Latest news with #DaveMaass
Business Insider
12-08-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
'…Collecting Data and Sharing Indiscriminately…': Home Depot Stock (NYSE:HD) Slips on Parking Lot Cam Use
It might have been bad enough for home improvement giant Home Depot (HD) when the Border Patrol started using its parking lots as a kind of live trap for finding illegal immigrants. But the latest news about Home Depot's parking lots may have some even more unnerved. Specifically, the problem now is parking lot cameras, and where that information is going. The news did not sit well with investors, and shares slipped fractionally in Monday afternoon's trading. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. The reports noted that Home Depot, as well as its immediate competitor, Lowe's (LOW), both turn to Flock cameras to study their parking lots. The Flock cameras catch license plate data from cars entering the parking lots, and that information in turn is being used by law enforcement as part of a '…growing surveillance system…,' reports noted. 'Do customers know that these stores are collecting their data and sharing indiscriminately? Probably not. Have these companies given thought about how this data might put their customers in danger, whether it's cops stalking their exes or aggressive ICE agents targeting yard workers? Probably not.' That is the word from Electronic Frontier Foundation director of investigations Dave Maass, who capped it off with one critical line: 'If these companies want customers to feel safe in their homes, then they should make sure they're also safe where they buy their supplies.' 'This Absolutely Enrages Me' What can enrage a gardener? Aphids? Carpenter ants? Deer nibbling on plants? Apple trees that fail to give fruit? One of the most recent examples of gardeners irked came from Home Depot, as the store recently threw out what one report called '…a small mountain of plants in plastic pots….' Said mountain was apparently destined for a landfill, before the gardener in question, who went unnamed, stepped in. Throwing away a large quantity of plants, dirt, and plastic pots is a problem, the report noted, because the biodegradable plant matter can apparently generate methane, which can contribute to global warming. The plastic pots did Home Depot no favors, as those are even worse for landfills. But the gardener enlisted a friend's help and salvaged the plants. The plants were moved to a 'temporary staging area' before being given away at no charge. This is not Home Depot's first contact with unnecessary trash that perhaps would have been better off given away than thrown out. Is Home Depot a Good Long-Term Buy? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on HD stock based on 19 Buys and six Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 12.16% rally in its share price over the past year, the average HD price target of $429.89 per share implies 11.04% upside potential. Disclosure
The Intercept
09-07-2025
- Business
- The Intercept
Trump's Big Beautiful Gift to Anduril
Anduril Industries is a major beneficiary of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes a section that essentially grants the weapons firm a monopoly on new surveillance towers for U.S. Customs and Border Protection across the southern and northern borders. The legislation, signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, provides significant spending increases to military and law enforcement projects, including over $6 billion for various border security technologies. Among these initiatives is expanding the ever-widening 'virtual wall' of sensor-laden surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border, where computers increasingly carry out the work of detecting and apprehending migrants. Anduril, today a full-fledged military contractor, got its start selling software-augmented surveillance towers to CBP. Anduril has pitched its Sentry Tower line on the strength of its 'autonomous' capabilities, which use machine learning software to perpetually scan the horizon for possible objects of interest — i.e. people attempting to cross the border — rather than requiring a human to monitor sensor feeds. Thanks to bipartisan support for the vision of a border locked down by computerized eyes, Anduril has become a dominant player in border surveillance, edging out incumbents like Elbit and General Dynamics. Now, that position looks to be enshrined in law: A provision buried in the new mega-legislation stipulates that none of the $6 billion border tech payday can be spent on border towers unless they've been 'tested and accepted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to deliver autonomous capabilities.' The bill defines 'autonomous' as 'a system designed to apply artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, or other algorithms to accurately detect, identify, classify, and track items of interest in real time such that the system can make operational adjustments without the active engagement of personnel or continuous human command or control.' Anduril is now the country's only approved border tower vendor. That reads like a description of Anduril's product — because it might as well be. A CBP spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that under the new law, Anduril is now the country's only approved border tower vendor. Although CBP's plans for border surveillance tend to be in flux, Homeland Security presentation documents have cited the need for hundreds of new towers in the near future, money that for the time being will only be available to Anduril. Anduril did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement to The Intercept, Dave Maass, investigations director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a longtime observer of border surveillance technologies, objected to the apparent codification of militarized AI at the border. 'I was cynically expecting Trump's bill to quadruple-down on wasteful surveillance technology at the border, but I was not expecting language that appears to grant an exclusive license to Anduril to install AI-powered towers,' he said. 'For 25 years, surveillance towers have enriched influential contractors while delivering little security, and it appears this pattern isn't going to change anytime soon. Will this mean more towers in public parks and AI monitoring the everyday affairs of border neighborhoods? Most likely. Taxpayers will continue footing the bill while border communities will pay an additional price with their privacy and human rights.' 