April, 14 2021, 12:00am EDT
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First-of-its-Kind Letter Calls for Ban on Private and Corporate Use of Facial Recognition
Groups call facial recognition "too dangerous to exist," say it must be abolished.
WASHINGTON
More than 20 civil and human rights organizations are expanding the fight against facial recognition and calling for a ban not only on government and law enforcement use of the technology, but also private and corporate use.
The letter, which highlights recent abuses by corporations including Uber Eats, Amazon, and Apple, states that this technology threatens to suppress workers' rights to organize, makes frontline workers susceptible to harassment and exploitation, puts personal biometric data in danger, and exacerbates existing biases.
The letter says that "In a world where private companies are already collecting our data, analyzing it, and using it to manipulate us to make a profit, we can't afford to naively believe that private entities can be trusted with our biometric information. A technology that is inherently unjust, that has the potential to exponentially expand and automate discrimination and human rights violations, and that contributes to an ever growing and inescapable surveillance state is too dangerous to exist."
While the call to ban law enforcement and government use of facial recognition has grown, and lawmakers have banned this use in many cities (and introduced a federal bill), Portland, OR is the only city to ban private use of facial recognition thus far. The organizations point to the Portland legislation as a template for other lawmakers to address the concerns with private and corporate use of the technology, and call on "local, state, and federal elected officials, as well as corporate leaders, to ban the use of facial recognition surveillance by private entities."
"There is zero reason to believe that corporations can use this technology responsibly, especially at a time when these companies are already collecting our data and using it to manipulate us for profit," said Caitlin Seeley George (she/her), Director of Campaigns and Operations at Fight for the Future. "This technology is inherently discriminatory and dangerous, no amount of regulation can address that. In order to protect people in workplaces, stores, restaurants, hospitals, transit and beyond, we must ban it."
"Opt-in consent based regulatory frameworks will not address these harms," added Evan Greer (she/her), Deputy Director at Fight for the Future. "If employees have to agree to being under constant facial recognition surveillance in order to have a job, that's not meaningful consent. If a patient has to agree to have their biometric information collected in order to receive care at a hospital, that's not really consent. Even more innocuous uses, like getting your face scanned to buy a burrito come with significant risks. The vast majority of people have no idea what the dangers of this technology are, and putting the onus on them fails to recognize power imbalances."
"Facial recognition technology poses serious threats to personal freedom. Letting this tool of authoritarian control spread throughout the private sector has serious implications for worker organizing rights and heightens the risk of catastrophic biometric data breaches," said Tracy Rosenberg, Advocacy Director at Oakland Privacy. "You can't replace your face, The troubled record of facial recognition technology in identifying darker skinned people and youth poses severe dangers for people too often criminalized. Facial recognition technology should be put back in the bottle. We don't need it and the dangers can't be regulated away."
"Facial recognition being prone to racial bias is not its only problem. If it were 100% accurate, it would be horrifying. If you're tracked wherever you go, your movements are laid bare for any company or government to exploit. Facial recognition deployments strip away your whole right to be let alone, in the name of more efficient advertising and policing. It's not worth it," said Alex Marthews, National Chair of Restore The Fourth.
"Corporate facial recognition fuels racist policing of Black, brown, and immigrant communities," said Aly Panjwani, Policy & Advocacy Manager at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. "Facial recognition is biased, broken, and dangerous to the livelihood of working-class people. This technology exists to monitor, exploit, and incarcerate and must be banned."
"The companies that develop and sell facial recognition technology need to recognize and confront its inherent dangers - and they need to stop it now," said Michael Connor, Executive Director of Open MIC, a nonprofit which has organized corporate shareholders to oppose the spread of facial recognition. Connor noted that a shareholder proposal at Amazon highlighting the human rights risks of the company's facial recognition product won more than 40 percent of the independent shareholder vote at Amazon's 2020 annual meeting, with yet another vote scheduled at this year's upcoming 2021 annual meeting. "Investors increasingly understand the dangers of facial recognition," Connor said. "Managements and boards of directors should take note."
