Meet The Press

The past year introduced a lot more people to the world of Chromebooks as everyone snatched them up for remote learning and at-home work during the pandemic. It's likely because of this that I spent more time fielding questions about them from family and friends than I have since they first launched in 2011.Read Full StoryChromebooksGoogle MeetAndroid DevicesTablet ComputersDesktop ComputersUsers ComputersMobile ComputersQ&ASecUSIBluetoothGoogle StadiaNetflixHuluSpotify

Then national theatre critic of The Australian, Katharine Brisbane and her husband, drama academic, the late Dr Philip Parsons, two years after they founded Currency Press in 1971, with their children Nick, now chair of Currency Press, and Harriet, this year replacing Katharine as Director of Currency House. Currency House No-one has done more for Australian drama than Katharine Brisbane. When she talks, we should all be listening to what she has to say. Over seven remarkable decades, she has played one of the leading roles in Australian culture. As theatre critic for the Australian from 1967 to 1974, she documented the most exciting, innovative and tumultuous period of the nation’s artistic, cultural, social and political activity — from the avant-garde stirrings of the late 1960s, through the revolutions of the Australian Performance Group in Melbourne and the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney. Australia’s new wave was not so much a singular wave, but a thrashing, roiling series of tempests lashing the complacent, monochrome cultural landscape: Brisbane was there to document it all. With her late husband, Philip Parsons, Brisbane founded Currency Press in 1971 committed to publishing the explosion of new Australian plays, a commitment it maintains to the current day. A public discussion In 2001, responding to a sense of “despondency” amongst performing arts workers — deriving in no small part from the contraction of funding over the prior decade — Brisbane and a handful of collaborators set up a monthly discussion club they called “Currency House”. Over the following three or four years, the group encouraged artists to join them in an attempt to restore a sense of purpose and significance: to reignite the passion, optimism and energy of the years of cultural expansion that followed the establishment of the Australian Council for the Arts in 1968, and the fiscal (and ideological) investments of subsequent governments. In 2004, Currency House took the private discussions public, launching the quarterly essay series Platform Papers. Now 89, Brisbane’s latest provocation, an essay called On the Lessons of History, is a stirring call to arms for the arts sector, and, reportedly, her last Platform Paper. Read more: The problem with arts funding in Australia goes right back to its inception On the surface, On the Lessons of History presents as a retrospective of the 62 essays and their authors, luminaries of contemporary practice and thinking, including Wesley Enoch, Lyndon Terracini, Lee Lewis and Alison Croggon. However, there is something much more important going on here, as hinted in the title’s nod to Will and Ariel Durant’s formative The Lessons of History (1968), a book that distilled history into sharp, focused themes, with a view to better understanding the past and the times to come. Brisbane’s sights are set resolutely on the future. The essay charges artists with a responsibility not only to their practices, but to a broader project. The arts, she writes, should provide a space where we undertake reflection as an active, interventionist and disruptive project. In this, theatre can lead us to an imagining of “Australia as a wiser and more creative country”. Crafting a new future Brisbane writes with informed urgency. Since 2001, she has observed “a period of cultural change from which we have emerged a different nation”. But not a better one, she writes. Rather: we have allowed ourselves to be swept up in fears and occupied with distraction — new [electronic] devices of incomprehensible ingenuity that invite entry into dazzling new worlds to escape the wreck we have made of this one. Artists are caught up in the terror: precarious, scared to speak out for fear of losing work, locked into logics of competition, celebrity and commerce. In response to this trend, and to the acute challenges of the most recent few years — drought, pandemic, the shattering revelations of corruption and inhumanity across our public institutions — Brisbane urges a fundamental repositioning of the arts. Most pointedly, she points to the “fatally flawed” terms under which the Australia Council was established. Katharine Brisbane’s ongoing legacy is formidable. Currency House Since its establishment in 1968, the council has been focused on funding “products rather than creators”, and dividing the arts sector into discrete artforms — losing sight both of the artists themselves, and the ways art forms meld and evolve. Rather than persisting in the “endless, competitive pursuit of excellence” — a trajectory which culminated in former arts minister George Brandis siphoning funding away from the Australia Council — we must reconsider the needs of the arts sector in the 2020s and beyond, and act on these new needs. Instead of framing arts funding as “money with which to produce art”, could we not instead see it as “money for cultural research”? This, then, is what Brisbane describes as Currency House’s new project: concrete steps toward re conceiving and redesigning the arts and cultural sector. The first of those steps is to provide a rallying point for artists: an activist platform from which to build