• Le #règlement européen sur l’IA n’interdira pas la #surveillance_biométrique de masse

    Le 8 décembre 2023, les législateurs de l’#Union_européenne se sont félicités d’être parvenus à un accord sur la proposition de #règlement tant attendue relative l’intelligence artificielle (« #règlement_IA »). Les principaux parlementaires avaient alors assuré à leurs collègues qu’ils avaient réussi à inscrire de solides protections aux #droits_humains dans le texte, notamment en excluant la #surveillance_biométrique_de_masse (#SBM).

    Pourtant, malgré les annonces des décideurs européens faites alors, le règlement IA n’interdira pas la grande majorité des pratiques dangereuses liées à la surveillance biométrique de masse. Au contraire, elle définit, pour la première fois dans l’#UE, des conditions d’utilisation licites de ces systèmes. Les eurodéputés et les ministres des États membres de l’UE se prononceront sur l’acceptation de l’accord final au printemps 2024.

    L’UE entre dans l’histoire – pour de mauvaises raisons

    La coalition #Reclaim_Your_Face soutient depuis longtemps que les pratiques des SBM sont sujettes aux erreurs et risquées de par leur conception, et qu’elles n’ont pas leur place dans une société démocratique. La police et les autorités publiques disposent déjà d’un grand nombre de données sur chacun d’entre nous ; elles n’ont pas besoin de pouvoir nous identifier et nous profiler en permanence, en objectifiant nos #visages et nos #corps sur simple pression d’un bouton.

    Pourtant, malgré une position de négociation forte de la part du Parlement européen qui demandait l’interdiction de la plupart des pratiques de SBM, très peu de choses avaient survécu aux négociations du règlement relatif à l’IA. Sous la pression des représentants des #forces_de_l’ordre, le Parlement a été contraint d’accepter des limitations particulièrement faibles autour des pratiques intrusives en matière de SBM.

    L’une des rares garanties en la matière ayant apparemment survécu aux négociations – une restriction sur l’utilisation de la #reconnaissance_faciale a posteriori [par opposition à l’utilisation en temps réel] – a depuis été vidée de sa substance lors de discussions ultérieures dites « techniques » qui se sont tenues ces dernière semaines.

    Malgré les promesses des représentants espagnols en charge des négociations, qui juraient que rien de substantiel ne changerait après le 8 décembre, cette édulcoration des protections contre la reconnaissance faciale a posteriori est une nouvelle déception dans notre lutte contre la #société_de_surveillance.

    Quel est le contenu de l’accord ?

    D’après ce que nous avons pu voir du texte final, le règlement IA est une occasion manquée de protéger les #libertés_publiques. Nos droits de participer à une #manifestation, d’accéder à des soins de #santé_reproductive ou même de nous asseoir sur un #banc pourraient ainsi être menacés par une surveillance biométrique omniprésente de l’#espace_public. Les restrictions à l’utilisation de la reconnaissance faciale en temps réel et a posteriori prévues par la loi sur l’IA apparaissent minimes et ne s’appliqueront ni aux entreprises privées ni aux autorités administratives.

    Nous sommes également déçus de voir qu’en matière de « #reconnaissance_des_émotions » et les pratiques de #catégorisation_biométrique, seuls des cas d’utilisation très limités sont interdits dans le texte final, avec d’énormes lacunes.

    Cela signifie que le règlement IA autorisera de nombreuses formes de reconnaissance des émotions – telles que l’utilisation par la police de systèmes d’IA pour évaluer qui dit ou ne dit pas la #vérité – bien que ces systèmes ne reposent sur aucune base scientifique crédible. Si elle est adoptée sous cette forme, le règlement IA légitimera une pratique qui, tout au long de l’histoire, a partie liée à l’#eugénisme.

    Le texte final prévoit également d’autoriser la police à classer les personnes filmées par les caméras de #vidéosurveillance en fonction de leur #couleur_de_peau. Il est difficile de comprendre comment cela peut être autorisé étant donné que la législation européenne interdit normalement toute #discrimination. Il semble cependant que, lorsqu’elle est pratiquée par une machine, les législateurs considèrent de telles #discriminations comme acceptables.

