Ottawa police piloted controversial facial recognition software last year -
Ottawa police quietly tested facial recognition software for three months last year, this newspaper has learned.
The pilot, which ended in March of 2019, came before a public dialogue on the use of CCTV cameras in spaces like the ByWard Market after a string of fatal shootings in the tourist hub. Though Ottawa police at the time spoke of the limitations of the surveillance cameras, they did not publicly reveal that the force had been investigating the use of a controversial tool that would go hand-in-hand with such surveillance.
In a statement to this newspaper, police said that “the Ottawa Police Service has explored the use of facial recognition technology as a tool to help solve crimes by utilizing photographs of persons of interests in criminal investigations and comparing them with existing databases collected per the Identification of Criminals Act, RSC 185.”
Police likened that to using fingerprints or DNA stored in an existing database to identify people. But Ottawa police said they do not currently use the technology and have no immediate plans to buy or use facial recognition software.
Controversy has swirled around law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology in recent weeks after a New York Times investigation into a company called Clearview AI. The Times’ story detailed how the company has created a massive database of open-sourced images scraped from websites across the internet, including Facebook. Police can then use the database for comparison with things like surveillance images.
Tagging: @abpoli @politicsofcanada @torontopoli @onpoli
Similarly, some Toronto police were
using it and lying about it“informally testing” Clearview AI from October 2019 to February 5 2020. The police chief halted it’s use when “it was brought to his attention.”The Toronto police refuses to comment on A) How the police chief didn’t know B) If it’s been used in arrests C) If the cops using it were judiciously authorized.
Toronto police chief halts use of controversial facial recognition tool | The Star
(Source: ottawacitizen.com, via )
On this day, 6 January 2005, local residents in Bayview in Chatsworth, Durban, successfully fought off a local government water disconnection team. This was especially brave given that a council security team had previously murdered a teenage boy, Marcel King, elsewhere in the city, after he attempted to help his mother during a disconnection of her electricity. The council, run by the African National Congress, said that they would be back with greater force.
Since the ANC had been elected in 1994, they had pursued a neoliberal agenda and disconnected the water supply to over 1 million homes, while thousands of people continued to die each year from diarrhoea, mostly caused by unsafe water.
Pictured: a nearby water protest in 2014 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1315603468624800/?type=3
- Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing by Jared Sexton
- Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity by E. Patrick Johnson
- Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry
- If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
- The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol
- Seize The Time by Bobby Seale
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
- Dirty Little Secrets About Black History : Its Heroes & Other Troublemakers by Claud Anderson
- They Came Before Columbus by Dr. Ivan Van Sertima
- Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
- The Miseducation of the Negro by Dr. Carter G. Woodson
- Precolonial Black Africa by Cheikh Anta Diop
- Black Skin White Mask by Frantz Fanon
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
- Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War by Wallace Terry
- Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila
- Assata by Assata Shakur
- Developmental Psychology of the Black Child by A N Wilson
- Black Labor, White Wealth : The Search for Power and Economic Justice by Claud Anderson
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
- Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis
- Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: The Rise of European Capitalism by Dr. John Henrik Clarke
- Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
- The Hidden Rules of Race: Barriers to an Inclusive Economy by Andrea Flynn
- Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings
- The Condemnation of Blackness by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
- The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
- The Blueprint For Black Power by Dr. Amos Wilson
- PowerNomics : The National Plan to Empower Black America by Dr. Claud Anderson
- When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson
- Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks
- The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer
- The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes
- The Rise and Fall of Black Wall Street by Robin Walker
- Harlem: A Century in Images by Deborah Willis
- Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
- The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
- Ain’t I a Woman by bell hooks
- For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
- The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
- Yurugu by Dr. Marimba Ani
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
- Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
- The Philosophies and Teachings of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey
- Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era by Ashley D. Farmer
- Soledad Brothers by George Jackson
Happy Black History Month!
BLACK HISTORY 247
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[video]
Freya has my heart.
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My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Happy bloody Valentine’s Harry Warden!!!😘😘😘
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[video]
Bonsai apple tree growing a full-sized apple.
A perfect balance of extremely impressive and completely ridiculous.
Apple trees are DETERMINED. My parents planted a twig of an apple tree, and that first year it grew one apple. And the whole thing was bent over from the weight of it. It had one job and by God it was gonna do it.
she did such a good job I’m so proud
I can’t believe that wee little thing grew a whole apple as big as itself!