upon the proposals and provocations of the Platform Papers series, lobbying and advocating for genuine change. For Brisbane, among the most pressing demands should be a cabinet-level acknowledgement of the creative sector, with an arts department “staffed by arts workers, dedicated to forward planning and fostering collaborative enterprises.” Read more: Remember the arts? Departments and budgets disappear as politics backs culture into a dead end Crucially, it is artists themselves who must show the way forward. They must not be cowed into silence, but instead must demand, at the very least, “funds to experiment and a living wage.” “In 2021” Brisbane writes, “we are starting again.” What, she concludes, do we have to lose? Platform Paper 63: On the Lessons of History by Katherine Brisbane, is on sale now. Ian Maxwell is the Head of the School of Literature, Art and Media at the University of Sydney, which has supported the publication of Katharine Brisbane's Platform Paper, and is partnering with Currency House to support an ongoing cultural advocacy project. This article is from The Conversation AU, which brings news and analysis from academic experts directly to the public.Katherine BrisbaneNational TheatreAvant-GardeCurrency PressCurrency HouseThe Australia CouncilAustralian CouncilUniversity Of SydneySchool Of LiteratureAustralian DramaAustralian CultureTheatre CriticIan MaxwellMelbourneAvant-gardeKatharine BrisbaneNickAlison CroggonAriel DurantGeorge Brandis

Michigan State football will kick off spring ball on Tuesday and wrap it up with their annual Spring Game on April 24. The Spartans released the complete spring practice schedule on Tuesday morning, with Michigan State practicing every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning for the next five weeks. Spring ball will conclude on April 24 with the annual Spring Game scrimmage.Read Full StoryMichigan State FootballSpring BallAmerican FootballPress ReleasesThe Game [email protected] Detroit Free PressSpartans WireSpring GameSpartan StadiumChris SolariTV

ISMAILIA, Egypt — (AP) — A skyscraper-sized cargo ship wedged across Egypt's Suez Canal further imperiled global shipping Thursday as at least 150 other vessels needing to pass through the crucial waterway idled waiting for the obstruction to clear, authorities said.The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow, man-made canal dividing continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula. In the time since, efforts to free the ship using dredgers, digging and the aid of high tides have yet to push the container vessel aside.Egyptian officials and others were due to begin work again to free the vessel Thursday morning after halting for the night.So far, dredgers have tried to clear silt around the massive ship. Tug boats nudged the vessel alongside it, trying to gain momentum. From the shore, at least one backhoe dug into the canal's sandy banks, suggesting the bow of the ship had plowed into it.Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, the company that manages the Ever Given, said the ship's 25-member crew are safe and accounted for. The ship had two pilots from Egypt's canal authority aboard the vessel to guide it when the grounding happened around 7:45 a.m. Tuesday, the company said.Canal service provider Leth Agencies said at least 150 ships were waiting for the Ever Given to be cleared, including vessels near Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea, Port Suez on the Red Sea and those already stuck in the canal system on Egypt's Great Bitter Lake.Cargo ships already behind the Ever Given in canal will be reversed south back to Port Suez to free the channel, Leth Agencies said. Authorities hope to do the same to the Ever Given when they can free it.Evergreen Marine Corp., a major Taiwan-based shipping company that operates the ship, said in a statement that the Ever Given had been overcome by strong winds as it entered the canal from the Red Sea but none of its containers had sunk.An Egyptian official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief journalists, similarly blamed a strong wind. Egyptian forecasters said high winds and a sandstorm plagued the area Tuesday, with winds gusting as much as 50 kilometers (30 miles) per hour.An initial report suggested the ship suffered a power blackout before the incident, something Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement denied Thursday.“Initial investigations rule out any mechanical or engine failure as a cause of the grounding,” the company said.Tuesday marked the second major crash involving the Ever Given in recent years. In 2019, the cargo ship ran into a small ferry moored on the Elbe River in the German port city of Hamburg. Authorities at the time blamed strong wind for the collision, which severely damaged the ferry.The closure could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Mideast, which rely on the canal to avoid sailing around Africa. The price of international benchmark Brent crude stood at over $63 a barrel Thursday.The Ever Given, built in 2018 with a length of nearly 400 meters (a quarter mile) and a width of 59 meters (193 feet), is among the largest cargo ships in the world. It can carry some 20,000 containers at a time. It previously had been at ports in China before heading toward Rotterdam in the Netherlands.Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal provides a crucial link for oil, natural gas and cargo. It also remains one of Egypt’s top foreign currency earners. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the world’s largest vessels. However, the Ever Given ran aground south of that new portion of the canal.The stranding Tuesday marks just the latest to affect mariners amid the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands have been stuck aboard vessels due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, demands on shipping have increased, adding to the pressure on tired sailors.___Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.Suez CanalCargo ShipsContainer ShipsInternational ShippingFree ShippingISMAILIAAPLeth AgenciesThe Ever Given In CanalEvergreen Marine Corp.The Associated PressGermanPort SuezGlobal ShippingPorts