    Une seule chose positive était ressorti des travaux techniques menés à la suite des négociations finales du mois de décembre : l’accord entendait limiter la reconnaissance faciale publique a posteriori aux cas ayant trait à la poursuite de crimes transfrontaliers graves. Bien que la campagne « Reclaim Your Face » ait réclamé des règles encore plus strictes en la matière, cela constituait un progrès significatif par rapport à la situation actuelle, caractérisée par un recours massif à ces pratiques par les États membres de l’UE.

    Il s’agissait d’une victoire pour le Parlement européen, dans un contexte où tant de largesses sont concédées à la surveillance biométrique. Or, les négociations menées ces derniers jours, sous la pression des gouvernements des États membres, ont conduit le Parlement à accepter de supprimer cette limitation aux #crimes_transfrontaliers graves tout en affaiblissant les garanties qui subsistent. Désormais, un vague lien avec la « #menace » d’un crime pourrait suffire à justifier l’utilisation de la #reconnaissance_faciale_rétrospective dans les espaces publics.

    Il semblerait que ce soit la #France qui ait mené l’offensive visant à faire passer au rouleau compresseur notre droit à être protégés contre les abus de nos données biométriques. À l’approche des #Jeux_olympiques et paralympiques qui se tiendront à Paris cet été, la France s’est battue pour préserver ou étendre les pouvoirs de l’État afin d’éradiquer notre anonymat dans les espaces publics et pour utiliser des systèmes d’intelligence artificielle opaques et peu fiables afin de tenter de savoir ce que nous pensons. Les gouvernements des autres États membres et les principaux négociateurs du Parlement n’ont pas réussi à la contrer dans cette démarche.

    En vertu du règlement IA, nous serons donc tous coupables par défaut et mis sous #surveillance_algorithmique, l’UE ayant accordé un blanc-seing à la surveillance biométrique de masse. Les pays de l’UE auront ainsi carte blanche pour renforcer la surveillance de nos visages et de nos corps, ce qui créera un précédent mondial à faire froid dans le dos.

    https://www.laquadrature.net/2024/01/19/le-reglement-europeen-sur-lia-ninterdira-pas-la-surveillance-biometriq
    #surveillance_de_masse #surveillance #intelligence_artificielle #AI #IA #algorithme

    voir aussi :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/1037288

  • Lecture d’un extrait du livre « Le livre du large et du long » de Laura Vazquez, paru aux éditions du sous-sol, en 2023.

    http://liminaire.fr/radio-marelle/article/le-livre-du-large-et-du-long-de-laura-vazquez

    Ce livre est une épopée en cinq chants, une encyclopédie débridée et libre qui propose une lecture sensible du monde « et des signaux qui nous entourent. » Laura Vazquez cite Monique Wittig en exergue de son livre : « Il nous faut, à l’époque où les héros sont passés de mode, devenir héroïques dans la réalité, épiques dans les livres. » Avec le désir de comprendre le monde de l’intérieur, la narratrice trace sa voie en ligne droite. Elle ausculte l’univers jusqu’à faire corps avec les choses elles-mêmes. Une invitation à se laisser traverser par les pensées les plus folles. Une poésie pleine d’élan, toute en vivacité et frénésie.

    (...) #Radio_Marelle / #Écriture, #Langage, #Livre, #Lecture, #En_lisant_en_écrivant, #Podcast, #Littérature, #Art, #Dessin, #Visage, #Peinture, (...)

    http://liminaire.fr/IMG/mp4/en_lisant_le_livre_du_long_et_du_large_laura_vazquez.mp4

    http://www.editions-du-sous-sol.com/publication/livre-large-long

  • Lecture d’un extrait du livre « Petite bande » de Charles Pennequin, paru aux éditions P.O.L., en 2023.

    http://liminaire.fr/radio-marelle/article/petite-bande-de-charles-pennequin

    Le livre de Charles Pennequin est constitué d’un ensemble de textes, de poèmes, de « dessins écriturés », de phrases écrites à la main, au feutre ou à l’encre, ou tapées à la machine, sur les doigts, les mains, les visages. « L’écrivain fait des pieds et des mains pour écrire. » Il est question de lumière, de formes, de l’écriture qui vient des dedans et des paroles qui viennent des dehors. « L’écrivain a plusieurs bouches à l’intérieur de ses mains. » Emportés par le flot de l’écriture, par le rythme et la respiration de la voix qui les profère, les formes graphiques du dessin qui les révèle, ces textes s’exposent et explosent dans leur « Énergie pensée parlée tracée ».

