All Posts Tagged as 'Profiling'

The Chinese government is using facial-recognition software to “track and control” a predominantly Muslim minority group, according to a disturbing new report from The New York Times. The Chinese government has reportedly integrated artificial intelligence into its security cameras to identify the Uighurs and appears to be using the information to monitor the persecuted group. The report, based on the accounts of whistleblowers familiar with the systems and a review of databases used by the government and law enforcement, suggests the authoritarian country has opened up a new frontier in the use of A.I. for racist social control—and raises the discomfiting possibility that other governments could adopt similar practices.

Two people familiar with the matter told the Times that police in the Chinese city of Sanmenxia screened whether residents were Uighurs 500,000 times in a single month. Documents provided to the paper reportedly show demand for the technology is ballooning: more than 20 departments in 16 provinces sought access to the camera system, in one case writing that it “should support facial recognition to identify Uighur/non-Uighur attributes.” This, experts say, is more than enough to raise red flags. “I don’t think it’s overblown to treat this as an existential threat to democracy,” Jonathan Frankle, an A.I. researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Times. “Once a country adopts a model in this heavy authoritarian mode, it’s using data to enforce thought and rules in a much more deep-seated fashion than might have been achievable 70 years ago in the Soviet Union. To that extent, this is an urgent crisis we are slowly sleepwalking our way into.”

A Georgia teacher faces battery charges after allegedly yanking a middle school student’s hair over a bathroom emergency, according to officials.

Charges were filed last week against Tracy Parham after security footage from Henry County Middle School helped clear up conflicting accounts of the violent incident, the Altana Journal-Constitution reported.

A judge who saw footage of the altercation from January on Friday ordered the science teacher to surrender to authorities.

Students wearing Confederate flags distributed racist and homophobic flyers on Wednesday in an effort to bully students in McCormick Junior High School’s Gay Straight Alliance students. The school is in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The flyers have a “NO” symbol covering a Pride flag and say “It’s great to be straight. It’s not ok to be gay.”

They also read, “Black lives only matter because if it weren’t for them who would pick our cotton” and “Join the kkk (the confederate kid club)”.

Netflix has denied shuffling the order of some of its TV series based on a viewer’s sexuality.

The platform was accused of changing the order in which episodes are shown on new series Love, Death & Robots earlier this week (March 18) by Out In Tech co-founder Lukas Thoms.

“Just discovered the most INSANE thing,” he tweeted. “The ORDER OF THE EPISODES for Netflix’s new series Love Death & Robots changes based on whether Netflix thinks you’re gay or straight.”