by Michael Dean Thompson
Networked Privacy and DNA
Dana Boyd who was one of the first to describe the idea of Networked Privacy has pointed out that choice is not really individual in the network. That is, the choices we make affect our entire network. That likewise means that harm ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
According to what Cooper Quentin who is a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Washington Post, the government has promised they will only use this latest tool for the most grievous crimes. We have heard that before. We previously heard that with regard to ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) successfully sued for access to FBI information regarding cell-site simulators (“CSS”). For years, the FBI has used nondisclosure agreements (“NDA”) to hide their use of CSSs from the public and the courts. Now, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Every formerly incarcerated person has to deal with additional employment hurdles that impede their opportunities for successful reintegration. A recent study by the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University attempted to determine if Postsecondary Carceral Education (“PSCE”) improved employment opportunities and how race ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Subpoenas based on a phone number served on the messaging app Signal typically receive only two pieces of information: the date the account was created and the last time it was accessed. Sometimes, they receive less. Signal’s website tells its users, “It’s impossible to turn over ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Cops have found themselves challenged by the decreasing size of electronic devices and the correlated increase in the ease of hiding them. To assist them, they have begun using dogs to sniff out a key chemical used to create the devices, triphenylphosphine oxide, which remains on ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
In 2023, the general public became aware of the impending emergence of Artificial General Intelligence. It was not long after ChatGPT 3.5 became public that Americans began to understand the remarkable technology is spookily powerful while not completely reliable. Infamously, a law firm was reprimanded ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Two men, Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, have found themselves indicted for Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering and facing up to a quarter of a century of jail time. It is not apparent that the men themselves conspired to launder any money. Rather, they ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
If a technology is repeatedly shown by its own data to do very little to reduce crime or assist in homicide investigations – two functions for which it is purported to be designed – will a name change fix it? ShotSpotter had seen a rapid ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Facial recognition technology (FRT) corporations and the policing agencies that use them continue to jeopardize American civil liberties. While their advocates point to a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study that reported the best systems managed a high degree of accuracy using high quality images, they ignore how when comparing thousands of “probe” images against millions or more database images, the real number of failures (both false matches and missed matches) grows to a very large quantity. Moreover, they fail to mention how the largest provider of FRT to cops, ClearView AI, remains an unproven technology - its failure rate has yet to be tested outside the company.
What we do see, however, is that among the first seven people known to be wrongfully accused, six were Black. This includes Robert Williams who was arrested based on grainy surveillance video, against which they matched an expired driver’s license photo. The very best algorithms for FRT have a significantly greater failure rate for Black and Asian people. They perform their worst with Black women. Add the element of low quality images, and the odds of a correct match spiral downward. Yet, cops continue to ...