"Facial recognition is one of the most dangerous forms of surveillance ever invented. We know that its use--both by private and government entities--puts Black and brown communities already targeted by state violence at an even higher risk of arrest and incarceration. And we know that it's already being used to target & silence protesters, deport migrant families, and control and surveil workers by their employers at Amazon warehouses and beyond. It's clear to us that the dangers this technology poses can't be "reformed" or "regulated" and we cannot trust tech companies--who are making enormous profits off of this tech--with the surveillance tools they already have. We must ban corporate & private use of facial recognition and fight for a surveillance-free future for all of us," added Laura Barrios, Campaign Manager, MPower Change.
"Corporate use of facial recognition will serve as an end-run around bans on government use of the technology and is a profound danger to the public in its own right. Face surveillance is too powerful for any entity to use because it enables widespread and surreptitious tracking of individuals on the back of cheap and omnipresent devices, cameras. The harms of facial recognition, both when it errs and when it is accurate, fall predominantly upon people of color, low-income individuals, and migrants. The use of this technology threatens to turn everyone into a suspect. FRT also permits unprecedented surveillance of workers, both on the job and off the clock. The only responsible step is for corporations to stop using facial recognition," said Jeramie Scott, Senior Counsel and Director of the Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
"Let's face it, the new gold standard for corporate power is private data, and owning your face is about as personal as it gets. Furthermore, corporations using facial recognition technology further exacerbates the criminalization of Black and Brown people," said Matt Nelson, Executive Director of Presente.org, the nation's largest Latinx digital organizing group. "Profiting from a surveillance state is an unethical, dangerous racket and has no place in a future democracy that works for all of us."
The release of this letter comes after a handful of recent cases that highlight the growing problem of facial recognition being used by corporations: the hack of more than 150,000 Verkada security cameras that include facial recognition software and are used in offices, gyms, hospitals, jails, schools, police stations, and more; Disney's announcement that it will be testing facial recognition at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom, and the incidences with Uber Eats, Apple, and Amazon previously mentioned.
Organizations signed onto the letter include Action Center on Race and The Economy (ACRE), American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Cryptoharlem, Daily Kos, Data for Black Lives, Demand Progress, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Fight for the Future, Greenpeace USA, Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, MediaJustice, MPower Change, Muslim Justice League, Oakland Privacy, Open MIC (Open Media & Information Companies Initiative), Presente.org, Privacy PDX, Public Citizen, RAICES, Restore the Fourth, RootsAction.org, Secure Justice, S.T.O.P. (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project), and United We Dream.
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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Top Progressive Groups Launch Massive Grassroots Mobilization for Harris
"Our coalition was critical to defeating Trump in 2020," said one organizer. "We're ready to do it again in 2024."
Jul 25, 2024
Announcing their endorsement of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, three of the country's largest progressive organizations announced Thursday their plan to mobilize their hundreds of thousands of members to reach out to millions of swing state voters about Harris' fight for abortion rights, the climate, and democracy.
The Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPD), the Working Families Party (WFP), and People's Action pledged to knock on more than five million doors in states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona, where they will tell voters about the key role Harris played in passing far-reaching climate action and jobs legislation in the Inflation Reduction Act, her strong support for abortion rights, and her commitment to delivering on President Joe Biden's housing agenda.
"Our coalition was critical to defeating [Republican presidential nominee Donald] Trump in 2020. We're ready to do it again in 2024," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. "This election is bigger than any one person. It’s about the kind of country we want to be and whether we will let the rights and freedoms our ancestors spent generations fighting for—the right to participate equally in our democracy, to organize our workplaces, and to control our own bodies—be taken away from us. Over the next four months, we'll be mobilizing voters in key states to elect Kamala Harris and build our ranks of WFP champions up and down the ballot."
The three groups' joint announcement of their endorsement of Harris comes four days after the vice president launched her campaign following Biden's decision to step aside under pressure from Democrats, due to concerns about his age, health, and sinking popularity among voters.
Since Sunday, the gun violence prevention group March for Our Lives has also announced its first-ever presidential endorsement of Harris, and the vice president has secured support from at least four national climate action groups.
"The Biden/Harris administration created real momentum toward an economy that puts working people before billionaires and a democracy that protects hard-won freedoms for everyone. We need to build on that momentum."
"We see an unprecedented surge of enthusiasm on the doors and from our members about Vice President Kamala Harris," said Marta Popadiak, movement governing director of People's Action. "The Biden/Harris administration created real momentum toward an economy that puts working people before billionaires and a democracy that protects hard-won freedoms for everyone. We need to build on that momentum."
