August, 19 2019, 12:00am EDT
WASHINGTON
Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) just became the first 2020 presidential candidate to call for a complete ban on law enforcement use of facial recognition surveillance. While other candidates, including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker have previously expressed concern about face scanning and biometric surveillance, so far none have incorporated a ban on the technology into their platform.
"The rapid spread of facial recognition surveillance is one of the most urgent threats to our basic freedom and human rights today. Every single 2020 candidate should be calling for a ban on this invasive, biased, and dangerous technology," said Evan Greer, deputy director of non-partisan digital rights group Fight for the Future (pronouns, she/her). "Banning facial recognition is not a radical idea. It's common sense. Allowing government agencies to build a face scanning panopticon with no oversight or accountability is reckless and puts people in danger. There's growing bipartisan support to rein in biometric surveillance. Any 2020 candidate that wants to be taken seriously on tech and civil liberties issues needs to be calling for a ban."
The Sanders announcement comes amid growing backlash to facial recognition surveillance that has been spreading across the country. Last month Fight for the Future launched our BanFacialRecognition.com campaign, along with an interactive map showing where in the US facial recognition surveillance is being used, and also where there are local and state efforts to ban it. San Francisco, Somerville, MA, and Oakland, CA, recently became the first cities in the country to ban the technology. Berkeley, CA and Cambridge, MA are also considering bans, and bills to halt current use of the tech are moving in the Massachusetts andMichigan legislatures. In Congress, there is growing bipartisan agreement to address the issue, but it could easily stall under pressure from law enforcement and big tech.
Fight for the Future, which is a non-profit that does not endorse candidates for office, opposes attempts by the tech industry (including Amazon) and law enforcement to pressure Congress to pass an industry-friendly "regulatory framework" for facial recognition that would allow this dangerous technology to spread quickly with minimal restrictions intended to assuage public opposition. But we support narrower efforts to ban or restrict specifically egregious uses of this surveillance, such as a bill introduced recently to ban the use of facial recognition in public housing. For more on our position, read our op-ed in Buzzfeed News: "Don't regulate facial recognition. Ban it."
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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UN Secretary-General Calls for Probe After Staffer Killed in Gaza
One U.N. staff member was killed and another was injured after an attack on their "clearly marked" vehicle.
May 13, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday reiterated his demand for a cease-fire in Gaza as he called for a full investigation into an attack on a "clearly marked" U.N. vehicle which killed one staff member and injured another in Rafah.
The U.N. did not identify the victims, but said the staff member who was killed worked for the U.N. Department of Safety and Security (DSS) and was the body's first international worker to be killed in Gaza since Israel began bombarding the enclave in October.
"The secretary-general condemns all attacks on U.N. personnel and calls for a full investigation," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for Guterres. "He sends his condolences to the family of the fallen staff member. With the conflict in Gaza continuing to take a heavy toll—not only on civilians, but also on humanitarian workers—the secretary-general reiterates his urgent appeal for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and for the release of all hostages."
Approximately 190 U.N. workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its attack. Until Monday all had been Palestinian nationals and most had worked for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has provided aid and public services to Gaza since 1948 and is a top employer in the enclave.
"Humanitarian workers must be protected," said Guterres on social media.
The DSS employees had been traveling to European Hospital in Rafah, where about 1 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since October. About 300,000 people have fled the city in the past week amid Israel's long-feared invasion.
The attack on the U.N. vehicle comes weeks after Israel struck another clearly marked humanitarian convoy, killing seven international aid workers with the U.S. group World Central Kitchen.
Israel has also attacked humanitarian aid operations, firing on civilians who gathered around a convoy to get food as starvation took hold of the enclave due to the Israeli blockade on nearly all relief deliveries, and killing at least one U.N. worker at a food distribution center in Rafah in March.
Israel and its defenders in the Biden administration have repeatedly claimed the Israel Defense Forces are taking steps to prevent civilian deaths, even as the death toll has surged past 35,000. In October, as the IDF began its assault in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said publicly that he had "released all the restraints" on the military.
Author and Middle East policy expert Assal Rad asserted Monday that "you don't kill 190 U.N. staff, repeatedly kill aid workers in clearly marked vehicles, kill an unprecedented number of journalists, doctors, and medics, tens of thousands of civilians, and more than 14,000 children on 'accident.'"
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From Monday through Friday, around 5,200 employees of Mercedes-Benz in Alabama will vote on whether to join the United Auto Workers—which has set its sights on the U.S. South after contract wins at the industry's "Big Three" in Michigan last year.
While Republican leaders in the state, including Gov. Kay Ivey, and at least one worker have publicly attacked the unionization effort, multiple Mercedes employees have signaled their support for the UAW going into this week's voting at an assembly facility in Vance and battery plant in Woodstock.
"I've watched our company not keep up with the times," Mercedes worker Brett Garrard recently told the Detroit Free Press. "We pray for fair wages, comparative wages inside the auto industry. Benefits packages have suffered throughout the years. My wife, herself, has stage four cancer. I'd like to see something implemented to maybe help our situation."
David Johnston, who works at the Woodstock plant, has also cited medical concerns, tellingForbes that "I'm always in a medical hospital. I'm always sick. I need better healthcare. Plus, when I retire I'm not going to have any insurance until Medicare kicks in."
Johnston is optimistic about the vote in Alabama. He pointed to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Volkswagen plant employees last month overwhelmingly voted to join the UAW.
