Police increasingly use facial recognition technology

It seems that they often withhold that information from Courts and defense attorneys:

Police around the United States are routinely using facial recognition technology to help identify suspects, but those departments rarely disclose they've done so - even to suspects and their lawyers.

Documents concerning the use and disclosure, of facial recognition technology were provided to the Washington Post as part of its ongoing investigation into use of the technology in the US, but only from around 40 departments in 15 states out of the "more than 100" departments who were asked. Most, WaPo noted, declined to answer anything.

Police records reportedly indicate that, aside from not disclosing that facial recognition technology, police also frequently obscured use of the technology by saying they identified suspects "through investigative means," while others have outright policy documents that tell officers to "not document this investigative lead."

In multiple cases documented in police reports and court filings, WaPo found those charged with crimes based on facial recognition often weren't aware that it had been used to identify them until after they were already in jail – several times incorrectly.

Emphasis added by me.

It seems that the Police sometimes don't even tell the DA's office about this.  While I Am Not A Lawyer, this seems like a great argument to abolish Qualified Immunity.  The secrecy itself is the best evidence that the process is being abused.  I mean, if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about, right?

The Rat Bastards lose a privacy battle

Good:

One of the major data brokers engaged in the deeply alienating practice of selling detailed driver behavior data to insurers has shut down that business.

Verisk, which had collected data from cars made by General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai, has stopped receiving that data, according to The Record, a news site run by security firm Recorded Future. According to a statement provided to Privacy4Cars, and reported by The Record, Verisk will no longer provide a "Driving Behavior Data History Report" to insurers.

Skeptics have long assumed that car companies had at least some plan to monetize the rich data regularly sent from cars back to their manufacturers, or telematics. But a concrete example of this was reported by The New York Times' Kashmir Hill, in which drivers of GM vehicles were finding insurance more expensive, or impossible to acquire, because of the kinds of reports sent along the chain from GM to data brokers to insurers. Those who requested their collected data from the brokers found details of every trip they took: times, distances, and every "hard acceleration" or "hard braking event," among other data points.

You will no doubt be shocked to hear that car dealers "helped" customers opt-in, as part of getting their brand new vehicles ready for the road.

But it looks like the revenue from this didn't offset the bad PR and customer bad feelings associated with the program, and so they dropped it like a hot potato.

GM quickly announced a halt to data sharing in late March, days after the Times' reporting sparked considerable outcry. GM had been sending data to both Verisk and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the latter of which is not signaling any kind of retreat from the telematics pipeline. LexisNexis' telematics page shows logos for carmakers Kia, Mitsubishi, and Subaru.

...

Disclosure of GM's stealthily authorized data sharing has sparked numerous lawsuits, investigations from California and Texas agencies, and interest from Congress and the Federal Trade Commission.

Act like a Rat Bastard, get treated like a Rat Bastard.