People's Action has utilized "deep canvassing," an organizing tactic that eschews the brief, scripted conversations typical in traditional phone-banking and door-knocking operations in favor of longer discussions and open-ended questions aimed at developing an understanding of voters' beliefs, priorities, and values.
"We are mobilizing tens of thousands of volunteers to have deep conversations about why voting for Harris is a vote for a future in which our families and communities will thrive," said Popadiak.
People's Action expressed hope that a Harris presidency could initiate a shift in the Biden administration's "disastrous support" for Israel.
DaMareo Cooper and Analilia Mejia, co-executive directors of CPD, called on progressives to "rally behind Vice President Harris to build upon" the achievements of the Biden administration, including strengthening the U.S. economy following the coronavirus pandemic and canceling student debt for nearly one million Americans.
"Vice President Kamala Harris is a strong candidate who will beat Donald Trump, preserve our democracy, and drive our country forward," said Cooper and Meija.
The WFP noted that 95% of its members and delegates voted this week to endorse Harris as the Democratic nominee, and said the organization plans to knock on two million doors in key states including North Carolina and Georgia.
The organizing push is kicking off as Sen. JD Vance (D-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee, faces blistering criticism for comments he made in 2021 in which he described Harris and other Democratic leaders as "childless cat ladies," and for his support for a nationwide abortion ban and call to track people who cross state lines to obtain abortion care. On Wednesday, the Harris campaign warned voters about Trump's promise to oil tycoons that he would ensure they can continue drilling for planet-heating fossil fuels if they gave him $1 billion in campaign donations.
Nic O'Rourke, a member of the Philadelphia City Council who represents the WFP, said that a Harris victory in November would ensure "the best conditions possible for activists as they join with and empower their communities" to fight for economic, racial, climate, and reproductive justice.
Unlike Harris', said O'Rourke, "the GOP's vision for America doesn't hold space for the righteous demands of the constituents I serve and the people I come from."
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House GOP Accused of Injecting 'MAGA Project 2025 Agenda' Into Funding Bills
"We can see the fingerprints of Project 2025 across each of the majority's appropriations bills," said Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro.
Jul 25, 2024
A leading House Democrat on Wednesday accused her Republican colleagues of hijacking the government funding process to pursue a "MAGA Project 2025 Agenda" that aims to further roll back abortion rights, cut education programs, and attack workers and the planet.
"House Republicans are unable and unwilling to govern," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. "House Democrats are at the table ready to negotiate. The quicker House Republicans realize their extremist agenda cannot become law, the quicker we can get down to the business of the American people."
"This year should have been easier than last. We began the 2025 process—weeks after successfully passing the final 2024 bills—with a top line in place, yet Republicans reneged on it," DeLauro continued. "They wrote partisan bills to further their Trump MAGA Project 2025 Agenda instead of working with Democrats to pass bills that could become law. At every turn, the Republicans are making abortion illegal, eliminating federal support for public education, undermining workers, and disarming America in the face of the climate crisis."
In recent weeks, House Republicans have put forth government funding bills for fiscal year 2025 that would slash the Education Department's budget by $11 billion, curb funding for the understaffed Social Security Administration, and assail climate agencies while boosting offshore drilling and other destructive practices—all of which is consistent with the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025 agenda.
"Project 2025 advocates for climate and environmental arson. And we can see exactly where the majority has taken its cues from the climate catastrophe manifesto in this bill."
At least 140 people who worked in the administration of former President Donald Trump, the GOP's 2024 presidential nominee, helped craft Project 2025, according toCNN.
The House GOP's appropriations bills stand no chance of becoming law with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House, but they have offered a preview of what the right-wing party is likely to do if it wins control of Congress and Trump secures another term in November.
Currently, Republicans "find themselves in a stalemate of their own doing," The Washington Postreported Thursday, "even after House SpeakerMike Johnson (R-La.) pledged to pass all 12 bills before their monthlong break from Washington in August." So far, the House has only passed five of the 12 bills.
On Tuesday, following hours of debate, House Republicans abruptly pulled a federal energy and water funding bill from the floor and the party's leadership decided to begin August recess a week early, starting on Thursday. Politicoreported that the withdrawn bill would have revoked the Energy Department's pause on new permit approvals for liquefied natural gas exports and "cut funding for efficiency and renewable energy programs."
