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Washington Takes Aim at Facial Recognition
A group of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded that the Justice Department look at how police use facial recognition tools and whether it violates civil rights laws — part of a fresh wave of scrutiny in Washington of a technology that has triggered national concerns but has never come under federal regulations.
The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, calls for the Justice Department to explain how the agency’s policies and practices ensure that law enforcement agencies receiving federal funds for facial recognition technology comply with civil rights protections. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is the letter’s lead author, joined by Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and 15 other Democrats and one independent.
The Justice Department has awarded at least $3.2 million to local law enforcement agencies for facial recognition software since 2007, according to public records.
The letter comes a day after the National Academies released a 106-page report concluding that facial recognition systems have gotten so advanced that the industry requires federal oversight. In the report, a committee of 14 experts heard from stakeholders on facial recognition over nine months and concluded that the technology is a cause for concern because of both human misuse and technical shortcomings.
Montana’s Effort to Expand Religious Exemptions to Vaccines Prompts Political Standoff
Montana lawmakers are in a standoff with the state’s health department over a package of sweeping changes to childcare licensing rules that includes a disputed provision to allow religious exemptions to routine vaccinations for children and workers.
Both Republican and Democratic legislators on the Children, Families, Health, and Human Services Interim Committee voted on Jan. 18 to renew their informal objection to the proposed childcare licensing rules, which the committee has blocked since November.
The vote prevents the state’s Department of Public Health and Human Services from adopting the rules until at least March when committee members say they will debate a formal objection that could delay the rules’ adoption until spring 2025.
The most contentious provision in the 97-page rules package would require large childcare facilities to enroll children who, for religious reasons, have not been vaccinated. Montana, like 44 other states, already allows religious exemptions from immunization requirements for school-age children. But this proposal would add a religious exemption to its immunization requirements for younger kids in the state.
The FDA and FTC Need to Crack Down on TikTok and Instagram Influencers Pitching Prescription Drugs
In June, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter about advertisements for the drug Recorlev for Cushing’s syndrome — its first in more than a year about webpages that make “false or misleading claims” about prescription drugs. More recently, in December the agency published guidance about TV and radio advertisements.
But the FDA is behind on something crucial: It needs to develop and clarify regulations to protect patients from potential harm and misleading information on social media platforms, particularly from influencers.
Influencers with no medical or pharmaceutical training regularly use these platforms to promote prescription drugs. Khloe Kardashian, for example, has posted ads on Instagram to promote a prescription migraine medication. So have Lady Gaga and gold-medalist Olympic athlete Aly Raisman, who recently endorsed a competing migraine medicine in an ad that began with her talking about Women’s Mental Health Month.
While these posts were clearly marked as ads in compliance with federal guidelines, simply disclosing that something was sponsored is not enough. In 2021, the FDA and Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy found that adolescents and those with chronic conditions are especially vulnerable to pharmaceutical social media direct-to-consumer advertising. This susceptibility and the lack of oversight for such ads could have adverse health consequences, especially for young adult patients.
Big Tech Wants You to Foot the Bill for Its AI Projects
Big Tech’s trend of the week is the incessant talk about AI subscriptions. Silicon Valley cannot stop throwing money into AI, but they’re a bit stuck figuring out how AI will throw money back at them. Now, Big Tech thinks it found a solution: they’re betting you will pay a monthly subscription for their AI service. And, oh boy, there’s already a lot of them.
It’s like streaming all over again: the product is expensive to make, no one wants ads in there (yet), and there are a ton of services costing $10 to $20 a month. So, are you ready to pay for a portfolio of AI services like you do for streaming?
This week, Amazon jumped on the bandwagon of AI subscriptions as well. The company is reportedly launching an AI-supercharged Alexa with a monthly subscription. The service is tentatively named “Alexa Plus”, and has a launch date set for June. Apparently, Amazon employees expressed concerns that people won’t pay for it. Same here, Amazon employees, same here.
Thousands of Businesses Found Handing Tons of User Data to Facebook
Alarming new research has found supposedly private user data is being shared between Facebook and thousands of companies through hidden tracking techniques.
