NYSee Radar

Tag: ai

  • Hackers Expose Age-Verification Software Powering Surveillance Web

    L0la L33tz · The Rage

    Three hacktivists tried to find a workaround to Discord’s age-verification software. Instead, they found its frontend exposed to the open internet.

    In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting – and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies.

    …

    Persona Identity, Inc. is a Peter Thiel-backed venture

    …

    The software performs 269 distinct verification checks and scours the internet and government sources for potential matches, such as by matching your face to politically exposed persons (PEPs), and generating risk and similarity scores for each individual. IP addresses, browser fingerprints, device fingerprints, government ID numbers, phone numbers, names, faces, and even selfie backgrounds are analyzed and retained for up to three years.

    …

    The program, according to the researchers, performs product analytics and user behavior tracking on a government identity-verification platform, provides real-time user monitoring — every click, every page load — on a FedRAMP platform processing PII and biometrics, and includes financial identity-verification capabilities on the government platform.

  • How US Intelligence and an American Company Feed Israel’s Killing Machine in Gaza

    James Bamford · The Nation.

    The project involved selling the ministry an Artificial Intelligence Platform that uses reams of classified intelligence reports to make life-or-death determinations about which targets to attack. In an understatement several years ago, Karp admitted, “Our product is used on occasion to kill people,” the morality of which even he himself occasionally questions. “I have asked myself, ‘If I were younger at college, would I be protesting me?’”

  • Retailers Secretively Using Face Recognition to Spot “Persons of Interest” — Including For the Government

    Jay Stanley · ACLU

    the incorporation of “BOLO” (“Be On the Look Out for”) alerts by companies on behalf of law enforcement has the potential to become — and may already be becoming — a powerful nationwide government surveillance dr­agnet.

    Cute move Rite Aid:

    In 2023 the FTC investigation found that “Rite Aid specifically instructed employees not to reveal Rite Aid’s use of facial recognition technology to consumers or the media.”

    We know the technology makes false positives all the time, and that there’s typically no human in the loop.

    If such sharing networks emerge — much as blacklists of “troublemakers” (i.e., labor organizers) were shared among companies in the 20th century — someone who is falsely accused might find themselves unjustly banned from a significant number of retail stores.

    This article collects a lot of scattered details concerning the issue, so would be a decent jumping off point for your exploration.

  • ‘pain point’ : the maximum amount you are willing to pay

    ‘pain point’ : the maximum amount you are willing to pay

    Noah Giansiracusa · Harvard Law Today

    Retailers are looking for what’s called the “pain point.” That’s the maximum amount that you as an individual customer are willing to pay for a specific product
    …
    [an app’s] knowledge of your phone battery’s life to determine how desperate you might be for a ride home, and therefore charge you more for it
    …
    now imagine … they look at me and they know every video I’ve watched on YouTube, everything I’ve searched in Google, and everything I have liked on Facebook, every conversation I’ve had with an AI chatbot. Does that feel like a fair situation?

    Does that feel like a fair situation?

    The wage slaves of the Gilded Age had it easy