Facial recognition technology has been touted both as part of a dystopic nightmare or a leap forward in policing and enhanced security.  Without privacy safeguards the former is a likelihood.  As to how it will be used by police or security will determine how effective it is.  The real question however is whether it actually works.  To date the evidence has been at best mixed.  It does not work well with people who are wearing headgear.  Without a sufficient view of a target’s face it can be ineffective and it needs to be sufficient focused to work.  The industry touts its benefits and the media love facial recognition stories but it is technology which has had a long gestation and there is no guarantee of a safe delivery.

In Google Glass gets face recognition the AFR reports on an app being develop which will have face recognition glasses for Google Glasses.  The article provides:

Updated: Now this is why I would fork over $1500 and risk looking like a tool to wear a pair of Google Glasses: face recognition.

Lambda Labs, a San Francisco-based augmented reality company, says it has developed facial recognition software for Google’s Read the rest of this entry »

The latest edition of the Harvard Law Review was released today (Volume 126 Number 7).  It is notable because it includes papers delivered at a Symposium on Privacy And Technology.

The Papers are:

Introduction: Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Dilemma.

The extract reads as follows:

Symposium by Daniel J. Solove :: During the past decade, the problems involving information privacy Read the rest of this entry »

Salon reports in Senate: Drones require new privacy laws  about testimony before a Senate panel calling for an upgrading of privacy protections in light of the increasing proliferation of drones in the US.

The article provides:

As domestic surveillance drones proliferate, the public needs greater protection experts tell hearing

WASHINGTON – Privacy laws urgently need to be updated to protect the public from information-gathering by the thousands of civilian drones expected to be flying in U.S. skies in the next decade or so, legal experts told a Senate panel Wednesday.

A budding commercial drone industry is poised to put mostly small, unmanned aircraft to countless uses, from monitoring crops to acting as lookouts for police SWAT teams, but federal and state privacy laws have been outpaced by advances in drone technology, experts said at a Senate hearing.

Current privacy protections from aerial surveillance are based on Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlantic published a story, So This Is How It Begins: Guy Refuses to Stop Drone-Spying on Seattle Woman, regarding  the use of a drone in Seattle by a person to interfere with another’s privacy.

It provides:

Back in October, Alexis wrote a piece asking what rights do we have with regard to the air above our property. Walk onto someone’s lawn and you’re trespassing; fly over it in a helicopter and you’re in the clear — “the air is a public highway,” the Supreme Court declared in 1946. But what about the in-between space? Does the availability of unmanned aerial vehicles (aka drones, aka UAVs) throw a wrench in the old legal understandings?

Well, here’s where the rubber meets the road for this abstract line of questioning. The Capitol Hill Seattle Blog is reporting a complaint it received from a resident in the Miller Park neighborhood. She writes:

This afternoon, a stranger set an aerial drone into flight over my yard and beside my house near Miller Playfield. I initially mistook its noisy buzzing for a weed-whacker on this warm spring day. After several minutes, I looked out my third-story window to see a drone hovering a few feet away. My husband went to talk to the man on the sidewalk outside our home who was operating the drone with a remote control, to ask him to not fly his drone near our home. The man insisted that it is legal for him to fly an aerial drone over our yard and adjacent to our windows. He noted Read the rest of this entry »

Today the Privacy Commissioner issued a press release regarding cyber security in line with National Cyber Security Awareness week, commencing today.

It states, in part:

Australian Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim today encouraged all Australians to take steps to protect their personal information during National Cyber Security Awareness Week (20 to 24 May 2013). The aim of the Awareness Week is to help people understand the simple steps they can take to protect their personal and financial information when online.

‘The web has Read the rest of this entry »

The Privacy Commissioner has published the speech he gave last week. It can be found here.

Below is a slightly edited transcript.  It relevantly provides:

The effect on Boston of the terrorist bombing has been profound.  I am currently in Boston at a conference at the MIT.  It dominates the news, it permeates discussions.  And it seems to be effecting American’s views on street surveillance.  The New York Times in Poll Finds Strong Acceptance for Public Surveillance  highlights a willingness of the public to allow for greater surveillance Read the rest of this entry »

Recently the World Today the report UK youth commissioner under fire over foul tweets highlights the permanence of the cybersphere and what one in the full bloom of fiery youth may regret as the rules of polite society beckon.  Woad warriors could transform themselves into paragons of virtue pre internet.  Memories fade and plausible deniability is an active option. Now the the Net sets all matters in in cyber concrete.  This has had an impact lately on Paris Brown.

The story provides:

ELEANOR HALL: Teenagers are often warned about what they say on social media sites: that they could come back to haunt them in later life.

A young woman in the UK didn’t have to wait long.

17-year-old Paris Brown’s position as the country’s first Youth Police and Crime Commissioner has been put in doubt Read the rest of this entry »

In Violet Homes Loans Pty Ltd v Schmidt & Anor [2013] VSCA 56 the Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the trial judge’s decision that a mortgage originator

FACTS

In Perpetual Trustees Australia Limited v Schmidt & Anor [2010] VSC 67 the trial judge, J Forrest J, found that Violet Homes Pty Ltd (“Violet”) had acted unconscionably and in breach of the general law, section 51AC of the Trade Practices Act and section 12CB of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission Act 2001.

In 2003 the Plaintiff (“Schmidt”) responded to an advertisement which claimed an investment of $40,000 in  syndicate would lead to a net return of $80,000 within 12 months.  Schmidt range the number given and spoke to a Mr Maddocks (“Maddocks”).  In next month he invested $80,000 in the syndicate.  obtained a line of credit from Perpetual Trustees Australia Ltd [12].  In early 2004 Maddocks pursuaded Schmidt to make further investments.  Schmidt was unable to borrow from his bank, the Bank of Melbourne, because he was a pensioner who had no capacity to repay [13].  Maddocks arranged a loan for Schmidt from Perpetual, preparing the loan application and income declaration.  The documents contained false information, as to Schmidt’s employment situation and his annual income.  Schmidt did not provide the false information but signed the documents without reading them [14].  The documents were provided to a finance broker, Medallion Finance Concepts (“Medallion”) who onforwarded them to Violet [16]. Responding to querries by Ms Bonnici a credit officer at Violet, including a failure to provide an ABN, raised Maddocks prepared an amended the application and had Schmidt sign it [20].  At no time did anyone from Violet deal with Schmidt directly.

DECISION

Unconsionability

The Court found that “..recklessness, in the form of wilful blindness, may in some cases supply the necessary element of moral obloquy”[58].  The court said Read the rest of this entry »