Digital Ethics

Rep. Rashida Tlaib suggested that the Detroit police department should only employ African Americans to identify black suspects from the city's facial recognition technology, according to video captured by The Detroit News -- a comment that the city's police chief called "racist" and "insulting."

Big technological shifts have always empowered reformers. They have also empowered bigots, hucksters, and propagandists.

A new incognito mode on Google Maps may make it easier to obscure your search history. But that doesn't mean the app won't be tracking your whereabouts.

For a nominally private network, Facebook's new app Threads asks for a surprising amount of user data.

It appears that Apple has rejected an app that warns Hong Kongers about police activity. The Hong Kong police force shot a high schooler in the chest yesterday and put seventy people, from 11 to 75, in the hospital. That app saves lives in Hong Kong. Let me tweet about it a bit https://t.co/APsQK6XRsP— Pinboard (@Pinboard) October 2, 2019

They need facial scans of people with darker skin

This is the online version of the Popular Information newsletter. You can get independent accountability journalism in your inbox every week. Sign up here: Last week, Facebook quietly changed the language of its advertising policies to make it easier for politicians to lie in ads.

We've gathered together some of the best digital ethics codes to guide charities' in building their own ethical frameworks.

Motorola Solutions is among the tech firms racing to deliver new ways of monitoring the public.

We love being on our phones. A lot. Now a cottage industry around "digital detox" wants to help you quit.

After two officers came to a Pacific Northwest community, longtime residents began to disappear — a testament to the agency’s quiet embrace of big data.

Travel companies are using facial recognition and other sophisticated tech to better predict how and why their customers shop the way they do.

Some social media companies have had a newsworthiness exemption for years, but they clarified this week that most political content is "news."

Nearly two decades ago, a company called Interpeak created a network protocol that became an industry standard. It also had severe bugs that are only now coming to light.

A.I. research is becoming increasingly expensive, leaving few people with easy access to the computing firepower necessary to develop the technology.

Headlines are full of the ways in which our use of data and automated decision-making algorithms have run amok, from blindly optimizing…

But does it matter that they are not real?

A statement on the necessity of surveillance resistant systems.https://t.co/eOdTOBZK0q pic.twitter.com/icb0OTWXtg— Sarah Jamie Lewis (@SarahJamieLewis) November 8, 2018

Artificial intelligence (AI) and face recognition technology is being used for the first time in job interviews in the UK to identify the best candidates.

I was beginning to think Foucault’s writings on the “disciplinary society” were becoming irrelevant. But then my niece started the 5th grade. Her teachers add and subtract behavioral points in an app shared with her mom. Note that she lost a point for using the restroom today. pic.twitter.com/3nXJ9Mdbyo— Josh Seim (@JoshSeim) September 27, 2019

An investigation into the politics of training sets, and the fundamental problems with classifying humans.

Consumer surveillance cameras are everywhere now, and they’re capturing moments we otherwise would never have known happened.

Standard Cognition will deploy its cashierless tech at a minor league baseball stadium retail venue in the next two years.

Google took out some print ads. Firefox isn't feeling it.

The FTC Facebook agreement reminded me of a question I asked Facebook at the #ARDPPC Ghana after they advised they had 150 million users in Africa (FYI 98% access FB via mobile in Africa). I asked why Facebook changed the Terms of Service for African users from Ireland to the US https://t.co/WDY5IlINdC— Privacy Matters (@PrivacyMatters) July 25, 2019

What a new art book on surveillance reveals about the current state of mass monitoring.

Don’t let unethical leadership define the limits of your work

Ethics is not the answer when our norms and rights are violated. Rule of law must prevail in regulating #ArtificialIntelligence. We need meaningful access to information, oversight and research in the public interest, @MarietjeSchaake #tptalks2019— Fanny Hidvegi (@infofannny) September 19, 2019