'Taxpayers will continue footing the bill while border communities will pay an additional price with their privacy and human rights.' The law's stipulation is not only a major boon to Anduril, but a blow to its competitors, now essentially locked out of a lucrative and burgeoning market until they can gain the same certification from CBP. In April, The Intercept reported on a project to add machine learning surveillance capabilities to older towers manufactured by the Israeli military contractor Elbit, and General Dynamics has spent years implementing an upgraded version of its Remote Video Surveillance System towers. The fate of these companies' border business is now unclear. Elbit did not respond to a request for comment. General Dynamics spokesperson Jay Srinivasan did not respond directly when asked about Anduril's border exclusivity deal, stating, 'We can't speculate on the government's acquisition strategy and the different contracts it intends to use to exercise the funding,' and pointed to the company's existing surveillance tower contracts. Towers like Anduril's Sentry have proven controversial, hailed by advocates in Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill as a cheaper and more humane way of stopping illegal immigration than building a physical wall, but derided by critics as both ineffective and invasive. Although border towers are frequently marketed with imagery of a lone edifice in a barren desert, CBP has erected surveillance towers, which claim to offer detailed, 24/7 visibility for miles, in populated residential areas. In 2024, the Government Accountability Office reported CBP's surveillance tower program failed to address all six of the main privacy protections that were supposed to be in place, including a rule that 'DHS should collect only PII [Personally Identifiable Information] that is directly relevant and necessary to accomplish the specified purpose(s).' The new Trump spending package emphasizes the development and purchase of additional autonomous and unmanned military hardware that could prove favorable for Anduril, which has developed a suite of military products that run on machine learning-centric software. One section, for instance, sets aside $1.3 billion for 'for expansion of unmanned underwater vehicle production,' an initiative that could dovetail with Anduril's announcement last year that it would open a 100,000–150,000 square foot facility in Rhode Island dedicated to building autonomous underwater vehicles. Another sets aside $200 million for 'the development, procurement, and integration of mass-producible autonomous underwater munitions,' which could describe Anduril's Copperhead line of self-driving torpedoes, announced in April. The bill also earmarks billions for suicide attack drones and counter-drone weaponry, technologies also sold by Anduril. Anduril is by no means the only contractor who can provide this weaponry, but it already has billions of dollars worth of contracts with the Pentagon for similar products, and enjoys a particularly friendly relationship with the Trump administration. Trae Stephens, Anduril's co-founder and executive chairman, served on Trump's transition team in 2016 and was reportedly floated for a senior Pentagon position late last year. Michael Obadal, Trump's nominee for Under Secretary of the Army, worked at Anduril until June, according to his Linkedin, and has come under fire for his refusal to divest his Anduril stock. Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is also longtime Trump supporter, and has hosted multiple fundraisers for his presidential campaigns. Following Trump's reelection last fall, Luckey told CNBC he was sanguine about his company's fortunes in the new administration. 'We did well under Trump, and we did better under Biden,' he said of Anduril. 'I think we will do even better now.'
Int'l Business Times
07-05-2025
- Automotive
- Int'l Business Times
CBP Pushes for Tech to Capture Faces of Everyone Crossing the Border by Car
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is seeking proposals from tech vendors for a facial recognition system that would capture and identify every person inside a vehicle crossing the border, including those in back seats. The goal is to match each face to existing travel or identity documents, according to a Request for Information (RFI) posted last week. CBP already uses facial recognition at air, sea, and land pedestrian ports of entry, but extending the system to vehicles has proven technically challenging, as Wired explained in a sprawling report on Tuesday . Environmental obstacles, seating arrangements, and human behavior hinder the agency's ability to consistently capture usable images of all passengers. A 152-day test at the Anzalduas border crossing in Texas, cited by the report as an example, revealed that the current system captured images of all occupants in only 76% of vehicles. Of those, only 81% met facial validation requirements to match with identity documents. "The current system is one-to-one facial recognition," said Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Wired. "The risk is the system failing to recognize that someone matches their own documents." This differs from one-to-many facial recognition systems, often used in policing, which carry the risk of false matches. CBP has not specified whether the capture issues stem from the image-gathering cameras or the software performing the matching, as Maass noted, "We don't know what racial disparities, gender disparities, etc., come up with these systems." CBP's call for enhanced surveillance technology follows the recent disclosure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has contracted Palantir Technologies to build a $30 million platform called ImmigrationOS, designed to enable near real-time tracking and analysis of undocumented migrants, particularly those who self-deport. According to ICE, the platform will integrate biographic, biometric, and behavioral data from various sources to identify individuals based on factors including country of origin, visa status, tattoos, and vehicle movements. The ICE contract was awarded without competitive bidding and justified as essential to addressing threats from transnational criminal organizations. Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel, has longstanding ties to U.S. immigration enforcement. ImmigrationOS builds on the case management system Palantir has provided to ICE since 2014, which already integrates a wide range of personal data, including from covert tracking devices and license plate readers. Though driven by the current administration's enforcement goals, Maass emphasized that CBP's surveillance expansion is not something unique to the current Trump administration.: "CBP surveillance strategy carries over from administration to administration—it always falls short, it always has vendor issues and contracting issues and waste issues and abuse issues. What changes is often the rhetoric and the theater around it" Originally published on Latin Times
