U.S. retailers fail to protect customer privacy

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Have an old Mario game collecting dust?. Now may be the time to evaluate its condition. An unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario 64 sold at a Dallas auction this month for $1.56 million. That’s right, over a million buckaroos, smashing the record set by another video game just two weeks prior (it was an unopened copy of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda and sold for $870K).

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

U.S. retailers are using Israeli military spy tech to watch shoppers
Thu Jul 15

For years, privacy advocates have argued that online shopping puts your information at risk, but now the same may be true for visiting physical storefronts. A growing number of retailers are using facial recognition technology in their security surveillance, which means they’re capturing footage of customers as they walk around a store and recognizing them individually. While these businesses — such as Macy’s, Lowes, and grocery chain Albertsons — claim it’s to prevent theft, in some cases it is used to target those recognized customers with online ads later.

And the increasing demand for such technology has led to a growth in companies supplying it, such as Israel-based AnyVision which recently raised $235 million in funding after successful use of their technology at army checkpoints, airports, and more. At U.S. retailers and schools, their “Better Tomorrow” technology identifies known shoplifters and sexual predators. Problem is, facial recognition technology is known to be biased against particular racial and gender identities. In fact, just this month a Black teenager was banned from a skating rink in Michigan after facial recognition software mistakenly implicated her in a brawl.

Further, inadequate federal regulation leaves the legality of this technology open to interpretation, though a few places have made strides of their own.

In 2019, San Francisco banned the use of facial recognition by police and other agencies.
Earlier this month, New York City enacted a law requiring stores and businesses to inform customers when they collect their biometric data.
And just last week, Seattle’s government agency overseeing air and sea ports voted to permanently prohibit use of biometric technology for law enforcement, security, and mass surveillance purposes.
Meanwhile Los Angeles moved in the opposite direction, approving police use of facial recognition technology to help in criminal investigations and more.

Want to know which stores are using facial recognition or want a way to ask them to stop? Check out Fight for the Future’s complete list with easy ways to take action.

Some additional resources...

→ Full coverage: R ecode
→ What data Better Tomorrow collects: The Next Web
→ How in-store data collection follows you online: Recode
→ Mistaken Michigan teen: ZDNET
→ SF’s ban: New York Times
→ NYC’s data law: JDSupra
→ Seattle’s vote: Security Magazine

CLIMATE CHANGE

Major world economies announce big plans to address climate change
Thu Jul 15

Following the deadly flooding in Europe this weekend, it’s easy to feel uneasy about our climate's future. So today we’re giving our attention to the most ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions yet.

The EU will be taxing imported goods based on the amount of greenhouse gases they emit, an approach developing countries fear will hurt them most.
China is launching an emissions-trading system, which increases the cost of products by putting a price on the greenhouse gases generated by industry.
Brussels has introduced 10 key policies, including an increase in the targets for wind, solar and other clean power sources and taxing aviation fuel.

These ambitious plans will help the EU meet requirements outlined in older legislation to cut emissions by 55%, but even that falls short of the 65% cut needed to reduce the severity of climate disasters. And in the U.S., Congress is keeping the Biden administration from similar levels of change. Biden’s plan requires companies to reduce carbon use at a far faster rate than their current projections, resulting in controversial high costs to industry. But a lack of response to climate change could cost the U.S. billions to trillions in property loss, public health costs, agricultural loss, and more.

Some additional resources...

→ EU & China coverage: Wall Street Journal
→ Brussels’ 10 policies: Politico
→ Biden’s struggle in Congress: Wall Street Journal
→ Economic cost of climate change to U.S.: 2019 Budget Hearing

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ASCII OF THE WEEK

        _
     _n_|_|_,_
    |===.-.===|
    |  ((_))  |
jgs '==='-'==='

So why are they mad at you?

I shoot people.

Art Credit: Joan Stark

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U.S. retailers fail to protect customer privacy

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