Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Tuesday 28 January 2020

London police to use face scan tech, stoking privacy fears

By KELVIN CHAN "Facial recognition tech- London is the sixth most
AP Business Writer nology poses a huge threat monitored city in the world,
LONDON (AP) — London to human rights, including with nearly 628,000 surveil-
police will start using fa- the rights to privacy, non- lance cameras, according
cial recognition cameras discrimination, freedom of to a report by Compari-
to pick out suspects from expression, association and tech.
street crowds in real time, peaceful assembly," Bacci- London's move comes af-
in a major advance for the arelli said. ter a British High Court rul-
controversial technology London police said the fa- ing last year cleared a simi-
that raises worries about cial recognition system, lar deployment by South
automated surveillance which runs on technology Wales police, which has
and erosion of privacy from Japan's NEC, looks been using it since 2017 to
rights. for faces in crowds to see if monitor big events like soc-
The Metropolitan Police Ser- they match any on "watch- cer games, royal visits and
vice said Friday that after a lists" of up to 2,500 people airshows. That system de-
series of trials, the cameras In this file photo dated Wednesday, March 28, 2012, a security wanted for serious and leted people's biometric
will be put to work within a cctv camera is seen by the Olympic Stadium at the Olympic violent offences, including data automatically after
month in operational de- Park in London. gun and knife crimes and scanning.
ployments of around 5-6 Associated Press child sexual exploitation. Britain's privacy commis-
"As a modern police force, sioner, Elizabeth Denham,
hours at potential crime ogy will enter people's I believe that we have a who had warned police
hotspots. The locations daily lives. Authorities and duty to use new technolo- not to take that ruling as a
would be chosen based private companies are ea- gies to keep people safe in blanket approval, struck a
on intelligence but the po- ger to use facial recogni- London," Assistant Commis- cautious tone on Friday.
lice did not say where, the tion but rights groups say it sioner Nick Ephgrave said She said that while London
number of places, or how threatens civil liberties and in a statement. police have stated they're
many cameras would be represents an expansion of The British have long be- putting safeguards and
deployed. surveillance. come accustomed to transparency in place to
Real-time crowd surveil- London's decision to use the video surveillance, with protect privacy and hu-
lance by British police is technology defies warnings cameras used in public man rights, "it is difficult to
among the more aggres- from rights groups, lawmak- spaces for decades by se- comment further on this un-
sive uses of facial recogni- ers and independent ex- curity forces fighting terror til we have an actual de-
tion in wealthy democra- perts, Amnesty Internation- threats. Real-time monitor- ployment and we are able
cies and raises questions al researcher Anna Bacci- ing will put that tolerance to scrutinize the details of
about how the technol- arelli said. to the test. that deployment." q

Workers criticize

Amazon on climate

despite risk to jobs

in a statement. Amazon, which relies on
Amazon said that its policy fossil fuels to power the
on external communica- planes, trucks and vans
tions is not new and is in that ship packages all over
keeping with other large the world, has an enormous
This Sept. 6, 2012, file photo shows the Amazon logo in Santa companies. It said the carbon footprint. And its
Monica, Calif. policy applies to all Ama- workers have been vocal in
Associated Press zon employees and is not criticizing some of the com-
directed at any specific pany's practices.
By BARBARA ORTUTAY called Amazon Employees group. Last year, more than 8,000
AP Technology Writer For Climate Justice, an ad- "While all employees are staffers signed an open let-
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — vocacy group founded by welcome to engage con- ter to CEO and founder Jeff
Hundreds of employees are Amazon workers that earli- structively with any of the Bezos demanding that Am-
openly criticizing Amazon's er this month said the com- many teams inside Amazon azon cut its carbon emis-
record on climate change pany had sent letters to its that work on sustainability sions, end its use of fossil fu-
despite what they say is a members threatening to and other topics, we do els and stop its work with oil
company policy that puts fire them if they continued enforce our external com- companies that use Ama-
their jobs at risk for speak- to speak to the press. munications policy and will zon's technology to locate
ing out. "It's our moral responsibil- not allow employees to fossil fuel deposits.
On Sunday, more than ity to speak up, and the publicly disparage or mis- Amazon said in a statement
300 employees of the on- changes to the communi- represent the company or that it is passionate about
line retail giant signed their cations policy are censor- the hard work of their col- climate change issues and
names and job titles to ing us from exercising that leagues who are develop- has already pledged to be-
statements on blog post on responsibility," said Sarah ing solutions to these hard come net zero carbon by
Medium. The online protest Tracy, a software develop- problems," according to an 2040 and use 100% renew-
was organized by a group ment engineer at Amazon, Amazon spokesperson. able energy by 2030.q