Surveillance systems at more than 46 malls in California are capturing license plate information that is fed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported Tuesday ... ... One company, Irvine Company Retail Properties, operates malls all over the state using a security network called Vigilant Solutions. Vigilant shares data with hundreds of law enforcement agencies, insurance companies, and debt collectors — including ICE, which signed a contract with the security company earlier this year, reports The Verge.

Marketing materials and documents obtained by ACLU affiliates in three states reveal a product that can be readily used to violate civil liberties and civil rights. Powered by artificial intelligence, Rekognition can identify, track, and analyze people in real time and recognize up to 100 people in a single image. It can quickly scan information it collects against databases featuring tens of millions of faces, according to Amazon. ... ... Amazon is marketing Rekognition for government surveillance. According to its marketing materials, it views deployment by law enforcement agencies as a “common use case” for this technology. Among other features, the company’s materials describe “person tracking” as an “easy and accurate” way to investigate and monitor people. Amazon says Rekognition can be used to identify “people of interest,” raising the possibility that those labeled suspicious by governments — such as undocumented immigrants or Black activists — will be seen as fair game for Rekognition surveillance. It also says Rekognition can monitor “all faces in group photos, crowded events, and public places such as airports,” at a time when Americans are joining public protests at unprecedented levels.

In a blog post in January, Microsoft talked up its partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which uses Redmond’s Azure Government cloud service. The post re-emerged this week amidst the uproar over the government’s child-separation policy at the border, and for a brief time, any mention of ICE was scrubbed from it. Sources with knowledge of the issue told PCMag that an employee deleted it after seeing commentary in social media; it was restored shortly thereafter. ... ... The source also said they do not believe Azure or Azure services are being used in the separation of families at the southern border, something CEO Satya Nadella echoed in a letter condemning the administration’s policy of separating families. He said Azure is used by ICE only for legacy mail, calendar, messaging, and document-management workloads.

. Computer calculations are increasingly being used to steer potentially life-changing decisions, including which people to detain after they have been charged with a crime; which families to investigate for potential child abuse, and — in a trend called ‘predictive policing’ — which neighbourhoods police should focus on. These tools promise to make decisions more consistent, accurate and rigorous. But oversight is limited: no one knows how many are in use. And their potential for unfairness is raising alarm. In 2016, for instance, US journalists argued that a system used to assess the risk of future criminal activity discriminates against black defendants.

ICE's most sensitive unclassified data, including data that supports the core agency functions and protects against loss of life. ... ... This ATO is a critical next step in enabling ICE to deliver such services as cloud-based identity and access, serving both employees and citizens from applications hosted in the cloud. This can help employees make more informed decisions faster, with Azure Government enabling them to process data on edge devices or utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification.

Following the revelation in March that Google had secretly signed an agreement with the Pentagon to provide cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology for drone warfare, the company faced an internal revolt. About a dozen Google employees have resigned in protest and thousands have signed a petition calling for an end to the contract. The endeavor, code-named Project Maven by the military, is designed to help drone operators recognize images captured on the battlefield. ... ... Google has sought to quash the internal dissent in conversations with employees. Diane Greene, the chief executive of Google’s cloud business unit, speaking at a company town hall meeting following the revelations, claimed that the contract was “only” for $9 million, according to the New York Times, a relatively minor project for such a large company. ... ... Internal company emails obtained by The Intercept tell a different story. The September emails show that Google’s business development arm expected the military drone artificial intelligence revenue to ramp up from an initial $15 million to an eventual $250 million per year.

Older workers are accusing Facebook, Ikea, and hundreds of other companies for discriminating against job seekers in their 50s and 60s through targeted job ads posted on Facebook. ... ... The Communications Workers of America, a labor union representing 700,000 media workers across the country, added the companies to a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday, which was filed in California federal court in December. In its original complaint, the labor union accused Amazon, T-Mobile, and Cox Media Group of doing the same thing. ... ... The case, Bradley v. T-Mobile, has major implications for US employers, who routinely buy job ads on Facebook to reach users. The plaintiffs argue that Amazon, T-Mobile, Ikea, Facebook, and hundreds of other companies target the ads so they are only seen by younger Facebook users.

Officials at the Lockport, New York, school district have purchased face recognition technology as part of a purported effort to prevent school shootings. Starting in September, all 10 of Lockport District’s school buildings, just north of Buffalo, will be outfitted with a surveillance system that can identify faces and objects. The software, known as Aegis, was developed by SN Technologies Corp., a Canadian biometrics firm that specifically advertises to schools. It can be used to alert officials to whenever sex offenders, suspended students, fired employees, suspected gang members, or anyone else placed on a school’s “blacklist” enters the premises. Aegis also sends alerts any time one of the “top 10” most popular guns used in school shootings appears in view of a camera.