"I mean, hands down. I think we're gonna win. We're gonna win. Hopefully by a lot," he said. "It seems like it's gonna be a slam dunk just like Volkswagen. Everybody's excited."
Haeden Wright, a senior organizer for Jobs to Move America, toldAL.com that a win in Alamaba "would show workers across all different industries that they can stand up together and fight for more."
In comments to The Guardian, Mercedes employee Rick Webster similarly framed this week's vote as part of a larger battle.
"It's time for Alabama workers to stand up and unite not just at Mercedes, but at Hyundai, Honda, and Toyota. It's time for everybody to stand up and have a voice and we need to end the Alabama discount," he said, using an organizer term to highlight how workers in the state have subpar wages and benefits compared to their peers elsewhere in the country.
Webster also called out Mercedes' efforts to convince workers in Alabama not to vote in favor of joining the UAW—which has filed multiple union-busting complaints against the company with the National Labor Relations Board.
"It is a daily barrage of text messages, emails, and there's an app we have for work for every kind of announcement you can think of and we're getting two to three notifications daily. Every day before the shift, we have to sit in the team room and watch anti-union videos," he explained. "It's just been a constant barrage. Everybody is just sick and tired of it."
Johnston toldNPR that "the entire message in those meetings is Vote no, vote no, vote no. We don't think you need to do this. This is not what you want."
A company spokesperson has told multiple news outlets that Mercedes-Benz U.S. International "fully respects our team members' choice whether to unionize and we look forward to participating in the election process to ensure every team member has a chance to cast their own secret-ballot vote, as well as having access to the information necessary to make an informed choice."
The United Auto Workers webpage on the Alabama effort includes information about who is eligible to vote, how to participate, and workers' rights as well as the UAW's responses to some of opponents' allegations against the union.
"Right now, Mercedes is doing whatever they can to discourage us. But voting yes for our union is a game-changer," the UAW webpage says. "Once we vote yes, the company is legally required to sit down with us as equals to bargain a contract. Just like VW, Mercedes has negotiated union contracts with workers all around the world. We can win our union, our union contract, and our fair share right here in Alabama."
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"As the descendant of European Jews, I was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing," wrote Maj. Harrison Mann.
May 13, 2024
An American Army officer on Monday described months of being increasingly disturbed by the images and news of Israel's U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza, which culminated in his public resignation from his position at the Defense Intelligence Agency to avoid further complicity in Israel's "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians.
Army Maj. Harrison Mann published his resignation letter on LinkedIn, saying he had distributed it internally on April 16 to announce his resignation from the agency.
As an officer at the DIA, Mann said, he has been unable to escape the fact that his place of work "directly executes policy" for the Biden administration, including its "nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel, which has enabled and empowered the killing and starving of tens and thousands of innocent Palestinians."
"My work here—however administrative or marginal it appeared—unquestionably contributed to that support," wrote Mann.
He described wrestling with the question of whether he could continue working at the DIA, reasoning with himself that, "I don't make policy and it's not my place to question it."
"However, at some point it became difficult to defend the outcomes of this particular policy," Mann wrote. "At some point—whatever the justification—you're either advancing a policy that advances the mass starvation of children, or you're not."
At the time Mann sent his letter to his colleagues, Israel was conducting airstrikes and preparing its ground invasion of Rafah, the southern Gaza city that over 1 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced to since October.
Israel has continued to block aid to Gaza even after saying in early April it would open a crossing and a port, and has now pushed the enclave into what the United Nations World Food Program chief said earlier this month was a "full-blown famine." Dozens of people have died of starvation. At least 35,091 people who have been killed in Israel's military assault—two-thirds of those killed have been women and children, despite Israel's claim it is targeting Hamas fighters.
Mann wrote that as the bombardment dragged on and U.S. President Joe Biden's defense and funding of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued, his mind turned to his European Jewish relatives.
"As the descendant of European Jews, I was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing—my grandfather refused to ever purchase products manufactured in Germany—where the paramount importance of 'never again' and the inadequacy of 'just following orders' were oft repeated," wrote Mann. "But I also have hope that my grandfather would afford me some grace; that he would still be proud of me for stepping away from this war, however belatedly."
Mann publicized his letter about six weeks after foreign affairs officer Annelle Sheline resigned from her position at the U.S. State Department, saying her work in the human rights realm in the Middle East had become "impossible" in light of Biden's material and political support for Israel's assault on Gaza.
Education Department official Tariq Habash, a Palestinian American, also resigned in protest earlier this year, and a top official who oversaw arms transfers at the State Department, Josh Paul, stepped down in October, citing the Biden administration's decision to send more arms to Israel as the war began.
In February, U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell died after self-immolating in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., having said he was engaging "in an extreme act of protest" to avoid being complicit in genocide.
On LinkedIn, Mann wrote Monday that he "received an unexpected outpouring of support" when he distributed his letter internally, and appeared to address other federal employees who may be questioning their complicity in Biden's policies.
"I am sharing [the letter] now in the hope that you too will discover you are not alone, you are not voiceless, and you are not powerless," wrote Mann.
Feds United for Peace, which includes employees across 30 federal agencies who have advocated for a cease-fire in Gaza, called Mann's letter "incredibly significant."
The New York Timesreported that it is not known "whether other military officers have resigned in protest of U.S. foreign policy" since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October and the IDF's deadly retaliation, "but the resignation of an active-duty officer in protest of U.S. foreign policy is likely uncommon—especially one in which the officer makes public the reasons for doing so."
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