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Content Type: Examples
Documents filed with the US National Labor Relations Board show that Amazon issues warehouse workers with radio-frequency handheld scanners to track and record every minute of "time off task". The filing is part of a dispute at the State Island Amazon warehouse, where workers voted to unionise in 2022. Managers must ask the person with the most "time off task", which includes time spent in the bathroom, talking to other associates, and navigational errors, about their whereabouts for each "…
Content Type: Examples
Amazon has begun issuing partner delivery companies with AI-enabled cameras to monitor and track drivers' behaviour on the road. The cameras add another layer of monitoring to existing requirements to run the smartphone app Mentor; drivers complain that the app's bugs lead to unfair disciplinary action against them; the app may also follow them into their homes. Drivers swap tips on gaming the app on Reddit.https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/amazon-mentor-app-tracks-and-disciplines-delivery-…
Content Type: Examples
Amazon delivery partner companies are ordering their drivers to turn off Amazon's Mentor monitoring app so they can take more risks in order to hit Amazon's delivery targets. Mentor, made by a company called eDriving, is a smartphone app Amazon uses to monitor drivers in Amazon-branded vans that tracks drivers' speed, braking, acceleration, and cornering; it also detect "phone distraction" and gives drivers a safe driving score. Amazon has pushed the liability for infractions onto the more than…
Content Type: Examples
Numerous video clips from Amazon's in-van driver-facing surveillance cameras are appearing on Reddit in violence of Amazon's stated privacy policies and raising questions about drivers' privacy. The videos are clearly not being posted by drivers themselves, but come from inside Amazon delivery partners, though who is posting them is unknown. The cameras capture all aspects of drivers road behaviour; the company claims they protect road safety. Drivers say they do not have access to the videos.…
Content Type: Examples
A 24-year-old man in Atlanta, Georgia is suing Amazon after being left with extensive brain and spinal cord injuries after an Amazon van crashed into his car. Amazon claims it isn't legally liable because the driver worked for the delivery company Harper Logistics LLC. However, the lawsuit seeks to prove that Amazon controls all aspects of deliveries from how many packages drivers are assigned to their continued employment and tracks drivers intensively, pressuring them to take risks in order…
Content Type: Examples
Employees monitored by monitoring tools such as Hubstaff, CleverControl, and FlexiSPY report that the software takes a screenshot every ten minutes and calculate an activity score based on how they type and move their mouse. Aware that employers are looking at these scores, employees pause the tracker while they perform tasks such as participating in Zoom meetings, watching videos, or taking notes, which then requires them to work more hours to make up the time. A TUC poll in 2022 found that 60…
Content Type: Examples
Four people in Kenya have filed a petition calling on the government to investigate conditions for contractors reviewing the content used to train large language models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. They allege that these are exploitative and have left some former contractors traumatized. The petition relates to a contract between OpenAI and data annotation services company Sama. Content moderation is necessary because LLM algorithms must be trained to recognise prompts that would generate harmful…
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The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the use of facial recognition technology to arrest protester Nikolay Glukhin on the Moscow metro system was "incompatible with the ideals and values of a democratic society governed by the rule of law". Glukhin's protest consisted of travelling carrying a life-sized cardboard figure of the dissident Konstantin Kotov holding a banner that said "I’m facing up to five years … for peaceful protests." Glukhin was arrested several days later, charged…
Content Type: Examples
Authorities in Germany and France are using legal powers intended for use against organised crime and extremist groups to crack down on direct action protests intended to spur public action against climate change. State authorities in Germany are preventively detaining protesters, in one case holding an individual for 30 days without charge. In France, lawmakers passed new surveillance and detection laws, and in UK legislation has made it illegal to lock or glue yourself to physical…
Content Type: Examples
A coalition of 65 NGOs including Access Now, EFF, and Article 19, have written a letter asking the European Commission to reject the possibility that content moderation provisions in the Digital Services Act could be used to compel social media shutdowns. The letter was in response to comments by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton saying that the DSA would allow the Commission to fine and ban social media networks from operating in the EU that don't immediately remove hateful content…
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Despite mass demonstrations in 2022 supporting women's right to bare their heads, Iranian authorities are considering a draft law that proposes prison terms of five to ten years (up from ten days to two months) for women to refuse to wear the hijab, substantial fines for businesses and celebrities who disobey the rules, and the use of AI to identify women violating the code. The Iranian parliament would vote on the bill in the next two months. Security forces are already using some of the…
Content Type: Examples
Thousands of cameras made by Bosch are part of a surveillance network on the streets of Tehran that clerical rulers are using to track women who refuse to cover their heads in public. Amnesty International reports that women whose bare heads are detected receive text messages threatening them with fines. Bosch says its cameras, which were sold to Iran between 2015 to 2017, were not equipped with facial recognition technology, but that the Iranian state could use software sourced from elsewhere…
Content Type: Examples
Munich's public prosecutor has confirmed that since October 2022 the Bavarian authorities have been tapping communications of the Last Generation climate activist group, including phones, emails, and voicemails on suspicion that the group is forming or supporting a criminal organisation. Last Generation's public protests often include blocking traffic or throwing liquids or paint on artworks, buildings, and private plans and boats. In some cases, authorities also monitored mobile location…
Content Type: Examples
The Biden administration has recommended the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, warning that not doing so could constitute "one of the worst intelligence failures of our time". S702 allows the US government to collect the digital communications of foreigners living outside the US and if not renewed will expire at the end of 2023. A cross-party selection of lawmakers is calling for the law to be substantially reforms to ensure it's not used against Americans.…
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The ACLU, NAACP, and other civil rights and civil liberties organisations have called on the US Department of Homeland Security to investigate intelligence gathering at "Cop City", a plan to build a police and fire department training centre in a forest near Atlanta, Georgia. More than 40 environmental protesters defending the forest have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism, and one was shot by police during a raid on the forest in January 2023. The organisations have warned in a…
