Digital Ethics

BlackVue has an app that shows the location of drivers that opt-in. The creators say it shouldn’t be possible to track its users in bulk; we found otherwise.

A group tested Amazon's facial-recognition software on Denver City Council members. Nine of them were falsely identified as sex offenders, and in some cases the system was 92% confident they were a match https://t.co/PHBK2gWjUV @JessicaDenver7 pic.twitter.com/cpbMOax5An— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) January 14, 2020

1. [thread] We are filing legal complaints against six companies based on our research, revealing systematic breaches to privacy, by shadowy #OutOfControl #adtech companies gathering & sharing heaps of personal data. https://t.co/qGsiNSe7gJ #privacy pic.twitter.com/f1ReGIgUUn— Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad (@finnmyrstad) January 14, 2020

There could be multiple reasons why some of them have flopped, but perhaps we're simply not ready to be served by robots in lieu of humans.

Here’s everything we know about Amazon’s video doorbell and the controversies surrounding it.

Four employees watched video footage from customers, exceeding "what was necessary", the company says

Technology has grown from some devices and platforms we use to an entire environment in which we function

“In the past a lot of S&P 500 CEOs wished they had started thinking sooner than they did about their Internet strategy. I think five years from now there will be a number of S&P 500 CEOs that will wish they’d started thinking earlier about their AI strategy.” Andrew Ng Introduction Artificial intelligence changes our […]

Telling people to “assume good intent” is a sign that if they come to you with a concern, you will minimize their feelings, police their reactions, and question their perceptions. It tells marginal…

Ethics is a funny topic. It runs deep with a lot of people.

Company’s work in 68 countries laid bare with release of more than 100,000 documents

In the fall of 1769, Thomas Jefferson lost a slave. His name was Sandy, and he was a runaway. Sandy was “about 35 years of age.” He worked as a...

Facial recognition is just one of several AI-powered security tools showing up at schools.

The idea that FaceApp is somehow exceptionally dangerous threatens to obscure the real point: All apps deserve this level of scrutiny.

The e-commerce giant warned workers who participated in environmental protests that future comments regarding company business practices could lead to termination.

Arresting and deporting undocumented people has become lucrative because their biological, biometric data can be mined, harvested, and used to generate profit.

The company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” Things have changed.

A Silicon Valley lobby enrolled elite academia to avoid legal restrictions on artificial intelligence.

Blame the companies surveilling you instead.

It is important that we write, podcast, and vlog on our own African digital content platforms that no one can censor or ban us from.https://t.co/VparyJVOoy— iAfrikan.com (@iafrikan) January 2, 2020

Encryption played a key role in South Africa’s political liberation.

The phone you’re using or the electric car you’re driving could be linked to child labour. Lithium-ion batteries powering most electric vehicles and cell phones contain the mineral cobalt. According to our research, cobalt mined by children and adults in appalling conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is entering the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest brands. Short of stopping the use of phones and electric cars, is there anything you can do?

Are smartphone and electric vehicle companies doing enough to cut human rights abuses out of their cobalt supply chains?

CCTV commissioner says he gets many queries about facial recognition and other tools

I learned a lot from creating my own deepfake video.

Shadowy firms collect detailed data on where we go and who we meet through our apps. Yet where is the protest that would fuel change?

This week, hacktivist and security engineer Lance R. Vick tweeted an enticing proposition along with a gut-punch headline: “Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines, tracking the locations of hundreds of thousands,” read the Washington Post link. The report revealed nearly instantaneous and sweeping adoption of smartphone-tracking platforms implemented in roughly 60 campuses, ranging from limited classroom attendance check-ins to pervasive 24/7 surveillance, mostly with fuzzy consent policies.

Cabinet Office apologises after details of more than 1,000 people posted online in error