CAIRO (AP) — Already displaced once in Yemen’s grinding civil war, Mohammed Ali Saleh fled with his pregnant wife and their three children to central Marib province last year to seek refuge in a region that has known some relative peace and stability because of well-protected oil fields nearby.But now the fighting is moving toward them again.Iran-backed Houthi rebels are pushing to capture the province from the internationally recognized government to try to complete their control over the northern half of Yemen. If they succeed, the Houthis could claim a strategic win after a largely stalemated battle in almost seven years of fighting.The sounds of war terrify Saleh and his family.“It’s a nightmare we are experiencing every night,” he said from a camp for the displaced that had previously escaped violence.The Houthis launched their Marib offensive in February. The new campaign, combined with increasing Houthi missile and drone attacks on neighboring Saudi Arabia, comes as the Biden administration tries to relaunch talks on ending the conflict in Yemen — the Arab world’s poorest country that has been pushed to the brink of famine by the bloodshed.The Houthi push in Marib also threatens to ignite more fighting elsewhere in Yemen. Government-allied forces, aided by a Saudi-led coalition, have ramped up attacks in other areas recently in an apparent attempt to force the Houthis to spread out their resources and make them more vulnerable.The Marib offensive “is a fateful battle for the Houthis,” said political analyst Abdel-Bari Taher. “It will determine the future of their ability to rule” in northern Yemen.Marib houses a key oil refinery that produces 90% of liquefied petroleum gas, which is used for cooking and heating in almost all Yemenis. Severe fuel shortages already plague many areas across the country.The fighting in Marib could displace at least 385,000 people, according to the U.N. migration agency. Four displacement camps in the province have been abandoned since the start of the offensive, said Olivia Headon of the International Organization for Migration in Yemen.Yemen has been convulsed by civil war since 2014 when the Houthis took control of the capital of Sanaa and much of the northern part of the country, forcing the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.The Saudi-led coalition, backed at the time by the U.S., entered the war months later to try restore Hadi to power. Despite a relentless air campaign and ground fighting, the war has deteriorated into a stalemate, killing about 130,000 people and spawning the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The Biden administration last month officially withdrew its backing for the coalition but said the U.S. would continue to offer support Saudi Arabia as it defends itself against Houthi attacks.The latest offensive has been among the fiercest, with the Houthis moving heavy weapons toward Marib. They have yet to achieve major progress amid stiff resistance from local tribes and government forces aided by airstrikes from the coalition.But the fighting is coming close to civilians and the displacement camps. Houthi forces have hit the provincial capital, also called Marib, and its outskirts with ballistic missiles, explosives-laden drones and shelling, according to aid workers.Sheikh Sultan al-Aradah, the provincial governor, told reporters that the coalition’s airstrikes helped fend off the Houthis. “Without their support, the situation would be very different,” he said.Hundreds of fighters, most of them Houthi rebels, have been killed in the Marib campaign, according to officials from both sides.Houthi leaders have portrayed the offensive as a religious battle, a sign of its significance for them. The rebels have tried to take Marib for years, seizing towns and districts in neighboring provinces.“There are probably multiple agendas at play in Marib but the most urgent is the Houthis’ belief they can take Marib city and end the war for the north, while improving their economic sustainability and their bargaining position with Saudi Arabia,” said Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group.But their offensive could be backfiring.Government-backed forces managed to retake swaths of territory from the Houthis in Hajjah and Taiz provinces. The battle for Marib also could be used as a justification for Hadi’s government to back out of previous partial cease-fires, such as the 2018 U.N.