    (...) #Radio_Marelle / #Écriture, #Langage, #Livre, #Lecture, #En_lisant_en_écrivant, #Podcast, #Littérature, #Art, #Dessin, #Visage, #Peinture, (...)

    http://liminaire.fr/IMG/mp4/en_lisant_petite_bande_pennequin-2.mp4

    https://www.pol-editeur.com/index.php?spec=livre&ISBN=978-2-8180-5811-4

  • Les #VasesCommunicants :

    L’obstination des vagues, de Caroline Diaz (sur des images de Pierre Ménard) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqXk-gMq8DY&feature=youtu.be

    Surface sensible, de Pierre Ménard (sur des images de Caroline Diaz) https://youtu.be/m6vmMTBoLno

    http://liminaire.fr/vases-communicants/article/surface-sensible-l-obstination-des-vagues

    Tous les mois, faire échange de vidéo. S’emparer des images et de la bande son, entrer en dialogue avec, sans nécessairement modifier le montage de la vidéo mais en ajoutant selon ses préférences (voix off, texte lu, improvisé, écrit sur l’image, ajout de sons, de musique), puis envoyer sa propre vidéo à son correspondant pour qu’il s’en empare à son tour.
    Le premier vendredi du mois, chacun diffuse le mixage/montage qu’il a réalisé sur la vidéo de l’autre et découvre à son tour son montage mixé sur la chaîne YouTube de son invité. (...) #Journal / #Vidéo, #Architecture, #Écriture, #Sons, #Mer, #Plage, #Normandie, #Paysage, #Ville, #Visages, #Regard, #Dérive, #Ciel, #Voyage, #Vidéo, #Littératube, #vidéoécriture (...)

  • Les #VasesCommunicants :

    Naître, conte étiologique de Milène Tournier (sur des images de Pierre Ménard) : https://youtu.be/bQbYnP6TlIY

    Une voix qui vient des rêves de Pierre Ménard (sur des images de Milène Tournier) https://youtu.be/EMcIJccwC0k

    http://liminaire.fr/vases-communicants/article/naitre-une-voix-qui-vient-des-reves

    Tous les mois, faire échange de vidéo. S’emparer des images et de la bande son, entrer en dialogue avec, sans nécessairement modifier le montage de la vidéo mais en ajoutant selon ses préférences (voix off, texte lu, improvisé, écrit sur l’image, ajout de sons, de musique), puis envoyer sa propre vidéo à son correspondant pour qu’il s’en empare à son tour.
    Le premier vendredi du mois, chacun diffuse le mixage/montage qu’il a réalisé sur la vidéo de l’autre et découvre à son tour son montage mixé sur la chaîne YouTube de son invité. (...) #Journal / #Vidéo, #Architecture, #Écriture, #Sons, #Paris, #Paysage, #Ville, #Visages, #Regard, #Dérive, #Ciel, #Voyage, #Vidéo, #Littératube, #vidéoécriture (...)

  • Les #VasesCommunicants : Le chemin de nos regards, vidéo de Anh Mat (texte et voix de Pierre Ménard) et Dans la ville de l’autre, vidéo de Pierre Ménard (texte et voix de Anh Mat)

    https://youtu.be/BLEqaqB1pXI

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-CZQDpZOWU

    http://liminaire.fr/vases-communicants/article/le-chemin-de-nos-regards-dans-la-ville-de-l-autre

    Tous les mois, faire échange de vidéo. S’emparer des images et de la bande son, entrer en dialogue avec, sans nécessairement modifier le montage de la vidéo mais en ajoutant selon ses préférences (voix off, texte lu, improvisé, écrit sur l’image, ajout de sons, de musique), puis envoyer sa propre vidéo à son correspondant pour qu’il s’en empare à son tour.
    Le premier vendredi du mois, chacun diffuse le mixage/montage qu’il a réalisé sur la vidéo de l’autre et découvre à son tour son montage mixé sur la chaîne YouTube de son invité. (...) #Journal / #Vidéo, #Architecture, #Écriture, #Sons, #Paris, #Saigon, #Paysage, #Ville, #Visages, #Regard, #Dérive, #Ciel, #Voyage, #Vidéo, #Littératube, #vidéoécriture (...)