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The UK's Northamptonshire Police used live facial recognition technology for the first time at the 2023 Formula 1 British Grand Prix in order to spot people who pose a "risk of danger to the wider public" such as wanted criminals, or people involved in serious crime or "unlawful protest". Northamptonshire Police said it would also send plain-clothed detectives and armed officers to patrol the circuit and use other measures to prevent disruption to the race.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk…
Content Type: Examples
In response to a damning report from Jonathan Hall KC, the reviewer of the UK's terrorism legislation, the Metropolitan Police referred to the Independent Office of Police Conduct the case of radical French publisher Ernest Moret. When Moret arrived at St Pancras station in London for a book fair in April 2023, police detained him for 24 hours under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act, confiscated his phone and laptop, and demanded he reveal his devices' passcodes. Hall said Schedule 7 powers…
Content Type: Examples
Facial recognition technology using chips from the US companies Nvidia and Intel and deployed in the Moscow underground has helped police detain and question thousands of people on the way to and returning from protests against the Russia-Ukraine war. Nvidia and Intel are not thought to have breached sanctions. However, the Russian and Belarusian companies that provide the algorithms to perform face matching participated, and in some cases won prizes, in US facial recognition test programmes…
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Internal emails obtained under an FOI request show that between April and June 2022 the US Marshals Service received regular alerts from Dataminr, a company that monitors social media on behalf of corporate and government clients and an official partner of Twitter, advising them of the times and locations of ongoing and planned abortion rights protests. There is no oversight for this type of warning system, even though it can chill free speech. The pattern of alerts suggests that Dataminr is…
Content Type: Examples
A heavily redacted report from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court shows that the FBI turned a tool intended for foreign surveillance under a law known as Section 702 on 278,000 US citizens between 2020 and 2021, including suspects in the January 6 insurrection and Black Lives Matter protesters. The FBI brought in corrective measures in 2021 that caused the use of the database to drop dramatically. The Biden administration is seeking to renew Section 702 before it lapses at the end of…
Content Type: Examples
Thousands of dissidents in 40 countries were imprisoned for posting or reposting social, political, or religious content on social media between June 2021 and May 2022, according to the Freedom on the Net 2022 report. The report calls China, the most repressive of the 40, "the world's worst environment for internet freedom"; the country has detained journalists, human rights activists, members of religious and ethnic minority groups, and ordinary users. It is highlighted that protesters…
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A former executive at Bytedance, the owner of TikTok, has said in a filing relating to a wrongful dismissal lawsuit that the members of Chinese Communist Party maintained a backdoor channel to access TikTok user data belonging to Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists in order to try to identify the individuals and their locations. The data included the users' network information, SIM card identifications, and IP addresses. Bytedance pulled the app out of Hong Kong in 2020 when a new…
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Hong Kong authorities seeking to ensure the complete removal of the popular pro-democracy protest song "Glory to Hong Kong" from search results got an injunction against Google after the technology giant refused to remove it without a court order. The authorities say in the writ that they are seeking to stop anyone with seditious intent from publishing or distributing the song in any media. After a hearing, the court denied the authorities' request.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics…
Content Type: Examples
Police have closely monitored the first protest in Hong Kong since 2020, limiting attendees to 100 and requiring them to wear number tags and submit their banners for prior inspection. Police also set up a cordon to keep protesters separated from the media. The protest opposed a land reclamation plan on the city's east side.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-65080083
Publication: BBC
Writer: BBC
Publication date: 2023-03-26
Content Type: Examples
Video footage shows that security agents linked to London mayor Sadiq Khan spied on the environmental activist group Green New Deal Rising and blocked members from participating in a public debate. Information about the campaigners and their plans appears to have been shared in advance between the Greater London Authority, the O2 venue, and ISG Commercial, which provides security services to the O2. The environmental group has been opposing the tunnel in progress linking the boroughs of…
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London's Metropolitan Police announced it would use facial recognition to scan the crowds attending the May 2023 coronation of King Charles III. The hundreds of thousands of people expected to line the streets was an entirely new scale of use for the technology in Britain. Critics such as Liberty and Big Brother Watch opposed the usage, fearing the police would use it to chill protest, already under threat from recent UK legislation granting police new powers.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-…
Content Type: Examples
Human rights lawyers allege that during protests in March 2023 police arbitrarily arrested numerous protesters with the goal of chilling protests. In similar cases during the 2018 "yellow vest" protests, only 5,000 of 11,000 people arrested were eventually prosecuted, according to the government's own figures. The arrests are supported by laws including a prohibition on participating in crowds preparing acts of violence or that have the potential to trouble public order. During visits by…
Content Type: Examples
In a case brought by NGOs before the 2023 May Day marches, administrative courts ruled that police may use drones to patrol the crowds and rejected the argument that the drones pose a serious attack to fundamental freedoms. However, a court in Rouen suspended parts of a decree that would have allowed police to use drones at a protest in Le Havre even though the judge agreed the drones would probably improve security.
https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20230501-french-courts-uphold-use-of-police-…
Content Type: Examples
The Mississippi legislature has introduced a bill that would require public schools and postsecondary institutions to install video surveillance cameras that record audio throughout their campuses, including in classrooms, auditoriums, cafeterias, gyms, hallways, recreational areas, and along each campus's perimeter, and allow parents to vies live feeds of classroom instructions. The bill's sponsor, state representative Stacey Hobgood Wilkes (R-Picayune) says the bill's provisions would help…