viralamo

Menu
  • Technology
  • Science
  • Money
  • Culturs
  • Trending
  • Video

Subscribe To Our Website To Receive The Last Stories

Join Us Now For Free
Home
Technology
Landlord Tech Watch project maps where landlords may be using tech to spy on tenants
Technology

Landlord Tech Watch project maps where landlords may be using tech to spy on tenants

17/08/2020

The AI Now Institute, People Power Media, and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project today launched Landlord Tech Watch, a crowdsourced map examining where surveillance and AI technologies are being used by landlords to potentially disempower tenants and community members. The site invites tenants to self-report the types of tech that are being installed in their residences and neighborhoods, and it aims to serve as a resource to help educate about the widespread use and harms of these technologies.

Currently, there’s little in the way of legislation governing the collection and use of data in the context of real estate. Owners and landlords typically purchase and install tech products and platforms without notifying or discussing potential harms with their tenants, and sometimes without even letting them know.

For instance, in New York City, rent-stabilized tenants at the Atlantic Plaza Towers in Brownsville were subjected to a facial recognition security system from a third-party vendor. Elsewhere in the city, an elderly tenant in Hell’s Kitchen charged that a keyless system installed by his landlord was too complicated, and feared that his movements would be tracked through the technology.

Residents and local elected officials were quick to rail against the systems, and last October, City Council proposed regulation that would force landlords to provide tenants with traditional metal keys to enter their buildings and apartments. The tenant in Hell’s Kitchen along with neighbors secured the right to physical keys in May after suing the landlord.

Landlord Tech Watch aims to offer tenants and researchers a better sense of the scope and scale of landlord technology currently in use like camera, payment, and screening. It includes examples of different types of tech and the specific harms associated with each type, along with a deployment map that indicates where such tech is being used and a survey that encourages people to share their experiences with the ways that their building and neighborhood are installing technology.

Residents at 406 West 129th Street, Manhattan have already used Landlord Tech Watch to report that intercoms from GateGuard have been installed at buildings without permission. (CNET recently reported GateGuard has been pitching its technology to landlords in New York as a way to sidestep rent-control regulations.) At 61 Wyckoff Ave, Brooklyn, 11237, a tenant claims the landlord recently replaced buzzers with new camera-equipped electronic buzzers.

The Landlord Tech Watch website notes that tech can be used to perform potentially prejudicial background, income, and credit checks on prospective landlords; while there’s no registry of all tenant screening companies, it’s estimated that there are over 2,000. (Last year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began circulating rules that would make it harder for tenants to sue landlords when algorithms disproportionately deny housing to people of color.) Virtual property management platforms might prevent tenants from communicating with their actual landlord, resulting in neglect and less responsive management. And AI security systems could target and potentially endanger certain tenants depending on their ethnicity and skin color.

Consider facial recognition, which countless studies have shown to be susceptible to bias. A study last fall by University of Colorado, Boulder researchers showed that AI from Amazon, Clarifai, Microsoft, and others maintained accuracy rates above 95% for cisgender men and women but misidentified trans men as women 38% of the time. Separate benchmarks of major vendors’ systems by the Gender Shades project and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggest that facial recognition technology exhibits racial and gender bias and facial recognition programs can be wildly inaccurate, misclassifying people upwards of 96% of the time.

“To expand and centralize their power, landlords are deploying invasive technology against tenants and community members, often without notice or consent,” AI Now postdoctoral researcher and Anti-Eviction Mapping Project cofounder Erin McElroy said in a statement. “It’s critical that tenants understand the implications of these surveillance and social control tools In order to fight back against invasive and dangerous tech.”

Source link

Share
Tweet
Pinterest
Linkedin
Stumble
Google+
Email
Prev Article
Next Article

Related Articles

Forte recruits 5 more high-end game studios to make blockchain-based games
Forte has established partnerships with five more game studios to …

Forte recruits 5 more high-end game studios to make blockchain-based games

ProBeat: Why Google is really calling for AI regulation
In a study published this week in the Journal of …

Google and ZebAI launch Chemome Initiative to identify ‘chemical probes’ with AI models

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Find us on Facebook

Related Posts

  • Beat Saber is now an Oculus studio after Facebook acquisition
    Elizabeth Warren for President open-sources its 2020 …
    29/03/2020
  • Facebook’s Hanabi-playing AI achieves state-of-the-art results
    Facebook’s Hanabi-playing AI achieves state-of-the-art results
    06/12/2019
  • The Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars fan service, recycled plots, and nostalgia are strong with this one
    The Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars fan …
    19/12/2019
  • Away CEO is stepping down in light of reports of toxic culture – TechCrunch
    Away CEO is stepping down in light …
    10/12/2019
  • Lyft releases Flyte, a platform for maintaining AI workflows
    Lyft launches on-demand delivery service for essential …
    16/04/2020

Popular Posts

  • How law enforcement gets around your smartphone’s encryption
    How law enforcement gets around your smartphone’s …
    15/01/2021 0
  • Deloitte: MLOps is about to take off in the enterprise
    Deloitte: MLOps is about to take off …
    17/12/2020 0
  • From whistleblower laws to unions: How Google’s AI ethics meltdown could shape policy
    10 U.S. states accuse Google of working …
    17/12/2020 0
  • Unity teams up with Snap to extend the reach of its ads and game engine
    Unity teams up with Snap to extend …
    17/12/2020 0
  • “Evil mobile emulator farms” used to steal millions from US and EU banks
    “Evil mobile emulator farms” used to steal …
    17/12/2020 0

viralamo

Pages

  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2021 viralamo
Theme by MyThemeShop.com

Ad Blocker Detected

Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Refresh
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.I AgreePrivacy policy