Ministry of Information
You’re being secretly tracked with facial recognition, even in church
Moshe Greenshpan, the CEO of Israel- and Las Vegas-based facial recognition software company Face-Six, says there are 30 churches around the world using his Churchix technology. He launched the service just four months ago and says churches are already using it to scan congregants’ earthly visages to keep track of attendance at events in order to know who wasn’t there so they can check up on them, or who attends most frequently so they can ask those people for donations. He declined to name any of the churches using the technology citing the controversy around facial recognition. I asked him if any of the churches are based in Texas or Illinois, the only two U.S. states that have laws on the books about getting permission to collect peoples’ faceprints. “I prefer not to say,” said Greenshpan.
(If a facial expression-detecting camera were trained on my own face, it would read “skeptical.” Without being able to talk to one of the churches using this technology, it’s impossible to verify Greenshpan’s claims.)
Greenshpan said the churches just have to upload one high-quality photo of a congregant to start scanning video or photos from gatherings to see if they were there. I asked him if the churches let people know they’re using the technology. “I don’t think churches tell people,” he said. “We encourage them to do so but I don’t think they do.”
That’s exactly the fear that privacy advocates have about the increasing roll-out of this technology: people’s faces are being put in databases and used to track them without any knowledge that it’s happening. Greenshpan argues that churches were already keeping track of who attended their events, but that his technology just makes it more efficient for medium-sized and mega-churches.
Greenshpan, who got his start with a facial recognition app called Skakash that was like a Shazam for celebrity faces, and then “followed the money” to business applications, is among the entrepreneurs who want to usher facial recognition into more common use. Some of the companies focus on their ability to create databases of “bad faces” — people who can be instantly identified for heightened scrutiny or even barred from entry. California-based FaceFirst tells retailers in an advertising brochure that they can get alerts when “pre-identified shoplifters” or “known litigious individuals” enter their stores.
FaceFirst also says retailers can create a database of “good customers,” so they can greet them by name when they walk through the door. Privacy advocates worry about the creation of face-tracking databases that could be used to track people’s movements in the offline world the same way advertising companies track them online from website to website using cookies.
Facefirst
“Instantly, when a person in your FaceFirst database steps into one of your stores, you are sent an email, text, or SMS alert that includes their picture and all biographical information of the known individual so you can take immediate and appropriate action,” says the Facefirst brochure. It doesn’t say what happens when that person isn’t you but is actually a doppelgänger with a bad reputation. Or how someone who doesn’t want to get greeted by name gets their face taken out of the database.
“There are no federal laws that specifically govern the use of facial recognition technology,” wrote Ben Sobel in a Washington Post editorial that discussed the only two states with relevant laws on the books. In lieu of a law, the Department of Commerce has been trying to establish facial recognition industry standards in a “privacy multistakeholder process.” For more than a year, industrial representatives and privacy advocates have been taking part in negotiations to come up with standards for how facial recognition should be deployed by businesses in the U.S. Last week, those negotiations broke down. Privacy groups involved in the process, including the ACLU and EFF, withdrew, saying in a letter that companies refused to agree to core principles of privacy.
“We asked the industry to agree that in general they need to get consent to put people’s images into facial recognition databases and they disagreed,” said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology. “So we proposed the narrowest of narrow situations, that when someone is walking down a street, a company they haven’t heard of shouldn’t identify that person by name. And the industry representatives wouldn’t agree to that either. So we walked out.”
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the government can't force raisin farmers to give up part of their annual crop for less than it's worth, a victory for conservative groups that hailed the decision as a win for private property rights.
The justices ruled 8-1 that a 1940s-era program born out of the Great Depression is unconstitutional because it allows federal officials to seize personal property from farmers without fully compensating them, even though the goal is to benefit farmers by stabilizing market prices.
The court sided with California farmers Marvin and Laura Horne, who claimed they were losing money under a program they called outdated and ineffective. They had been fined $695,000 for trying to get around it.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the government must pay "just compensation" when it takes personal goods, just as when it takes land away.
Roberts rejected the government's argument that the Hornes voluntarily chose to participate in the raisin market and have the option of growing different crops if they don't like it.
"'Let them sell wine' is probably not much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history," Roberts said. "Property rights cannot be so easily manipulated."
The case was considered one of the most important property disputes to reach the high court since 2005, when the justices ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could use the power of eminent domain to hand private homes or businesses to developers to help stimulate economic improvement. That case sparked a backlash in many states and led more than 40 state legislatures to pass laws protecting property rights.