  • Fascination Shibuya : Portraits arrachés à la ville flux
    http://liminaire.fr/derives/article/fascination-shibuya

    https://youtu.be/iU7TEzhqDYI

    J’avance. Je ne vois rien. La musique des immeubles avec leurs publicités aux images obsédantes et répétitives, lumières clignotantes, signes enchevêtrant, et ce bruit inouï qui se mêle aux sons de la circulation, des métros aériens, de la gare toute proche, et des avions dans le ciel. Une jeune femme dans un long manteau vert kaki qui porte une besace de couleur bleu, la lanière en cuir au creux de son bras replié, dans le pli du coude, la main serrée sur son téléphone portable tout contre son cœur. J’avance. Je ne peux pas regarder les immeubles qui entourent le carrefour et traverser sans risquer de me heurter à l’un des passants qui vient en sens inverse. Une femme brune, lunettes aux fines montures, vêtue d’une robe en jean, d’une veste en laine côtelée bleu marine, elle porte son sac à dos noir sur sa poitrine, elle fouille à l’intérieur pour en sortir un titre de transport sans y jeter le moindre regard, la force de l’habitude. J’avance. Les regards sont fuyants. Le pas pressé. (...) #Journal / #Vidéo, #Architecture, #Écriture, #Sons, #Tokyo, #Japon, #Shibuya, #Paysage, #Ville, #Visages, #Regard, #Dérive, #Ciel, #Voyage, (...)

  • Mary Beth Meehan’s photos dissolve distances between people - CSMonitor.com
    https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2021/1006/Mary-Beth-Meehan-s-photos-dissolve-distances-between-people
    https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2021/09/1011+BOOKS%20meehan%20pool.jpg?alias=standard_900x600

    By April Austin Weekly Deputy Editor, Books Editor
    Silicon Valley exerts a magnetism like a tractor beam on people from around the world. They come to the San Francisco Bay Area seeking riches, or at least the trickle down from the booming high-tech economy led by Apple, Alphabet (owner of Google), and Facebook.

    The reality, as photographer Mary Beth Meehan depicts in the book “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America,” is strikingly different. Yes, tech companies have created thousands of jobs, she says in an interview, “but the dominant narrative about a ‘utopia’ obscures how life is actually lived, and what it means to be a human being there.” The gap between the ultra-wealthy and ordinary workers – who cannot afford housing and basic necessities even with decent-paying jobs – is widening.   

    Silicon Valley is a microcosm of the broader inequality that divides the nation, according to Meehan. The effects are felt not just economically but socially. “People are living right next to each other and they don’t interact,” she says. To counter this sense of separation, the photographer created portraits that encourage readers to go beyond stereotypes to see the people who make up this amorphous place known as Silicon Valley. The result is a book of images that speaks to the human toll exacted by the relentless economy. 


    Alfredo Sosa/Staff
    Mary Beth Meehan stands in front of one of her mural-sized photographs at the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, in August.

    WHY WE WROTE THIS

    From afar, the lives of others can take on a caricature-like quality. Mary Beth Meehan’s photography invites neighbors to see each other more fully.

    The project began with an invitation from Stanford University professor Fred Turner, who brought Meehan to the university with the idea of using photography to go beneath the “streets of gold” myth. Her photographs would help answer questions such as: Who lives in the area? What are the conditions in which they live?  

    It’s not the first time that Meehan has created portraits of individuals in a specific community; her past projects include Brockton, Massachusetts; Newnan, Georgia; and her now-hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. The process she developed in those cities set the template for her work in Silicon Valley. In each of those projects, she spent time getting to know the area. She went out with her camera and knocked on doors, visited houses of worship, and talked with people on the street and in their homes. 

    Meehan’s approach involves capturing people from a cross section of a city’s demographics. “Each individual is her- or himself, but they also represent a community, a whole ecosystem,” she says. Some of her photographs of Newnan and Providence eventually became large-scale banners, the biggest measuring 38 feet wide, that were displayed on public buildings in those cities, furthering dialogues within the communities. 