-brokered deal that ended fighting for the key Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida, which handles about 70% of Yemen’s commercial and humanitarian imports.The rebels began the Marib offensive shortly after President Joe Biden removed them from a U.S. terrorism list, reversing a Trump administration decision that brought a widespread outcry from the U.N. and aid groups on humanitarian grounds.The escalation has left international observers at a loss on how to find a starting point for a long-sought peace. Tim Lenderking, the U.S. envoy to Yemen, noted that “tragically, and somewhat confusingly for me, it appears that the Houthis are prioritizing a military campaign.” He has urged them to agree to a recent cease-fire proposal.Mohammed Abdul-Salam, a spokesman for the Houthis, told the rebel-run al-Masirah satellite TV channel that they were studying the proposal, but he also criticized it. He alleged it didn’t offer an acceptable way to end to the blockade imposed by the coalition on rebel-held areas, a reference to the closure of Sanaa’s airport to commercial flights and restrictions on cargo ships at Hodeida.At the same time, the Houthis have intensified their missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia. The coalition said the rebels were encouraged by Biden’s moves, including his decision to halt U.S. support for the coalition in a dramatic break with the joint air campaign against them.The warring parties have not held substantive negotiations since 2019. A deal brokered by the U.N. in 2018 after talks in Sweden has largely gone nowhere; only one of its components — prisoner exchanges — has made any progress, after multiple rounds of talks.Meanwhile, displaced families in Marib live in fear of what comes next.Saleh, 29, and his family fled his native Sanaa in 2017 for the city of Hazm, the provincial capital of Jawf, before the Houthis overran it last year. That forced them to flee to Marib, and they settled in one of the 125 displacement camps there, according to the IOM.“We are tired. We have been displaced several times,” said Saleh’s wife Fatima, who gave birth to their youngest daughter in the camp.—-Associated Press writer Ahmed al-Haj in Sanaa, Yemen, contributed. HouthisFaminePoliticsRebel ForcesRebel FightersArab ForcesU.S. Military ForcesAPYemenisU.N.HajjahHodeidaTrumpIOMAssociated PressSalehPeter SalisburyJoe Biden

GameStop, the video game retailer at the center of a social-media driven investment frenzy, said it lost $215 million in the 12 months ended Jan. 30 as it dealt with pandemic-related shutdowns and moved to transform itself into a more online-focused company. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved....Read Full StoryGamestopMarketsGameStopFiscal YearOnline VideoInvestmentAssociated PressRetailerCompanySocialCopyright

A skyscraper-sized container ship has become wedged across Egypt's Suez Canal and blocked all traffic in the vital waterway, officials said Wednesday, threatening to disrupt a global shipping system already strained by the coronavirus pandemic. The MV Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow, man-made canal dividing continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula. Images showed the ship's bow was touching the eastern wall, while its stern looked lodged against the western wall. Tugboats strained Wednesday to try to nudge the obstruction out of the way as ships hoping to enter the waterway began lining up in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. But it remained unclear when the route, through which around 10% of world trade flows and which is particularly crucial for the transport of oil, would reopen. One official warned it could take at least two days. “The Suez Canal will not spare any efforts to ensure the restoration of navigation and to serve the movement of global trade,” vowed Lt. Gen. Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority. Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given, said all 20 members of the crew were safe and that there had been "no reports of injuries or pollution.” It wasn't immediately clear what caused the Ever Given to become wedged on Tuesday morning. GAC, a global shipping and logistics company, said the ship had experience a blackout without elaborating. Bernhard Schulte, however, denied the ship ever lost power. Evergreen Marine Corp., a major Taiwan-based shipping company that operates the ship, said in a statement that the Ever Given had been overcome by strong winds as it entered the canal from the Red Sea but none of its containers had sunk. An Egyptian official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to brief journalists, similarly blamed a strong wind. Egyptian forecasters said high winds and a sandstorm plagued the area Tuesday, with winds gusting as much as 50 kph (30 mph). However, it remained unclear how wind alone would have been able to push a fully laden vessel weighing some 220,000 tons. Typically, Egyptian pilots take over ships passing through the canal, but it wasn't immediately clear if that happened with the Ever Given. An image posted to Instagram by a user on another waiting cargo ship appeared to show the Ever Given wedged across the canal as shown in satellite images and data. A backhoe appeared to be digging into the sand bank under its bow in an effort to free it. The Egyptian official said tugboats hoped to refloat the ship and that the operation would take at least two days. The ship ran aground some 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southernly mouth of the canal near the city of Suez, an area of the canal that's a single lane. That could have a major knock-on effect for global shipping moving between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, warned Salvatore R. Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and associate professor of history at North Carolina’s Campbell University. “Every day, 50 vessels on average go through that canal, so the closing of the canal means no vessels are transiting north and south,” Mercogliano told the AP. "Every day the canal is closed ... container ships and tankers are not delivering food, fuel and manufactured goods to Europe and goods are not being exported from Europe to the Far East.” Already, some 30 vessels waited at Egypt's Great Bitter Lake midway on the canal, while some 40 idled in the Mediterranean near Port Said and another 30 at Suez in the Red Sea, according to canal service provider Leth Agencies. There were concerns that idling ships in the Red Sea could be targets after a series of attacks against shipping in the Mideast amid tensions between Iran and the U.S. “All vessels should consider adopting a heightened posture of alertness if forced to remain static within the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden,” warned private marine intelligence firm Dryad Global. The closure also could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Mideast. The price of international benchmark Brent crude jumped nearly 2.9% to $62.52 a barrel Wednesday. The Ever Given, built in 2018 with a length of nearly 400 meters (a quarter mile) and a width of 59 meters (193 feet), is among the largest cargo ships in the world. It can carry some 20,000 containers at a time. It previously had been at ports in China before heading toward Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal provides a crucial link for oil, natural gas and cargo. It also remains one of Egypt’s top foreign currency earners. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the world’s largest vessels. However, the Ever Given ran aground south of that new portion of the canal. The stranding Tuesday marks just the latest to affect mariners amid the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands have been stuck aboard vessels due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, demands on shipping have increased, adding to the pressure on tired sailors, Mercogliano said. “It’s because of the breakneck pace of global shipping right now and shipping is on a very tight schedule,” he said. "Add to it that mariners have not been able to get on and off vessels because of COVID restrictions.” ——— Associated Press writers Taijing Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, Samy Magdy in Cairo, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to this report. ——— Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP. Cargo ShipsContainer ShipsMerchant ShipsMediterranean SeaRed SeasThe Suez Canal AuthorityThe Ever GivenGACEvergreen Marine Corp.The Associated PressInstagramAPLeth AgenciesDryad GlobalPorts

COVINGTON, Ga. — State health officials have confirmed Newton County is the location of the first Georgia case of a particularly contagious coronavirus variant that originated in Brazil. “Currently we have one confirmed case with P.1 (Brazil) variant and that case is in Newton County,” said Nancy Nydam, spokeswoman for...Read Full StoryBrazilCdcVirusGeorgia StateCounty OfficialsNew York StateFirst GeorgiaSouth AfricanCDCThe Associated PressImperial College LondonThe New York TimesWSB-TV PublicCoronavirus VariantNewton County

Facial recognition technology raises serious ethical and privacy questions, even as it helps investigators south of the border zero in on the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. (Pixabay) Who owns your face? Of course, a silly question … right? But what about the data generated from your face? And what does it mean to have your face become data? Already, plenty of data about millions and millions of faces exist. We have volunteered our faces in social media posts and photos stored in the cloud. But we’ve yet to determine who owns the data associated with the contours of our faces. In the age of Big Tech, we need to grapple with what expectations we can and should have about who has access to our faces. The recent riot at the U.S. Capitol has put the question into the spotlight as facial recognition becomes a vital tool in identifying rioters: What is the power of facial recognition technology, and are we ready for it? Even before the riots, facial recognition technology was being used in many ways that we probably haven’t seriously considered, and many of us have voluntarily contributed to creating data about our faces, either explicitly or implicitly. Facial recognition technology, for example, is ubiquitous in public spaces . As we make decisions on whether to use facial recognition technology for law enforcement, surveillance and other initiatives with ostensible social purposes, we need to stop and ask ourselves: What are the costs of losing our faces to data? There are serious consequences, including the right to privacy and our ability to live our lives free of surveillance. In Belgrade, according to reports and a video by local non-governmental organization the SHARE Foundation made in support of their initiative #hiljadekamera (Thousands of Cameras) , high-definition cameras will be deployed in the Serbian city for a variety of surveillance functions. There are myriad privacy and surveillance concerns about facial recognition technology. The Share Foundation. The director of SHARE, Danilo Krivokapić, says facial recognition technology in those cameras will track individuals’ movements as they wander around the city. Photos that already exist in the system are matched up with the data captured by the cameras, and are then analyzed through a supplied artificial intelligence system. This creates the possibility for tracking a person’s movements, via facial recognition technology, in real time as they move through Belgrade. But this isn’t just happening in Belgrade. Governments and surveillance go hand in hand, and facial recognition technology gives governments more options and ways to track and constrain the movement of people within their borders. The city of London decided last year to deploy cameras capable of facial recognition alongside its 627,727 CCTV cameras . The