By contrast, Monday's ruling in the raisin case was seen as a decisive win for property-rights advocates seeking to limit government power.
"The decision confirms what should be obvious: the government cannot come and take your personal property without compensation, whether raisins or other property, on the ground that the taking is for your own good," said J. David Breemer, attorney for the Pacific Law Foundation, a conservative group that backed the Hornes.
The program was authorized by a 1937 law that allows the U.S. Department of Agriculture to keep prices for raisins and other crops steady by helping to manage supply. A 1949 marketing order allowed farmers to form a committee that decides how much of the raisin crop handlers must turn over to the government each year.
These raisins would be placed into a reserve pool to be sold outside the open market, used for the school lunch program or given away to charities and foreign governments. Any profits from these reserve sales would go toward funding the committee and anything left over went back to the farmers.
The Hornes refused to participate in the program in 2003, when farmers were required to give up 47 percent of their crop but received far less in return than their costs of production. They also refused to cooperate in 2004, when other farmers gave up 30 percent of the crop in 2004 and were paid nothing.
The Hornes' lawyer, John O'Quinn, called the ruling "a personal vindication" for the couple and "an important win for personal liberty."
Raisin prices have been stable recently, and farmers have not been ordered to put crops in reserve since 2010.
Only a small number of other crops are regulated in the same way, though federal officials say most programs are not active. Those include California dried prunes, California dates, California almonds, tart cherries, walnuts and spearmint oil.
A USDA spokesman said agency officials were reviewing the ruling and had no immediate comment.
Roberts said the government could have restricted raisin sales by limiting production, which is how the vast majority of crops programs work.
In a separate opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer agreed that the Hornes were entitled to be properly paid for their crops, but he said the case should be sent back to a lower court to decide whether they would have been owed any money had they complied with the program.
Breyer's separate opinion was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.
Justice Clarence Thomas took issue with Breyer's point and wrote separately to say that sending the case back to figure out compensation "in this case would be a fruitless exercise."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only dissenter. She said the program did not deprive the Hornes of all property rights, it just limited the amount of potential income they could earn from it.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/23/supreme-court-says-government-seizure-raisins-is-unconstitutional/
Obama has issued 19 secret directives
WASHINGTON — A one-digit correction toPresident Obama 's directive on hostage policy Wednesday had the effect of disclosing the existence of a previously unknown — and still-secret — Obama order on national security.
The hostage policy was originally released Wednesday as a presidential policy directive numbered PPD-29. When the White House corrected that number to PPD-30, it meant Obama had issued a secret directive as PPD-29 sometime in the past 17 months.
Obama signed PPD-28, an order on electronic eavesdropping in the wake of revelations byEdward Snowden , in January 2014.
So what is PPD-29? No one's talking. A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment of the existence of classified PPDs Wednesday.
"The only reason we know about it is the sequential numbering of the directives, and realizing they skipped a few," said Steven Aftergood of theFederation of American Scientists , which tracks the directives.
PPD-29 isn't the first to be tacitly acknowledged only by a missing number. Of the 30 PPDs issued by Obama, 19 have not been released. And for 11 of those, the White House has not disclosed even the subject of the order.
"It's not only the public that doesn't have copies. It's also Congress that doesn't have copies," Aftergood said. "It's a domain of largely unchecked presidential authority. It doesn't mean it's bad, but it's lacking in independent oversight."
But they have the same legal force as an executive order, forming a body of largely secret law, said Harold Relyea, a political scientist who advised Congress on national security directives before retiring from theCongressional Research Service .
"The difference is that while executive orders are public by law — they must be published in theFederal Register to be effective —- PPDs are not," he said. "It is a kind of secret law. People have to obey it. But it's a directive that can allocate money, direct people or take a course of action."
What Obama calls PPDs have gone by different names by different presidents back to theTruman Administration . President George W. Bush called them National Security Presidential Directives (NPSDs). President Clinton called them Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs). President Nixon called them National Security Decision Memoranda.
Whatever they're called, Obama has been less prolific than his predecessors. George W. Bush issued 66 such orders, plus 25 more Homeland Security Presidential Directives.President Reagan issued at least 325.
Some, going back as far as theLyndon Johnson administration, remain classified. They can involve subjects including the use of nuclear weapons, ballistic missile defenses, space policy, cybersecurity and even continuity plans for the federal government in the case of a large-scale disaster.
