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The Washington County Sheriff's Office became the first law enforcement agency in the country known to use Amazon's artificial-intelligence tool Rekognition, transforming this thicket of forests and suburbs into a public testing ground for a new wave of experimental police surveillance techniques.

Almost overnight, deputies saw their investigative powers supercharged, allowing them to scan for matches of a suspect's face across more than 300,000 mug shots taken at the county jail since 2001. A grainy picture of someone's face - captured by a security camera, a social media account or a deputy's smartphone - can quickly become a link to their identity, including their name, family and address. More than 1,000 facial-recognition searches were logged last year, said deputies, who sometimes used the results to find a suspect's Facebook page or visit their home.

But Washington County also became ground zero for a high-stakes battle over the unregulated growth of policing by algorithm. Defense attorneys, artificial-intelligence researchers and civil rights experts argue that the technology could lead to the wrongful arrest of innocent people who bear only a resemblance to a video image. Rekognition's accuracy is also hotly disputed, and some experts worry that a case of mistaken identity by armed deputies could have dangerous implications, threatening privacy and people's lives.

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Stories of resistance against biometric schemes are seldom seen in established media because Big Tech lawyers head off such stories by bullying outlets with legal threats. Monsanto and Big Pharma turned this into an art form.

The NYPD, that paragon of opacity, screwed up. And now it wants its stuff back. The Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology has been engaged in a public records lawsuit against the NYPD since 2017. It's seeking records on the department's use of facial recognition technology. The NYPD has fought hard, but has been forced to hand over almost 3,700 pages of relevant info to date. This after initially telling the Center it had "no responsive documents." Contained in the steady drip of documents handed over to the Center was something the NYPD Wasn't supposed to release in unredacted form.

The FBI still has not assessed whether its facial recognition systems meet privacy and accuracy standards nearly three years after a congressional watchdog—the Government Accountability Office—raised multiple concerns about the bureau’s use of the tech.

An article in Go Erie, revealed how the Feds are classifying parts of cities as "Opportunity Zones" or as I call them "Opportunity Surveillance Zones" (OPS ). The U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service are using Opportunity Zones to help law enforcement turn sections of cities into federally funded surveillance zones.

Illinois law blocks facial recognition technology for private industry, but not for government or police. The last paragraph of the bill states, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to apply to a contractor, subcontractor, or agent of a State agency or local unit of government when working for that State agency or local unit of government.

Facial recognition software is a powerful technology that poses serious threats to civil liberties. It’s also a booming business. Today, dozens of startups and tech giants are selling face recognition services to hotels, retail stores—even schools and summer camps. The business is flourishing thanks to new algorithms that can identify people with far more precision than even five years ago. In order to improve these algorithms, companies trained them on billions of faces—often without asking anyone’s permission. Indeed, chances are good that your own face is part of a “training set” used by a facial recognition firm or part of a company’s customer database.

Everyone's hooking up ICE with automatic license plate reader (ALPR) data. And everyone's misleading the public about it, starting with ALPR manufacturer, Vigilant. The EFF has been investigating California law enforcement's data sharing claims with relation to its Vigilant ALPRs and finding their public statements are directly contradicted by internal communications obtained with public records requests.

The push to turn America's cities into Chinese-style surveillance networks has found a new partner in Detroit, Michigan. The only difference between what is happening in San Diego and what is happening in Detroit is, they are not using the same smart street lights to spy on everyone. Detroit uses Intellistreets a company known to have strong ties to Homeland Security.

If you don’t feel like your privacy rights are already being violated enough, rest assured, things are going to get a lot worse in the near future. We are being watched at every turn – the US has truly become a surveillance state, with cameras on every corner, Smart devices spying on us, and our own computers and phones tracking our movements. Airports have been particularly invasive since the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2001. Since then, air travel has become quite unpleasant.

For those of you that still hold onto to the idea that America will never follow in China's, Big Brother footsteps, I give you this disturbing story. A recent CNet article revealed how the Washington County Sheriff's Office (WCSO) in Oregon uses Amazon's Rekognition software to identify shoplifters.

I hope you enjoyed America's favorite pastime because by the end of this year, nearly every Major League Baseball (MLB) team will be using facial recognition. Last year, their were only nine MLB teams using CLEAR's facial recognition to spy on fans. But all of that is about to change. This year, the MLB has decided to go full-blown TSA and put facial recognition cameras in 23 stadiums which is just seven shy of the entire league.

Last month, Business Insider published an extraordinarily detailed look into the private army protecting Facebook and its founder. While much of the expose revolved around the company’s traditional security measures like armed guards and executive protection details, what stood out was the company’s close relationship with law enforcement and its use of traditional government surveillance technologies from secret cellphone tracking to license plate scanners to the proposed deployment of facial recognition to its global surveillance camera network

Your face may be one in a million, but there are little to no consumer protections regarding how companies using facial recognition technology share your face and other information they capture about you.

Can you imagine a city in the United States secretly creating a Chinese-style public surveillance network that can identify everyone? Can you imagine that same city secretly creating a Chinese-style public watchlisting network? Well, imagine no more because it has already happened.