    Mary Beth Meehan
    A U.S. Army veteran, Cristobal works full time as a security officer at Facebook. He earns $21 per hour, but he can’t afford a home in Silicon Valley. He lives in a backyard shed in Mountain View.
    Meehan, who grew up in a working-class family with immigrant Irish and Italian roots, has made it her lifework to help spark conversations among people of different racial, class, and cultural backgrounds. The essence of her approach is simple but far from easy: “Just go talk to people.” 

    She’s aware that her background as a well-educated white woman might raise questions in some communities that have been historically misunderstood and misrepresented in the media. “I’m interested in all the ways that we see each other incorrectly, and how photography can push against that,” she says.  

    The people in these neighborhoods are far more accustomed to journalists and researchers who have already formed a judgment about the situation before they even ask their first question. Meehan takes a different approach: “Let’s let the people, who are the experts on their own lives, tell us.” 

    Mary Beth Meehan
    Ravi and Gouthami work as pharmaceutical-technology engineers. They would like to make a home and start a family, but with the high cost of housing – their one-bedroom apartment costs $3,000 a month – they are not sure they can afford to stay.

    Meehan has wrestled with photography’s history as a tool of exploitation, in which people with money and access have had the power to shape the dominant narrative. She’s come to the conclusion that the practice of photography needs to be rebuilt in a way that “doesn’t reinscribe the old ruptures.” The answer, she says, is developing deeper collaborations. For her, this means mentoring everyone from schoolchildren to older adults from diverse backgrounds as they find their own paths to self-
    expression through photography. 

    When she makes portraits, Meehan collaborates with individuals to decide where and how they will be photographed, and what they’ll be wearing. Her skill is seen in the deliberateness with which she frames and edits the picture. 

    By highlighting the humanity of each person, Meehan hopes to bring out the viewer’s humanity. This is especially important in a place like Silicon Valley, she says, where the wealthy may not really see the people who clean, cook, and care for them and their families. It’s a place where immigrants arrive seeking the American dream, only to end up struggling to find a foothold. 

    “Each project is pushing against a big system,” she says. “In Silicon Valley, it’s the myth that the economy there is floating all boats.” Why, she argues, can’t some of that enormous wealth go into creating healthy lives for the people there? “That’s the question we’re really asking, and what does that say about the American economy?”

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visage_Silicon_Valley

  • [C&F] Samedi 23 avril - Un cadeau pour la Sant Jordi
    http://0w0pm.mjt.lu/nl2/0w0pm/1glu.html?m=AVgAACH9OOwAAABES1gAAAhharoAAAAAtBIAAK4dABjAHgBiYrJDcqvTue_HSq

    [C&F] Samedi 23 avril - Un cadeau pour la Sant Jordi

    Bonjour,

    Le 23 avril 1616 mourrait Miguel de Cervantes, l’auteur de L’ingénieux Hidalgo Don Quichotte de la Manche. Depuis 1926, le 23 avril est devenu en Catalogne la fête du livre. Ce jour là, qui est également la Saint Georges (Sant Jordi en catalan), Barcelone se transforme en immense librairie en plein air.

    Il est de coutume d’offrir un livre et une rose pour la Sant Jordi.

    Barcelone devient une gigantesque librairie en plein air pour la Sant Jordi

    Cette relation du 23 avril au livre a encouragé l’Unesco à en faire la Journée mondiale du livre et du droit d’auteur.
    C&F éditions ne pouvait rester en dehors de cette fête du livre.

    Notre cadeau de Sant Jordi se fera à partir de notre librairie en ligne (https://cfeditions.com)

    Notre offre décrite ci-dessous commence dès maintenant. Elle est valable jusqu’au 23 avril 2022 à minuit.

    Accéder à la librairie en ligne de C&F éditions : https://cfeditions.com

    Cette année, nous vous proposons un cadeau à double détente :

    – Si vous achetez un livre, nous vous offrons le même titre au format epub s’il existe... et s’il n’existe pas encore, nous vous offrons « En communs : une introduction aux communs de la connaissance » de votre serviteur.

    – Si vous achetez deux livres, nous ajoutons au colis Visages de la Silicon Valley, le merveilleux livre de photos de Mary Beth Meehan avec un essai introductif de Fred Turner. Ça, c’est du cadeau !