The secrecy makes it difficult to know entirely what changes Obama has made in the hostage policy. The directive issued Wednesday revoked a prior directive by President George W. Bush in 2002. But that directive, known as NSPD-12, remains secret.
"You would think that if there's a new policy it would be a simple matter to explain what the old policy was," Aftergood said.
And even though Obama released his directive, it incorporates a classified annex with additional instructions to executive branch agencies.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/24/presidential-policy-directives-form-secret-law/29235675/
(If a facial expression-detecting camera were trained on my own face, it would read “skeptical.” Without being able to talk to one of the churches using this technology, it’s impossible to verify Greenshpan’s claims.)
Greenshpan said the churches just have to upload one high-quality photo of a congregant to start scanning video or photos from gatherings to see if they were there. I asked him if the churches let people know they’re using the technology. “I don’t think churches tell people,” he said. “We encourage them to do so but I don’t think they do.”
That’s exactly the fear that privacy advocates have about the increasing roll-out of this technology: people’s faces are being put in databases and used to track them without any knowledge that it’s happening. Greenshpan argues that churches were already keeping track of who attended their events, but that his technology just makes it more efficient for medium-sized and mega-churches.
From the Churchix website
FaceFirst also says retailers can create a database of “good customers,” so they can greet them by name when they walk through the door. Privacy advocates worry about the creation of face-tracking databases that could be used to track people’s movements in the offline world the same way advertising companies track them online from website to website using cookies.
From a Facefirst advertising brochure for retailers
“There are no federal laws that specifically govern the use of facial recognition technology,” wrote Ben Sobel in a Washington Post editorial that discussed the only two states with relevant laws on the books. In lieu of a law, the Department of Commerce has been trying to establish facial recognition industry standards in a “privacy multistakeholder process.” For more than a year, industrial representatives and privacy advocates have been taking part in negotiations to come up with standards for how facial recognition should be deployed by businesses in the U.S. Last week, those negotiations broke down. Privacy groups involved in the process, including the ACLU and EFF, withdrew, saying in a letter that companies refused to agree to core principles of privacy.
“We asked the industry to agree that in general they need to get consent to put people’s images into facial recognition databases and they disagreed,” said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology. “So we proposed the narrowest of narrow situations, that when someone is walking down a street, a company they haven’t heard of shouldn’t identify that person by name. And the industry representatives wouldn’t agree to that either. So we walked out.”
According to many a sci-fi book and at least one hilarious comic, technology-enabled facial recognition in the wild will eventually be as common as caller id on your phone — which also got heat from privacy advocates when first introduced in 1990. How mainstream society feels about it is still unclear, though people occasionally seem to be discomforted judging from lawsuits filed this year in Illinois alleging that both Facebook and Shutterfly created faceprints without their users’ consents. But proponents say, with the steady march of technology and image collection, face recognition everywhere is looking increasingly inevitable.
“You, I, everyone has the right to take photographs in public,” said Carl Szabo, a lawyer at online advertising trade group Netchoice who was on the other side of the Commerce debate. “Facial recognition can be applied immediately, or days later, or months later. If someone takes a photograph in public, and wants to apply facial recognition, should they really need to get consent in advance? Are they going to chase someone down the street to get them to fill out a form?”
Szabo said he was disappointed that the privacy groups had dropped out of the negotiations but that the Department of Commerce working group will still issue standards on facial recognition for industry. He thinks companies just need to be transparent about what they’re doing and put notices up about facial recognition being used. He says businesses will change their ways if consumers signal that they don’t like it. “I don’t know if society will get used to Carl Szabo being identified as he’s walking down the street,” he said. “But if a business makes people uncomfortable, there will be a backlash.”
Of course, if Greenshpan’s claims are true, there are congregants at churches who are currently being subjected to facial recognition scanning who have no idea it’s happening and thus no opportunity to raise holy hell about it if they object.
Supreme Court says government seizure of raisins is unconstitutional
The justices ruled 8-1 that a 1940s-era program born out of the Great Depression is unconstitutional because it allows federal officials to seize personal property from farmers without fully compensating them, even though the goal is to benefit farmers by stabilizing market prices.
The court sided with California farmers Marvin and Laura Horne, who claimed they were losing money under a program they called outdated and ineffective. They had been fined $695,000 for trying to get around it.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the government must pay "just compensation" when it takes personal goods, just as when it takes land away.
