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FOI Documents Confirm RCMP Falsely Denied Using Facial Recognition Software
FOI Documents Confirm RCMP Falsely Denied Using Facial Recognition Software
Its contract with Clearview AI started in October, but the force was still denying using the controversial technology three months later.
The RCMP denied using facial recognition software on Canadians three months after it had entered into a contract with controversial U.S. company Clearview AI, The Tyee has learned.
Documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request show an RCMP employee signed a “Requisition for goods, services and construction” form to fund a one-year contract with Clearview AI that began Oct. 29.
The RCMP refused to say whether it used Clearview AI when asked by The Tyee in January 2020.
And the force went further in an emailed statement in response to questions from the CBC, denying in an emailed statement that it used any facial recognition software.
“The RCMP does not currently use facial recognition software,” it said on Jan. 17. “However, we are aware that some municipal police services in Canada are using it.”The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
In fact, the RCMP’s $5,000 contract with Clearview had begun almost three months earlier.
The FOI documents show the RCMP justified the request based on the software’s successful use by U.S. police agencies.
“Clearview is a facial recognition tool that is currently being used by the child exploitation units at the FBI and Department of Homeland Security because of it’s [sic] advanced abilities,” the employee wrote.
If the request was not approved, the form stated, “Children will continue to be abused and exploited online.”
Despite Denials, RCMP Used Facial Recognition Program for 18 Years
“There will be no one to rescue them because the tool that could have been deployed to save them was not deemed important enough.”
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The Most Significant Afghanistan Papers Revelation Is How Difficult They Were To Make Public
The Most Significant Afghanistan Papers Revelation Is How Difficult They Were To Make Public
The Washington Post has published clear, undeniable evidence that US government officials have been lying to the public about the war in Afghanistan, a shocking revelation for anyone who has done no research whatsoever into the history of US interventionism.
In all seriousness it was a very good and newsworthy publication, and those who did the heavy lifting bringing the Afghanistan Papers into public awareness deserve full credit. The frank comments of US military officials plainly stating that from the very beginning this was an unwinnable conflict, initiated in a region nobody understood, without anyone being able to so much as articulate what victory would even look like, make up an extremely important piece of information that is in conflict with everything the public has been told about this war by their government.
But the most significant revelation to come out of this story is not in the Afghanistan Papers themselves.
The most significant Afghanistan Papers revelation comes from The Washington Post‘s account of the extremely difficult time they had extricating these important documents from the talons of government secrecy, as detailed in a separate article titled “How The Post unearthed The Afghanistan Papers“. WaPo explains how the papers were ultimately obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests which, after they were initially rejected by the US government, needed to be supplemented over three years with two lawsuits.
“The Post’s efforts to obtain the Afghanistan documents also illustrate how difficult it can be for journalists — or any citizen — to pry public information from the government,” WaPo reports. “The purpose of FOIA is to open up federal agencies to public scrutiny. But officials determined to thwart the spirit of the law can drag out requests for years, hoping requesters will eventually give up.”
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Secret files: British government courting Arab tyrants, fossil fuel interests
Secret files: British government courting Arab tyrants, fossil fuel interests
Official documents show how oil and business interests trump democracy
The approach reflects the consistent focus of Britain’s strategy in the region on promoting “stability” through energy investments and arms sales with authoritarian regimes and outright dictatorships.
Responding to an FOI request in February, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) Middle East and North Africa Directorate provided a list of meetings hosted by other governments or companies attended by Edward Oaken, then the FCO’s Director for the Middle East.
According to the list, Oakden was hosted fifty-nine times during a period of just over a year, almost entirely by autocratic Arab regimes, fossil fuel companies, and corporate interests.
Oakden was FCO Middle East director from 2013 to 2015 before being appointed British Ambassador to Jordan in February,
From 18th September 2013 to 14th January 2015, Oakden had a total of 26 “hospitality” meetings with representatives of serial human rights abusers — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Oman and Morocco — and a further 15 with business groups, investors, and oil companies.
The rest were largely routine meetings with British and European political leaders.
The FCO conceded that the list of meetings provided was not exhaustive.