move lead to protests. People demonstrate in front of a mobile police facial recognition facility outside a shopping centre in London in February 2020. Dozens of groups and individuals working to protect privacy, human rights and civil liberties want a ban on facial-recognition surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. AP Photo/Kelvin Chan Corporations also employ FRT It’s not just governments that want your face. Last year, Cadillac Fairview , one of the biggest commercial real estate companies in North America, was called out by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada for installing inconspicuous cameras in directories at 12 of their malls throughout Canada, including Toronto’s iconic Eaton Centre. These cameras captured five million images of customers and used facial recognition software that generated more data about those images, including gender and age. Although the images were deleted, the data generated from the images was kept on a server by a third party. A little facial recognition with your stocking stuffers? Holiday shoppers are seen Toronto’s Eaton Centre in December 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston In response to the privacy commissioner’s report, New Democrat MP Charlie Angus stated : “We have a right to be able to go in public places without being photographed, tracked, put into data surveillance machines, whether it’s for corporations or for police and government.” Unfortunately, Angus is wrong — there is no such right. And since Cadillac Fairview didn’t keep the photos, just the data about the faces in the photos, the problem was about consent, not violating privacy rights . What rights do we have when we volunteer our faces to datafication? Journalist Rebecca Heilweil documents the many ways we bring facial recognition technology into our lives . Many of us are familiar with Facebook’s photo-tagging technology that tags not just your face, but other people in your photos. This technology is also present in Google and Apple’s photo apps. À lire aussi : Big Brother facial recognition needs ethical regulations But this kind of facial recognition technology is being extended into other realms. For example, Subaru deploys facial recognition technology to detect distracted driving . Apple offers HomeKit features that cross-reference data collected from various devices, and uses facial recognition to tell you if a friend recognized from your photos is at the door. Nest Hub Max from Google employs facial recognition technology to literally look for you, in the way that it’s always listening for the words: “OK, Google.” Hirevue uses AI to evaluate potential employee images for suitability and likelihood for success. Fundamental part of who we are The human face is one of the most basic things that very young children recognize and learn as their brains sort out the world. Faces are among the first things babies recognize. (Piqsels) It is a fundamental part of who we are as a species, and its importance is almost too vital to even articulate. Is the data associated with that face — that is, the digital representation of your face that matches up to your actual face or photos of your face — part of that fundamental part of you that you get to keep to yourself? Or is that a foolish expectation in our data-intensive world? Which brings us back to the U.S. Capitol insurrection. There is a certainly a sense of justice to see facial recognition technology deployed to bring white supremacists to justice. But at what cost ? We know about the biases in our existing data against people of colour , women and of low-income status . We know police who use these biased data in the name of algorithmic policing has resulted in harassment of targeted communities and the wrongful arrests of Black people . The stakes are high, not just for law enforcement, but for our rights to privacy as individuals. Our expectations of data collection and privacy are not in line with the realities of data collection and storage, facial or otherwise. So it’s important to consider our rights in the context of our humanity. Our personal data has been and is being collected at an astounding rate every day . That’s resulting in a fundamental change not just in economic and ethical terms, but in the way we live as human beings. Our understanding of human rights, and the corresponding laws to protect them, need to be rebooted to account for how data collection is fundamentally changing . This research is supported by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto. This article is from The Conversation Canada, which brings news and analysis from academic experts directly to the public.Big TechPrivacy RightsU.S. CapitolFundamental Human RightsU.S. IntelligenceThe SHARE FoundationCamerasSerbianThe Share FoundationCCTVFRTCadillac FairviewTHE CANADIAN PRESS/New DemocratFacebookCharlie Angus

The British royal family has reportedly worked together to make sure Prince Philip isn’t overwhelmed by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s bombshell tell-all. On March 7, CBS aired a two-hour interview that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did with Oprah Winfrey. During the televised sit-down, Harry, 36, revealed that his relationships with his father Prince Charles, 72, and older brother Prince William, 38, have ruptured.Read Full StoryBritish Royal FamilyCelebritiesUkPrincess DianaCBSUs WeeklyWindsor CastleThe Associated PressBlack Lives MatterDukeSussexInterviewFamily MemberRoyal DutiesMedia MogulPrince HarryMeghan MarkleOprahPrince PhilipOprah WinfreyPrince CharlesPrince WilliamQueen Elizabeth IiGayle KingElizabeth IiEdward Vii