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Tag: Surveillance

  • Dead soldiers in Clearview AI (Revised June 15th)

    Dead soldiers in Clearview AI (Revised June 15th)

    The war between Russia and Ukraine rages on. One method for the Ukrainian resistance to raise awareness of the number of dead Russian (and Ukrainian) soldiers is to use Clearview AI, the facial network services company, which can detect faces and connect them to, for instance, social media profiles. It’s also a method for the Ukrainian Ministry for Digital Transformation and five other Ukrainian agencies to detect dead soldiers scattered on and around battlefields.

    On January 6th 2021, two weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, we could witness the attack on the Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Afterwards, authorities could tap into the network services of Clearview AI and, quite easily, detect hundreds of participants in these illegal activities. Many of them have been prosecuted and some sentenced to jail. Clearview AI has amassed billions of photos on the public Internet for years, rendering them extremely able to pinpoint human beings if you have a Clearview AI account. The image I have of you will be matched against this gigantic image database and probably tell me it is you, even if we haven’t met for years (or ever).

    The podcast Click Here has a good episode on this and how it’s used in Ukraine. On the one hand employees of the Ministry of Digital Transformation use proper Clearview AI accounts, thus being able to match most images of dead soldiers with real people, even if years have passed, the deceased have no eyes and parts of the faces are distorted. They inform both Ukrainian and Russian relatives and tell them where to retrieve the body.

    More problematic is the fact that groups affiliated with the Ukrainian IT Army appear to use an account too, also informing Russian relatives, though in a(n) (even) more condescending and hostile way. Russian relatives are probably feeling neither gratitude, nor appreciation for suddenly receiving images of dead bodies, especially with gloating or condescending messages.

    Even if I remain a skeptic, there are some reasons for using this kind of technology.

    1. War is gruesome and disgusting. People die and preferably they should be identified. Computers and programs can help here and make this much easier and faster than humans.
    2. War crimes are committed and should be investigated. Technology can help here too.
    3. Russian authorities are not the ones to inform relatives that sons have died in accidents, wars or “special military operations”. They can lie and this is where technology can help tell otherwise.
    4. Identification of people is not dependant on favourable relations with another nation’s authorities. Identification can be made without another nation’s consent, because their citizens are in databases elsewhere anyway.

    There are more cons, however, some really strong.

    1. These databases will be targeted by states, state-sponsored organizations, rogue organizations and individuals.
    2. States will strive to acquire similar databases in order to identify anyone anytime anywhere.
    3. To presume that Russian relatives will feel anger at their government and/or gratitude towards Ukrainians for sending images of their dead ones is really bad. Rather, it can galvanize public support for Russian authorities.
    4. The hope for grieving mothers’ movements to direct their anger at the Russian regime is likewise bad. Why should they, especially if there’s anonymous messages from foreigners telling them they are blind to facts and supporting an evil leader?
    5. Disinformation warfare 1 – whom to believe? A random person from another country claiming my relative is dead or the national authorities?
    6. Disinformation warfare 2 – I can assert you to be a traitor and use this tool to prove it.
    7. Disinformation warfare 3 – can “photoshopped” images be run in Clearview AI?
    8. Disinformation warfare 4 – this kind of technology can trigger an even worse response and method of war, spiralling further down.
    9. Misidentification of individuals happen in every other computer system, so why shouldn’t it happen with Clearview AI.
    10. Gathering of images is done without consent or information and for how long will they be kept?

    Similar systems in use today are the combination of Sky Net and Integrated Joint Operations Platform in China. They are very creepy and should probably be banned altogether, because the more of this technology there is, the more it will be used. Based on a decision in May, Clearview AI is no longer allowed to sell its database to private businesses in the US and to Illinois state agaencies (for five years in the latter case). At this point, the database comprises 20 billion facial photos.

    But. After all, it’s rather easy to stay emotionally detached if you’re not in Ukraine, living your life, albeit with inflation and a shaky economy. Still, the war is far away and it’s easy to say this use, weaponized use, of images is wrong. But in a different situation, with war, death, fear and suffering around me, I’d probably be doing it myself.

  • Book review: The perfect police state

    Book review: The perfect police state

    This could well be a follow-up to Beijmo’s De kan inte stoppa oss. Instead of Syria as the main stage, the story and its focus is China. As Europe was an outlier in Beijmo’s book, Turkey and the US are the outliers here.

    Writer Geoffrey Cain presents himself early as the journalist he is, when travelling Xinjiang in western China, though the main character in the narrative is Maysem, an Uighur who has escaped Xinjiang. Cain introduces “the Situation”, the extreme oppression of Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang and the equally extreme surveillance there created by the Chinese Communist party. Its war on the three evils (terrorism, separatism and extremism) has created an omnipresent surveillance like no other, a dream of predecessors like Gestapo, Stasi and the KGB, much in the form of Sky Net (yes, sounds like Terminator) and Integrated Joint Operations Platform. Purposes are reeducation (brain wash) and genocide (e.g., by sterilization) and to dismantle the entire culture by sowing distrust between every person.

