Secret surveillance software created by a former Israeli intelligence officer is harvesting Facebook photos. The firm behind it is taking profile images from the social network, YouTube and other sites to build a huge facial recognition database. Its creators say the software could lead to the identification of terror suspects, captured in promotional and other material posted online. News of the controversial service is causing alarm among privacy activists as Facebook scrambles to deal with its ongoing data scandal. Secret surveillance software created by a former Israeli intelligence officer is harvesting Facebook photos. It was revealed last month the company shared the private data of up to 87 million users with the political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. Face-Int is now owned by analytics firm Verint, who acquired it in 2017 from creators Terrogence, a surveillance company founded by onetime Israeli secret agent Shai Arbel. Both companies have reportedly supplied the US government and its security agencies, including the NSA, with cutting edge spy technologies. The facial recognition database is said to contain the facial profiles of thousands of terror suspects'harvested from such online sources as YouTube, Facebook and open and closed forums all over the globe', according to Terrogence's website. Experts are concerned that the company's efforts extend beyond this remit, however, and into the political realm. 'It raises the stakes of face recognition - it intensifies the potential negative consequences,' Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Forbes.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. In 2015, an A.I.-powered Twitter bot did something a little out there--avant-garde one might say. It tweeted, "I seriously want to kill people," and mentioned a fashion event in Amsterdam. Dutch police questioned the owner of the bot over the death threat, claiming he was legally responsible for its actions, because it was in his name and composed tweets based on his own Twitter account. It's not clear whether tweeting "I seriously want to kill people" at a fashion event actually constitutes a crime--or even a crime against fashion--in the Netherlands.

Cardboard cutouts of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington as he testified before a Senate panel last week. Cardboard cutouts of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington as he testified before a Senate panel last week. A federal judge in California has ruled that Facebook can be sued in a class-action lawsuit brought by users in Illinois who say the social network improperly used facial recognition technology on their uploaded photographs. The plaintiffs are three Illinois Facebook users who sued under a state law that says a private entity such as Facebook can't collect and store a person's biometric facial information without their written consent. The law, known as the Biometric Information Privacy Act, also says that information that uniquely identifies an individual is, in essence, their property.

The need for diverse development teams and truly representational data-sets to avoid biases being baked into AI algorithms is one of the core recommendations in a lengthy Lords committee report looking into the economic, ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence, and published today by the upper House of the UK parliament. "The main ways to address these kinds of biases are to ensure that developers are drawn from diverse gender, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, and are aware of, and adhere to, ethical codes of conduct," the committee writes, chiming with plenty of extant commentary around algorithmic accountability. "It is essential that ethics take centre stage in AI's development and use," adds committee chairman, Lord Clement-Jones, in a statement. "The UK has a unique opportunity to shape AI positively for the public's benefit and to lead the international community in AI's ethical development, rather than passively accept its consequences." The report also calls for the government to take urgent steps to help foster "the creation of authoritative tools and systems for auditing and testing training datasets to ensure they are representative of diverse populations, and to ensure that when used to train AI systems they are unlikely to lead to prejudicial decisions" -- recommending a publicly funded challenge to incentivize the development of technologies that can audit and interrogate AIs.

Facebook has been trying to get a lawsuit claiming its facial recognition tech violates an Illinois privacy act dismissed for years. Well, that's not going to happen anytime soon, because San Francisco federal judge James Donato -- the same judge who denied Facebook's motion to dismiss in 2016 -- has just given the case the go-ahead to proceed as a class action lawsuit. "Plaintiffs' claims are sufficiently cohesive to allow for a fair and efficient resolution on a class basis," he wrote in his ruling. Judge Donato didn't agree with Facebook's argument that the law doesn't apply to it, because its servers aren't located in the state. He said the servers' geographic locations aren't "a dispositive factor" in the case.

Facebook has to face a class action lawsuit over claims that it was using facial recognition on people's photos without their permission. The decision brings yet more troubles to Facebook as it deals with a range of privacy and data abuse scandals. The problems have been mounting for weeks, ever since it became clear that the platform had been giving up users' data to developers without them necessarily knowing. That has led to a range of new scrutiny, including people realising that Facebook appears to be tracking their phone calls and who they message. Now, in another blow, US District Judge James Donato has given the go-ahead for a major lawsuit over the way the sites' facial recognition tools work.

Facebook will have to face a class action lawsuit over privacy concerns about the company's facial recognition software, a federal judge ruled Monday.

New developments in artificial intelligence do not yet need specific new laws to control possible harmful effects, a landmark inquiry by peers recommends today. However the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence's 180-page report proposes that the government draft an international ethical code - which would include a ban on autonomous weapons, so-called'killer robots'. In researching the report, the lords' investigation took evidence from a wide range of ethical and legal experts, including the Law Society, law firms and Gazette columnist Joanna Goodman, as well as figures from industry and academia. Its overall finding was that the UK is in a strong position to lead developments, with its'constellation of legal, ethical, financial and linguistic strengths'. However committee chair Lord Clement-Jones (DLA Piper partner Timothy Clement-Jones) noted that: 'AI is not without its risks and the adoption of the principles proposed by the committee will help to mitigate these.'

Very few know that the legal sector was one of the first to adopt Artificial Intelligence, with some corporate legal firms using it in some form since 2005. Even as the judiciary takes baby steps to digitise court work, lawyers across the country are using software like'Casemine', 'Mitra', 'Legitquest', 'Mike' and'Kira' for basic research, the sort of work which otherwise would have been handled by an entry-level legal associate. This analysis and retrieval of data otherwise takes an immense amount of time. Huzefa Tavawalla, who heads International Commercial Law Practice at Nishith Desai Associates, allays the fears that jobs are at stake. "That can never happen because one of the things that a machine lacks is a conscience. This is one of the biggest challenges of AI," says Tavawalla, whose firm was among the first to develop an in-house AI model.

Members of the House of Lords have called for an artificial intelligence code of conduct in the UK. The House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, in a report titled AI in the UK: Ready, Willing and Able?, argued that the UK can lead the world in AI, as long as it puts ethics at the centre of its plans. The Committee recommended five principles guiding how researchers and businesses develop artificially intelligent systems in the UK. As part of its report, the Lords have called for these principles to be formulated into a cross-sector AI code to be adopted internationally as well as in the UK. Commenting on the report, the Committee's chairman, Lord Clement-Jones, said: "The UK has a unique opportunity to shape AI positively for the public's benefit and to lead the international community in AI's ethical development, rather than passively accept its consequences."