    Accéder à la librairie en ligne de C&F éditions
    https://cfeditions.com

    Bonne lecture,

    Hervé Le Crosnier

    PS : Vos libraires favoris auront également des cadeaux pour vous si vous franchissez leurs portes ce samedi 23 avril. Malheureusement, il vous faudra commander nos livres, car nous ne sommes présents dans les rayonnages que d’une minorité de librairies... et ce n’est pas de notre fait : la plupart des librairies contactées estiment que leur public n’est pas intéressé par les sujets que nous traitons. C’est dommage, mais nous devons vivre avec cette situation pour rester indépendants des méga-diffuseurs. Mais n’hésitez pas à indiquer à votre libraire favori·te qu’il ou elle peut nous contacter pour présenter nos ouvrages en rayon, voire sur table (contact@cfeditions.com). Nos conditions libraires sont les mêmes que celles de tous les éditeurs (remise, droit de retour, envoi gratuit via prisme ou coursier).
    Des roses de Barcelone pour la Sant Jordi

    #C&F_éditions #Sant_jordi #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Mary Beth Meehan’s photos dissolve distances between people - CSMonitor.com
    https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2021/1006/Mary-Beth-Meehan-s-photos-dissolve-distances-between-people
    https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2021/09/1011+BOOKS%20meehan%20pool.jpg?alias=standard_900x600

    Silicon Valley exerts a magnetism like a tractor beam on people from around the world. They come to the San Francisco Bay Area seeking riches, or at least the trickle down from the booming high-tech economy led by Apple, Alphabet (owner of Google), and Facebook.

    The reality, as photographer Mary Beth Meehan depicts in the book “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America,” is strikingly different. Yes, tech companies have created thousands of jobs, she says in an interview, “but the dominant narrative about a ‘utopia’ obscures how life is actually lived, and what it means to be a human being there.” The gap between the ultra-wealthy and ordinary workers – who cannot afford housing and basic necessities even with decent-paying jobs – is widening.

    Silicon Valley is a microcosm of the broader inequality that divides the nation, according to Meehan. The effects are felt not just economically but socially. “People are living right next to each other and they don’t interact,” she says. To counter this sense of separation, the photographer created portraits that encourage readers to go beyond stereotypes to see the people who make up this amorphous place known as Silicon Valley. The result is a book of images that speaks to the human toll exacted by the relentless economy.

    When she makes portraits, Meehan collaborates with individuals to decide where and how they will be photographed, and what they’ll be wearing. Her skill is seen in the deliberateness with which she frames and edits the picture.

    By highlighting the humanity of each person, Meehan hopes to bring out the viewer’s humanity. This is especially important in a place like Silicon Valley, she says, where the wealthy may not really see the people who clean, cook, and care for them and their families. It’s a place where immigrants arrive seeking the American dream, only to end up struggling to find a foothold.

    “Each project is pushing against a big system,” she says. “In Silicon Valley, it’s the myth that the economy there is floating all boats.” Why, she argues, can’t some of that enormous wealth go into creating healthy lives for the people there? “That’s the question we’re really asking, and what does that say about the American economy?”

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages

  • A conversation with Fred Turner and photographer Mary Beth Meehan | USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
    https://annenberg.usc.edu/events/annenberg-research-seminar/conversation-silicon-valley-culture-expert-fred-turner-and

    Annenberg Research Seminar
    A conversation with Silicon Valley culture expert Fred Turner and photographer Mary Beth Meehan
    Monday, November 8, 2021 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. PT Online

    Acclaimed photographer Mary Beth Meehan and Silicon Valley culture expert Fred Turner join forces to give us an unseen view of the heart of the tech world.

    Photo of Mary Beth Meehan Mary Beth Meehan
    It’s hard to imagine a place more central to American mythology today than Silicon Valley. To outsiders, the region glitters with the promise of extraordinary wealth and innovation. But behind this image lies another Silicon Valley, one segregated by race, class and nationality in complex and contradictory ways.

    Photo of Fred Turner Fred Turner
    With arresting photographs and intimate stories, Seeing Silicon Valley makes this hidden world visible. Join Fred Turner and Mary Beth Meehan as they discuss the making of the book, the role of photography in scholarship, activism and public life, and what it might mean for the technology industry to help us make a truly humane society.

