“Are there certain activities that are nobody’s business no matter what? Are there "According to The Intercept, in 2012 the NYPD gave IBM “secret access” to its city-wide video surveillance system, which the company used to develop new surveillance features, such as searching camera footage for images of people by hair color, facial hair and even skin tone.
The NYPD said that it only used the skin tone feature for testing purposes and didn’t deploy it to its camera system because it didn’t want the public to think it was racially profiling. The NYPD also said that giving access to IBM to its camera system was required for the collaboration to work.
However, civil liberties advocates argued that New Yorkers should have been made aware that the real-time collection of physical data was being handed over to a private firm. This revelation comes at a time when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD are fighting against a new city council bill that would require more transparency from the NYPD."
You guys try to make this sound surprising. It isn't. It so happens I didn't explicitly know the technology existed (though I'm not surprised) but when useful technology like this IS developed, they would be crazy, frankly, to not use such useful information.
Sucks of course, this invasion of privacy, but who honestly expects better from the government?