House Republicans were able to pass funding legislation for the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday. Just one Democrat, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), voted for the bill, which is dead on arrival in the Senate.
As E&E Newsreported:
The legislation's $38.5 billion top line is about $72 million below the fiscal 2024 level. EPA's budget would shrink by $1.8 billion, with significant cuts to agency programs focused on science and technology, environmental justice, and chemical risk reviews. The Superfund cleanup program and the Diesel Emissions Reduction Program would see higher budget lines.
Interior funding would drop by $42 million, in part because of cuts to offices such as the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the National Park Service.
In a floor speech earlier this week opposing the legislation, DeLauro said that "rather than making sound investments to protect our air and water, preserve our National Parks, and ensure the environment we all share and live in remains clean and protected, the majority's bill benefits the most egregious polluters and climate science deniers, jeopardizes public health and safety, hinders our responses to the climate crisis, and endangers rural and low-income communities."
"This disastrous proposal did not come out of nowhere," she continued. "This is explicitly where the majority wants to take the country. Project 2025 is the Trump MAGA Republican agenda to take over the government and destroy our rights and freedoms. But it is not just a document on a website—we can see the fingerprints of Project 2025 across each of the majority's appropriations bills."
"In short, Project 2025 advocates for climate and environmental arson," DeLauro added. "And we can see exactly where the majority has taken its cues from the climate catastrophe manifesto in this bill."
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'Disgusting': Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade
"The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs."
Jul 25, 2024
The richest sliver of the global population hauled in more than $40 trillion in new wealth over the past decade as countries around the world cut taxes for those at the very top, supercharging inequality that poses a dire threat to democracy and the planet.
An Oxfam analysis released Thursday ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers estimated that over the past 10 years, the global 1% has accumulated $42 trillion in new wealth. That's "nearly 34 times more than the entire bottom 50% of the world's population," the group observed.
"That is disgusting," Michael Taylor, founder of the Australian Independent Media Network, wrote in response to the new figures.
The analysis comes amid a growing push by current and former world leaders for rich countries to enact a global tax on billionaire wealth that would begin to reverse the damage done by decades of regressive policy. Oxfam found in a separate analysis released earlier this year that economic and political elites' global "war on fair taxation" has slashed taxes for the rich by 32% since 1980.
Oxfam said Thursday that global billionaires "have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5% of their wealth."
"Inequality has reached obscene levels, and until now governments have failed to protect people and planet from its catastrophic effects," Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of inequality policy, said in a statement Thursday. "The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs."
"Momentum to increase taxes on the super-rich is undeniable, and this week is the first real litmus test for G20 governments," Lawson added. "Do they have the political will to strike a global standard that puts the needs of the many before the greed of an elite few?"
A recent report by renowned economist Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley outlined how nations could go about implementing a 2% minimum tax on the wealth of global billionaires—a policy change that he shows would raise up to $250 billion in annual revenue that could be used to support a range of priorities, from climate investments to education and healthcare programs.
"Thanks to recent progress in international tax cooperation, a common taxation standard for billionaires has become technically possible," said Zucman. "Implementing it is a question of political will."
The economist's report was commissioned by the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has championed a global billionaire tax in the face of resistance from powerful nations, including the United States—which has more billionaires than any other country. In 2018, U.S. billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.
But reporting indicates that the leaders of G20 nations—which are home to roughly 80% of the world's billionaires—are likely to rebuff Lula's push for billionaire wealth tax, opting instead to pursue what Bloombergdescribed as "research on taxation and inequality that could take years to deliver results."
Reuters similarly reported Wednesday that G20 finance ministers meeting in Brazil "are preparing a joint statement for Thursday in support of progressive taxation that will stop short of endorsing the hosts' proposal for a global 'billionaire tax.'"
The global billionaire wealth surge comes in the context of growing misery for large swaths of the world's population. A report released Wednesday by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that one out of 11 people around the world—or up to 757 million people—"may have faced hunger" last year.
"The world's poorest people are paying the highest price of hunger," Eric Munoz, Oxfam's food policy expert, said in response to the FAO report. "We need deeper, structural policy and social change to address all of the drivers of hunger, including economic injustice, climate change, and conflict."
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