WIRED
06-05-2025
- Automotive
- WIRED
US Border Agents Are Asking for Help Taking Photos of Everyone Entering the Country by Car
May 6, 2025 5:00 AM Customs and Border Protection has called for tech companies to pitch real-time face recognition technology that can capture everyone in a vehicle—not just those in the front seats. Photo Illustration:United States Customs and Border Protection is asking tech companies to send pitches for a real-time facial recognition tool that would take photos of every single person in a vehicle at a border crossing, including anyone in the back seats, and match them to travel documents, according to a document posted in a federal register last week. The request for information, or RIF, says that CBP already has a facial recognition tool that takes a picture of a person at a port of entry and compares it to travel or identity documents that someone gives to a border officer, as well as other photos from those documents already 'in government holdings.' 'Biometrically confirmed entries into the United States are added to the traveler's crossing record,' the document says. An agency under the Department of Homeland Security, CBP says that its facial recognition tool 'is currently operating in the air, sea, and land pedestrian environments.' The agency's goal is to bring it to 'the land vehicle environment.' According to a page on CBP's website updated last week, the agency is currently 'testing' how to do so. The RIF says that these tests demonstrate that while this facial recognition tool has 'improved,' it isn't always able to get photos of every vehicle passenger, especially if they're in the second or third row. 'Human behavior, multiple passenger vehicle rows, and environmental obstacles all present challenges unique to the vehicle environment,' the document says. CBP says it wants a private vendor to provide it with a tool that would 'augment the passenger images' and 'capture 100% of vehicle passengers.' Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, received a document from CBP via public record request that reveals the results of a 152 day test the agency conducted on its port of entry facial recognition system from late 2021 to early 2022. The document Maass obtained was first reported by The Intercept. Maas said that what stood out to him was the error rates. Cameras at the Anzalduas border crossing at Mexico's border with McAllen, Texas captured photos of everyone in the car just 76 percent of the time, and of those people, just 81 percent met the "validation requirements" for matching their face with their identification documents. The current iteration of the system matches a person's photo to their travel documents in what's known as one-to-one facial recognition. The primary risk here, Maas says, is the system failing to recognize that someone matches their own documents. This differs from one-to-many facial recognition, which police may use to identify a suspect based on a surveillance photo, where the primary risk is someone getting a false positive match and being falsely identified as a suspect. Maas says it's unclear whether CBP's error rates primarily have to do with the cameras or the matching system itself. 'We don't know what racial disparities, gender disparities, etc, come up with these systems,' he says. As reported by The Intercept in 2024, the DHS's Science and Technology Directorate issued a request for information last August that's similar to the one that CBP posted last week. However, the DHS document currently appears to be unavailable. Maas adds that it's important to remember that CBP's push to widen and improve its surveillance isn't unique to the current Trump administration. 'CBP surveillance strategy carries over from administration to administration—it always falls short, it always has vendor issues and contracting issues and waste issues and abuse issues,' Maas says. 'What changes is often the rhetoric and the theater around it.' DHS noted in a 2024 report that CBP has historically struggled to get "biographic and biometric" data from people leaving the country, particularly if they leave over land. This means that it's hard for it to track people self-reporting the country, which is something the administration is encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to do. CBP's recent request for information only mentions inbound vehicles, not outbound vehicles, meaning it's currently not set up to use facial recognition to track self-deparations. CBP did not respond to WIRED's request for comment. CBP's request for information comes less than three weeks after 404 Media revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is paying the software company Palantir $30 million to build a platform that would allow the agency to perform 'complete target analysis of known populations.' According to a contract justification published a few days later, the platform, called ImmigrationOS, would give ICE 'near real-time visibility' on people self-deporting from the US, with the goal of having accurate numbers on how many people are doing so. However, ICE did not specify where it would get the data to power ImmigrationOS. In the ICE document that justifies paying Palantir for ImmigrationOS, the agency does not specify where Palantir would get the data to power the tool. However, it does note that Palantir could create ImmigrationOS by configuring the case management system that the company has provided to ICE since 2014. This case management system integrates all of the information ICE may have about a person from investigative records or government databases, according to a government privacy assessment published in 2016. It's unclear if the system may have integrated new data sources over the past decade. But at the time of the assessment, the system stored information about someone's physical attributes—like hair and eye color, height and weight, and any scars or tattoos—as well as any "location-related data' from 'covert tracking devices,' and any data from license plate readers, which can provide a detailed history on where a person goes in their vehicle and when.