In the study, users downloaded a three-year span of data from Facebook which found that on average, each individual had their data shared by 2,230 companies.
While the individuals who submitted their data for this research were not demographically adjusted, they are of a demographic group that is more inclined to be privacy conscious, hinting that the average Facebook user’s data may have been shared far wider.
The research was conducted by Consumer Reports, a non-profit, independent organization seeking to provide transparency on how consumer data is used, and found that for the 709 volunteers who submitted their data, there were 186,892 companies that shared their data with Facebook.
Face Recognition Technology Follows a Long Analog History of Surveillance and Control Based on Identifying Physical Feature
Face recognition technology is the latest and most sophisticated version of biometric surveillance: using unique physical characteristics to identify individual people. It stands in a long line of technologies — from the fingerprint to the passport photo to iris scans — designed to monitor people and determine who has the right to move freely within and across borders and boundaries.
In my book, “Do I Know You? From Face Blindness to Super Recognition,” I explore how the story of face surveillance lies not just in the history of computing but in the history of medicine, of race, of psychology and neuroscience, and in the health humanities and politics.
Viewed as a part of the long history of people-tracking, face recognition technology’s incursions into privacy and limitations on free movement are carrying out exactly what biometric surveillance was always meant to do.
The system works by converting captured faces — either static from photographs or moving from video — into a series of unique data points, which it then compares against the data points drawn from images of faces already in the system. As face recognition technology improves in accuracy and speed, its effectiveness as a means of surveillance becomes ever more pronounced.
BMJ Report Recommends ‘Behavioral Interventions’ to ‘Reduce Vaccine Hesitancy Driven by Misinformation on Social Media’
The BMJ is not short for “Behavioral Medical Journal” — but it might as well be. Now this publication, owned by the British Medical Association, is exploring how to deploy no less than “behavioral interventions” to bring about less “vaccine hesitancy.”
And the article doesn’t stop at medical arguments. The hesitancy here is specifically linked with social media-driven “misinformation.” The recommendations don’t differ greatly from what those Big Tech social subsidiaries have been including for years in their policies — and these “guidelines” were probably cooked in the same kitchen, so to speak.
Things like, boosting the visibility of “reliable health information” and more “pro-action” on these platforms “in dealing with the proliferation of misinformation.”
Here’s what BMJ says are standard behavioral approaches: encouraging vaccination by “(including) mandatory vaccination and regulation for healthcare professionals, incentives, public health communication campaigns, and engaging trusted leaders.”
Penélope Cruz Says Social Media Is ‘a Cruel Experiment’ on Children
Penélope Cruz says her two kids don’t have phones or social media accounts. In an interview with Elle, the actor opened up about what it’s like to be a mother to two preteens — a 10-year-old daughter, Luna, and a 12-year-old son, Leo.
Cruz says she tries to protect her kids — whom she shares with her husband, Spanish actor Javier Bardem — from the dangers of technology, admitting that they aren’t on social media and “don’t even have phones.”
“It’s so easy to be manipulated, especially if you have a brain that is still forming,” Cruz told Elle. “And who pays the price? Not us, not our generation, who, maybe at 25, learned how a BlackBerry worked. It’s a cruel experiment on children, on teenagers.”
Amazon’s $1.4 Billion iRobot Deal to Be Blocked by EU Antitrust Watchdog
Amazon.com Inc.’s proposed $1.4 billion acquisition of Roomba maker iRobot Corp. is expected to be blocked by the European Union’s antitrust regulator over concerns that the deal will harm other robot vacuum makers.
The e-commerce giant was told the deal was likely to be rejected at a meeting Thursday with officials from the European Commission, according to people familiar with the matter. A final decision still needs formal approval from the EU’s political leadership and is due by Feb. 14.
The deal is likely to face opposition in the U.S. as well. According to people familiar with the matter, the Federal Trade Commission has been drafting a lawsuit that would seek to block the acquisition. The FTC’s three commissioners haven’t yet voted on a challenge nor had a final meeting with Amazon to discuss the potential case, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing an ongoing probe.