Roberts rejected the government's argument that the Hornes voluntarily chose to participate in the raisin market and have the option of growing different crops if they don't like it.
"'Let them sell wine' is probably not much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history," Roberts said. "Property rights cannot be so easily manipulated."
By contrast, Monday's ruling in the raisin case was seen as a decisive win for property-rights advocates seeking to limit government power.
"The decision confirms what should be obvious: the government cannot come and take your personal property without compensation, whether raisins or other property, on the ground that the taking is for your own good," said J. David Breemer, attorney for the Pacific Law Foundation, a conservative group that backed the Hornes.
The program was authorized by a 1937 law that allows the U.S. Department of Agriculture to keep prices for raisins and other crops steady by helping to manage supply. A 1949 marketing order allowed farmers to form a committee that decides how much of the raisin crop handlers must turn over to the government each year.
These raisins would be placed into a reserve pool to be sold outside the open market, used for the school lunch program or given away to charities and foreign governments. Any profits from these reserve sales would go toward funding the committee and anything left over went back to the farmers.
The Hornes refused to participate in the program in 2003, when farmers were required to give up 47 percent of their crop but received far less in return than their costs of production. They also refused to cooperate in 2004, when other farmers gave up 30 percent of the crop in 2004 and were paid nothing.
The Hornes' lawyer, John O'Quinn, called the ruling "a personal vindication" for the couple and "an important win for personal liberty."
Raisin prices have been stable recently, and farmers have not been ordered to put crops in reserve since 2010.
Only a small number of other crops are regulated in the same way, though federal officials say most programs are not active. Those include California dried prunes, California dates, California almonds, tart cherries, walnuts and spearmint oil.
A USDA spokesman said agency officials were reviewing the ruling and had no immediate comment.
Roberts said the government could have restricted raisin sales by limiting production, which is how the vast majority of crops programs work.
In a separate opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer agreed that the Hornes were entitled to be properly paid for their crops, but he said the case should be sent back to a lower court to decide whether they would have been owed any money had they complied with the program.
Breyer's separate opinion was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.
Justice Clarence Thomas took issue with Breyer's point and wrote separately to say that sending the case back to figure out compensation "in this case would be a fruitless exercise."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only dissenter. She said the program did not deprive the Hornes of all property rights, it just limited the amount of potential income they could earn from it.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/23/supreme-court-says-government-seizure-raisins-is-unconstitutional/
Obama has issued 19 secret directives
WASHINGTON — A one-digit correction to
The hostage policy was originally released Wednesday as a presidential policy directive numbered PPD-29. When the White House corrected that number to PPD-30, it meant Obama had issued a secret directive as PPD-29 sometime in the past 17 months.
Obama signed PPD-28, an order on electronic eavesdropping in the wake of revelations by
So what is PPD-29? No one's talking. A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment of the existence of classified PPDs Wednesday.
"The only reason we know about it is the sequential numbering of the directives, and realizing they skipped a few," said Steven Aftergood of the
PPD-29 isn't the first to be tacitly acknowledged only by a missing number. Of the 30 PPDs issued by Obama, 19 have not been released. And for 11 of those, the White House has not disclosed even the subject of the order.
"It's not only the public that doesn't have copies. It's also Congress that doesn't have copies," Aftergood said. "It's a domain of largely unchecked presidential authority. It doesn't mean it's bad, but it's lacking in independent oversight."
But they have the same legal force as an executive order, forming a body of largely secret law, said Harold Relyea, a political scientist who advised Congress on national security directives before retiring from the
"The difference is that while executive orders are public by law — they must be published in the
What Obama calls PPDs have gone by different names by different presidents back to the
Whatever they're called, Obama has been less prolific than his predecessors. George W. Bush issued 66 such orders, plus 25 more Homeland Security Presidential Directives.
Some, going back as far as the
The secrecy makes it difficult to know entirely what changes Obama has made in the hostage policy. The directive issued Wednesday revoked a prior directive by President George W. Bush in 2002. But that directive, known as NSPD-12, remains secret.
"You would think that if there's a new policy it would be a simple matter to explain what the old policy was," Aftergood said.
And even though Obama released his directive, it incorporates a classified annex with additional instructions to executive branch agencies.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/24/presidential-policy-directives-form-secret-law/29235675/
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