On Sunday, May 19 at 7 p.m. ET and PT, “60 Minutes” will have include a segment, “A Face in the Crowd,” on the issue of privacy and facial-recognition technology. Here’s what “60 Minutes” says:

The odds are you are not just a face in the crowd any longer. Even if your picture isn’t plastered all over social networking and photo-sharing sites, facial recognition technology in public places is making it harder if not impossible to remain anonymous. Lesley Stahl reports on the new ways this technology is being used that even has one of its inventors calling it too intrusive. Her 60 MINUTES report will be broadcast Sunday, May 19 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Professor Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon, who researches how technology impacts privacy, stunned Stahl with an experiment. He photographed random students on the campus and in short order, not only identified several of them, but in a number of cases found their personal information, including social security numbers, just using a facial recognition program he downloaded for free. Read more »

The Los Angeles Times reports that the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff’s departments concerning privacy questions about the use of license-plate recognition systems. The groups have requested through the state public records act one week’s worth of the license-plate scanning data gathered and kept by the departments. (See a previous post for more information on the camera surveillance technology.)

Privacy rights groups on Monday filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles County’s two major law enforcement agencies after they refused to turn over information collected by electronic license plate scanners, the suit claimed.

To recap: In the last year, there has been increasing focus on the issue of domestic use of aerial drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, “UAVs”) to conduct surveillance. Months ago, Congress approved the FAA reauthorization bill, which includes a provision to integrate the use of aerial surveillance by drones in the United States by 2015. In July, drone makers sought to answer concerns by releasing voluntary guidelines, but privacy questions remain. Also, there are security questions, as well, as a recent drone “hijacking” proves. First, the voluntary code of conduct, which is not legally binding on the companies that agree to abide by the guidelines. The code states, “We will respect the privacy of individuals.” There are no details on how individuals’ privacy will be respected. In September, the International Association of Chiefs of Police adopted a code of conduct (pdf) for the use of drones in the United States for surveillance of the public. However, although the document has statements such as “Unauthorized use of a UA will result in strict accountability,” there is no information about what such accountability means. Recently, the Government Accountability Office released a report, “Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Measuring Progress and Addressing Potential Privacy Concerns Would Facilitate Integration into the National Airspace System,” (archive pdf). The report recommended that the government address privacy issues with the domestic use of drones.

Recently, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn decided to scrap the plan for police to use surveillance drones. In a short statement, he said: “Today I spoke with Seattle Police Chief John Diaz and we agreed that it was time to end the unmanned aerial vehicle program, so that SPD can focus its resources on public safety and the community building work that is the department’s priority. The vehicles will be returned to the vendor.” Read more about this in theSeattle Times, “Seattle grounds police drone program.”

Also recently, Charlottesville, Va., became the first city in the United States to pass legislation against the domestic use of drones. U.S. News and World Report says: “The resolution, passed Monday, ‘calls on the United States Congress and the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information obtained from the domestic use of drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court,’ and ‘pledges to abstain from similar uses with city-owned, leased, or borrowed drones.’” (For more on legislation in the states concerning drones, read a recent op-ed in Slate by the ACLU. There’s also a roundup of domestic drone legislation in the states at the ACLU’s Free Future blog.)

Now, Idaho has passed a law, SB 1134, that would restrict the use of UAVs by law enforcement officials. Reuters reports:  Read more »

In an opinion column for the Financial Times, Evgeny Morozov discusses privacy and Internet services giant Google and its latest product, Google Now, in which users would input their calendar and other information. Morozov writes:

Let’s give credit where it is due: Google is not hiding its revolutionary ambitions. As its co-founder Larry Page put it in 2004, eventually its search function “will be included in people’s brains” so that “when you think about something and don’t really know much about it, you will automatically get information”.

Science fiction? The implant is a rhetorical flourish but Mr Page’s utopian project is not a distant dream. In reality, the implant does not have be connected to our brains. We carry it in our pockets – it’s called a smartphone.

So long as Google can interpret – and predict – our intentions, Mr Page’s vision of a continuous and frictionless information supply could be fulfilled. However, to realise this vision, Google needs a wealth of data about us. Knowing what we search for helps – but so does knowing about our movements, our surroundings, our daily routines and our favourite cat videos. [...] Read more »

Politico reports that companies that sell aerial drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, “UAVs”) are gearing up for a big push, which has privacy and civil liberty implications. (See a recent post for background info on UAVs and moves in state and federal legislatures concerning privacy and restrictions on such domestic use of aerial drones.) Politico reports:

The unmanned aerial vehicle industry could pump millions of dollars and thousands of jobs into states already chafing from sequestration and looking to inject new funds into their local economies.

But the cash influx could leave many members of Congress walking on political minefields as privacy advocates warn of potential infringement by drones and the unrelated issue of targeted killing operations by the Pentagon and CIA draws more fire.

Alarmed privacy advocates say drone technology could be used for nefarious purposes, and even journalists could use it to intrude on the reasonable expectation of privacy. [...] Read more »

The Federal Aviation Administration announced that it “will hold an online public engagement session” in order to “provide the public with an opportunity to comment on the agency’s proposed privacy policy for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).”  See a recent post for more on moves in state and federal legislatures concerning privacy and restrictions on such domestic use of of aerial drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, “UAVs”). Here’s more from the press release:

The FAA will provide a brief overview of the UAS test site program and proposed privacy policy and then take comments from participants. Each participant will have three minutes for comments. The FAA encourages the public to provide comments to the docket. The FAA will listen and record all comments, but will not answer any questions during the session.

The FAA anticipates that test site operator privacy practices will help inform the dialogue among policymakers, privacy advocates, and the industry on broader questions about the use of UAS technologies. The privacy requirements the FAA has proposed are specifically designed for the operation of the UAS test sites. They are not intended to pre-determine the long-term policy and regulatory framework under which commercial UASs would operate. Rather, they aim to assure maximum transparency of privacy policies associated with UAS test site operations in order to engage all stakeholders in discussion about which privacy issues are raised by UAS operations and how law, public policy, and the industry practices should respond to those issues in the long run.

Date: Wednesday, April 3 at Noon ET
For more information and to register: https://www.eventbuilder.com/encounter/event_desc.asp?p_event=s6b6g2p7