JEDII Tech News: February 27

A roundup of links from around the web …

How One State Managed to Actually Write Rules on Facial Recognition

By Kashmir Hill on NYTimes (nytimes.com)

Massachusetts is one of the first states to put legislative guardrails around the use of facial recognition technology in criminal investigations.

India Targets Climate Activists With the Help of Big Tech

By Naomi Klein on The Intercept (theintercept.com)

Tech giants like Google and Facebook appear to be aiding and abetting a vicious government campaign against Indian climate activists.

How safe is Clubhouse?

By Kate O’Flaherty on WIRED UK (wired.co.uk)

Despite its boom in popularity, the Clubhouse app has been found lacking in some basic privacy and security protections

How Anduril and other startups are building military ready, self-piloted drones, away from Silicon Valley, where such projects have become politically untenable

on Techmeme (techmeme.com)

By Cade Metz / New York Times. View the full context on Techmeme.

Our First Year: Auditing Algorithms

on Revue (getrevue.co)

Dispatches from Editor-in-Chief Julia Angwin

These 7 Black Women Are the Unsung Heroes of the COVID Pandemic

By Patrice Peck on Health.com (health.com)

In the health care and medical spaces critical to curbing COVID-19, seven Black women are playing both offense and defense against a crisis—stabilizing the same ground on which they blaze new trails.

Bias, disrespect, and demotions: Black employees say Amazon has a race problem

By Jason Del Rey on Vox (vox.com)

Interviews with diversity managers and internal data obtained by Recode find that Black Amazon employees are promoted less frequently and are rated more harshly than non-Black peers.

The Dolly Moment

By Tressie McMillan Cottom on essaying (tressie.substack.com)

Why We Stan A Post-Racism Queen. A new essay on my new project, essaying. Live now. If you are an OG tressiemc.com subscriber – you got this delivered to your inbox along with a free Substack subscription as a thank you.

AI Ethics Non-Profit Ecosystem: Where are the Black Folks?

By Mia Dand on Medium (miad.medium.com)

When Ian Moura and I first started compiling a list of non-profits in the space of AI Ethics, our intent was to map the ecosystem to…

Introducing #NoMoreDataWeapons

By Jamelle Watson-Daniels on Data for Black Lives Blog (blog.d4bl.org)

Data for Black Lives is launching #NoMoreDataWeapons. No more investing in Data Weapons, No more building new Data Weapons, No more disguising Data Weapons as legitimate and neutral.

Virginia’s Weak Privacy Bill Is Just What Big Tech Wants

By Hayley Tsukayama on Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org)

Virginia’s legislature has passed a bill meant to protect consumer privacy—but the bill, called the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, really protects the interests of business far more than the interests of everyday consumers.Take ActionVirginia: Speak Up for Real PrivacyThe bill, which both…

Zoom Pledges Provide Closed Captioning For All Free Users — A Win For Hearing Health Advocates

By Peter O’Dowd and and Jeannette Jones on WBUR (wbur.org)

Hearing health advocate Shari Eberts talks about her fight to make the service accessible to all.