Blood for oil for cash
The Foreign Office meetings included three receptions hosted by British Petroleum (BP), including a “high level dinner” to discuss “global energy challenges”; a Genel Energy annual reception; and a lunch meeting with Centrica Energy “on business prospects in the Middle East.”
British firms BP and Genel are heavily invested in Iraq. BP is involved in the giant Rumailah oil field and the huge northern Kirkuk field in the Kurdish region, while Genel is invested primarily in Iraqi Kurdish fields of Taq Taq and Tawke.
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UK Police Confirm Ongoing Criminal Probe of Snowden Leak Journalists
UK Police Confirm Ongoing Criminal Probe of Snowden Leak Journalists
A secretive British police investigation focusing on journalists working with Edward Snowden’s leaked documents remains ongoing two years after it was quietly launched, The Intercept can reveal.
London’s Metropolitan Police Service has admitted it is still carrying out the probe, which is being led by its counterterrorism department, after previously refusing to confirm or deny its existence on the grounds that doing so could be “detrimental to national security.”
The disclosure was made by police in a letter sent to this reporter Tuesday, concluding a seven-month freedom of information battle that saw the London force repeatedly attempt to withhold basic details about the status of the case. It reversed its position this week only after an intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office, the public body that enforces the U.K.’s freedom of information laws.
Following Snowden’s disclosures from the National Security Agency in 2013, the Metropolitan Police and a lawyer for the British government separatelystated that a criminal investigation had been opened into the leaks. One of the London force’s most senior officers acknowledged during a parliamentary hearing that the investigation was looking at whether reporters at The Guardian had committed criminal offenses for their role in revealing secret surveillance operations exposed in the Snowden documents.
In January, The Intercept sought details about the status of the investigation through requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. But the Metropolitan Police, the largest and most powerful of the 45 regional police forces across the United Kingdom, stonewalled the requests. It cited fears about “increased threat of terrorist activity” and claimed that it could not reveal details about the investigation because they could “assist any group or persons who wish to cause harm to the people of the nation.”
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‘Frackademia’ Report Reveals Ties Between Government, Universities, and Shale Industry
‘Frackademia’ Report Reveals Ties Between Government, Universities, and Shale Industry
While the government has decided to provide tax breaks for the oil industry in the 2015 Government Budget, everyone else has been talking about divestment. Ben Lucas looks at the growing movement and new evidence published this week on the relationship between government, universities and fracking companies.
What started out as a grassroots campaigning tactic to lobby big institutions to stop backing non-renewable energy production, has this week gained large-scale mainstream support.
The Guardian’s “keep it in the ground” has now gathered a petition with over 60,000 signatures to ask the world’s largest charitable foundations to divest their endowments from fossil fuels. The UN has also come out in open support for the increasingly global movement.
And this week a report published by TalkFracking, a campaign group supported by Vivienne Westwood, on ‘Frackademia’ seeks to raise awareness about the influence of the fracking industry in university research departments.
A ‘Positive View of Fracking’
The investigation, carried out by Paul Mobbs, an environmental researcher, investigated the relationship between the fracking industry and academia. But it findings have done more than that, unravelling the extensive relationship and networks that exist between universities, the government, and the oil and gas industry.
The report contains a Freedom of Information (FOI) request that reveals how oil and gas companies were targeting scientists to provide a more positive view of fracking.
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Information Commissioner Pleads Poverty, Tory MPs Say Raise Fees
Information Commissioner Pleads Poverty, Tory MPs Say Raise Fees.
Conservative MPs are proposing that the government raise user fees for access to information requests, charging businesses and journalists more money to help mitigate a series of budget cuts that have damaged the already-ailing system.
The comments from several government MPs at a House of Commons committee Thursday came in response to pleas of poverty from Suzanne Legault, the information commissioner of Canada.
Legault told MPs that a rapid 30 per cent rise in her workload, as well as a shrinking budget to help government fight the deficit, has left her office in “crisis,” with little choice but to cut the number of investigators who deal with complaints from requesters about withheld or delayed information.
“Last fiscal year, I faced a 30 per cent jump in new complaints, which has brought the organization to a crisis point,” she told the committee.
“Unless my budget is increased, I have only one option going into the next fiscal year … to cut the program.”
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