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“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” – Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park  Just a quick update about the ever-expanding toolkit of the technocratic mass surveillance state: The new kid on the block is GeoSpy, which can examine a photograph and extrapolate your location in seconds. It claims to accomplish this by using only visual data in the image rather than metadata. From a purely technical perspective, that’s a big achievement. From a privacy standpoint, it’s a nightmare. According to an account first reported by 404 Media and summarized by Alex Hively of SlashGear, the original open source version of GeoSpy was quickly removed when it became clear that it could be used to stalk people. Company founder Daniel Heinen later admonished Joe Rogan and guests in a tweet reminding them that GeoSpy is “only for Law Enforcement and Government” use (which, at the time of the tweet had recently become true). That GeoSpy is now “only for” law enforcement and government use is cold comfort. It seems an all-too-familiar narrative, reminding us of Clearview AI’s similarly reckless approach to the ethics of identification technology. By the end of 2021, the facial recognition startup had scraped ten billion images from the web and social media, providing agencies with a powerful new tool to instantly identify us and aid in the quick construction of dossiers of our beliefs, activities, and relationships. And now, thanks to breakneck developments in technology, the government can now both identify us and locate us. Consider this statement from GeoSpy founder Heinen: “My job as a leader in my space is to build the best technology that customers are asking for. It's not my job to play the ethics game because our elected officials will eventually figure that out. I have full faith in the American people to decide who to elect and what to vote on.” (If this were a video, here is where we’d cut away to a dark screen and the sound of crickets.) We won’t belabor the point as our readers know full well where all of this is likely to lead. But we will quote ourselves from a related article decrying the surveillance capabilities of drones and satellites: “What is cutting-edge technology today will be standard tomorrow. This is just one more way in which the velocity of technology is outpacing our ability to adjust.” With the rise of GeoSpy, we now have one more reason for Congress and the states to hit pause and reassert the privacy guarantees inherent in the Fourth Amendment. One last thing: Don’t assume you’re safe just because GeoSpy found a picture that you took indoors. It appears they’ve cracked that nut too, having discovered that their visual model can learn “regional architectural cues.” Silly us, we thought all apartment kitchens looked the same. As Malwarebytes advises, “It’s just become even more important to be conscious about the pictures we post online.” Comments are closed.
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