This is half a decade old news, but I only found this out myself after it accidentally came up in conversation at the DMV. The worker would not have informed me if it hadn’t come into conversation. Every DMV photo in the United States is being used for AI facial recognition, and nobody has talked about it for years. This is especially concerning given that citizens are recently being required to update their ID to a “Real ID,” which means more people than ever before are giving away the rights to their own face.

The biggest problem with privacy issues is that people talk about it for a while, but more often than not nothing ever happens to fix the problem, it simply gets forgotten. For example, in the next few years Copilot will simply become a part of people’s lives, and people will slowly stop talking about the privacy implications. What can we even do to fight the privacy practices of giants?

      • helenslunch
        26·
        1 month ago

        I’m not sure it is. Feels like a waste of money. People don’t care. Politicians don’t care. In fact they greatly benefit from the erosion of privacy.

          • helenslunch
            13·
            1 month ago

            ACLU has done a lot of good

            I don’t doubt it, but at the end of the day it’s a drop in the bucket vs. the wide variety of increasingly exploitative platforms that people continue to use.

            The government doesn’t even need surveillance, they just demand it from corporations with data that users knowingly and willingly volunteer to them, to the extent that you can’t even participate in society without subjecting yourself to those same invasive and exploitative platforms.

            their lawyers have fought to not give up Signal users’ information

            What information? How can they give information they don’t have?

      • helenslunch
        1·
        28 days ago

        They’re literally lobbiests

        Huh?

        have a track record of forcing the government to make great changes

        And yet here we are…constantly sliding downhill, regardless…

        • delirious_owl@discuss.online
          2·
          28 days ago

          The EFF and ACLU employ a number of people, and some of those people exist to lobby the government to not make dumb laws.

          Politicians don’t understand technology, so they need lobbiests to explain to them how legislation could be bad for people from a technical perspective

          When you fund the EFF, you get lobbiests on your behalf going to legislators to fix broken legislation. And lobbyists going to legislators to write good legislation to protect our rights.