    Cain does a much better job than Beijmo at explaining his sources, his knowledge of things usually hidden, why he cross-checked interviewees, reasons for altering names and how he ended up covering this dire subject.

    Excerpt from pages 6-7 in the book, where Cain watches heavily equipped counterterrorism officers in the city of Kashgar:

    “I casually snapped a photo of the scene with my cell phone, and started to walk away. One of the police officers was wearing sunglasses with a built-in camera linked to China’s Sky Net surveillance database; the camera was connected by a wire to a minicomputer in his pocket. He turned left and glanced at me. If I were a local resident, he could probably see my name and national ID number on his lenses within seconds. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by police. I didn’t know where they came from, or how long they had been watching me. […] It’s likely that I’d been watched from the moment I arrived. Fellow journalists had warned me that my hotel room would be bugged and any laptops or smartphones I left in my room would be scanned. With 170 million cameras nationwide, some able to identify anyone from up to nine miles away, and government devices called Wi-Fi sniffers gathering data on all smartphones and computers within their range, the state probably knew a great deal about me the moment I stepped off the plane.”

    This occurred in 2017, just a couple of years after Beijmo’s story. Much has happened, albeit another country, in technology. It reminds me of the planes with cameras circling Baltimore, recording every vehicle and person in the city, as told by Bloomberg in 2016.

    By retelling Maysem’s story, and the stories of multiple other persons, we’re given a glimpse of the horrible oppression of the ethnic minorities in Xinjiang: reeducation centers, concentration camps, forced labor for Chinese and international corporations, the propaganda emanating from the Communist party, the male watchers allowed to sleep in female Uighurs homes and beds. Technologically, it’s on a totalitarian scale the Nazis could only have dreamed of. Despicable and omnipresent a system, the retelling is haunting, even if it’s not as blunt and violent as in Syria.

    Part in the creation of the surveillance stands the technological giants of China, with an unwitting Microsoft initiating the search for ever better surveillance many years ago. Some of the tech giants are Huawei, Hikvision and Tencent, the creator and holder of WeChat.

    Then, what is the actual difference technologically from our Western societies? Facebook Messenger and Alphabet/Google registering as much as they can about us on any device and with any trackers they can get hold of. Facebook with their glasses, Alphabet with their glasses and their watches. Android as an operating system with Google services installed allowing, by default, unrestrained data collection. Tech companies wish to create AI with our information and sell us as products to advertisers and corporations. In China, the Communist party wishes to create AI and control people in order to create a harmonious society without friction. The Citizen Lab released a report in 2020 named We Chat, They Watch, revealing how WeChat is used to spy on non-Chinese residents and to train AI.

    Cain’s book is a good read, and the seriousness of the issue is written on every page. To follow Maysem’s story, you need to read the book, because I won’t give you any more details. Usually, I don’t bother with graphics or design, but the cover of the book (in hardcover) is appealing.

  • Book review: De kan inte stoppa oss

    Book review: De kan inte stoppa oss

    Mattias Beijmo is a Swedish public speaker, opinion writer and analyst focused on technology and its implications for privacy, democracy and society. In the book They can’t stop us, Beijmo tells us a story of the Arab spring mainly through the lens of two young Syrians. Bassel is the outstanding tech-savvy guy with a promising, global future. Noura is the aspiring jurist, defending human rights in a dictatorship. Both want more, but none of them are prepared to leave Syria, despite the looming protests and clashes with police and security forces.

    As the clashes turn into a looming civil war, in the mezzanine of severe oppression but not outright war, Bassel and other democracy protesters receive help from hackers internationally. One group is based in Sweden, named Telecomix. They do their best in helping protesters avoid surveillance and tracking. Unfortunately, another Swedish presence presents itself to the Syrian dictatorship – Ericsson (also other companies). They can help track people. And so, the technological war also begins.

    Another of Beijmo’s intention is to reveal digital weapons, or should I say how seemingly benign digital equipment can be turned into weapons with devastating effects, especially for people who believe in democracy, freedom of speech and human rights.

    In recent years, Swedish media has disclosed how several more Swedish companies sell equipment to dictatorships in Belarus and Myanmar, with the purpose of surveillance and tracking of dissidents. Some scenes from the book are imprinted on my mind. And dare I mention, they are not happy. Reading it (it only exists in Swedish though) might give you cold shivers down your spine again and again. But if you’re a proponent of democracy, or at least prefer living in a democracy, you should read it.