    Speakers:

    Mary Beth Meehan is a photographer known for her large-scale, community-based portraiture centered around questions of representation, visibility, and social equity in the United States
    Fred Turner is Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Fred_Turner #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • “La peur en Occident” : lecture pour un drôle d’été – D’ici et d’ailleurs
    https://blogs.letemps.ch/emmanuelle-robert/2020/07/22/la-peur-en-occident-lecture-pour-un-drole-dete

    “Comme c’était le jour de la mi-carême, qu’il faisait beau soleil et un temps charmant, les Parisiens se trémoussaient avec d’autant plus de jovialité sur les boulevards (…). Le soir du même jour, les bals publics furent plus fréquentés que jamais : les rires les plus présomptueux couvraient presque la musique éclatante ; on s’échauffait beaucoup au chahut, danse plus qu’équivoque ; on engloutissait toutes sortes de glaces et de boissons froides quand tout à coup, le plus sémillant des arlequins sentit trop de fraîcheur dans ses jambes, ôta son masque et découvrit à l’étonnement de tout le monde un visage d’un bleu violet.”

    #restaurant #café #glaces #boîtes_de_nuit #visage_bleu_violet

    (article de 2020)

  • In Silicon Valley, many find it impossible to make ends meet | The Big Issue
    https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/in-silicon-valley-many-find-it-impossible-to-make-ends-meet

    Facebook, Google and hundreds of other companies that drive our digital lives call Silicon Valley home, but so do people who find it almost impossible to make ends meet, even if they are key to keeping billion-dollar industries running.

    In a new book, photographer Mary Beth Meehan presents a series of portraits that show another side of the people who power the world’s tech capital.

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Mary Beth Meehan: Seeing Silicon Valley - LENSCRATCH
    http://lenscratch.com/2021/05/mary-beth-meehan-seeing-silicon-valley

    “For more than seven decades, business leaders, politicians, and would-be entrepreneurs have tried to unravel the secrets of Silicon Valley. In just over one hundred powerful, haunting pages, Meehan and Turner have captured a side of the valley rarely seen: the deeply inequitable landscape of contingent and disproportionately foreign-born labor that makes its high-tech magic possible. Humane, insightful, and deeply compelling, this book tells the story of Silicon Valley in a completely new and utterly magnetic way.” – Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

    Photographer Mary Beth Meehan has a legacy of considering the complexity of communities and reminding us of our humanity through her portraits and interviews. For her newest project and book published by the University of Chicago Press, Seeing Silicon Valley, she joined forces with Silicon Valley culture expert Fred Turner to give us an unseen view of the heart of the tech world.

    When considering the population central to this American mythology, we might consider the characters of the television show Silicon Valley–rag tag techies that carry dark under eye circles from long days in front of a screen without sunshine and a small cluster of visionaries who have gotten very rich from technology. But the reality of place is very different. Behind this image lies another Silicon Valley, one segregated by race, class, and nationality in complex and contradictory ways. Its beautiful landscape lies atop underground streams of pollutants left behind by decades of technological innovation, and while its billionaires live in compounds, surrounded by redwood trees and security fences, its service workers live in their cars.

    With arresting photography and intimate stories, Seeing Silicon Valley makes this hidden world visible. Instead of young entrepreneurs striving for efficiency in minimalist corporate campuses, we see portraits of struggle—families displaced by an impossible real estate market, workers striving for a living wage, and communities harmed by environmental degradation. If the fate of Silicon Valley is the fate of America—as so many of its boosters claim—then this book gives us an unvarnished look into the future.

    Mary Beth Meehan uses photography to transform public spaces, works collaboratively to reflect communities back to themselves, and aims to jolt people into considering one another anew. Combining image, text, and large-scale public installation, Meehan’s work challenges notions of representation, visibility, and equity, and prompts people to talk with one another about what they see.

    Meehan’s first book, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America, with Fred Turner, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in Spring of 2021.

    “Seeing Newnan,” Meehan’s most recent public installation, was featured on the Sunday front page of The New York Times on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, in January of 2020, and has shifted the dialogue about representation, identity, and race in that small Georgia city.

    Meehan has held residencies at Stanford University, the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and at Brown University upcoming in 2021. She has lectured and led workshops at the School of Visual Arts, New York, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

    A native of Brockton, Massachusetts, Mary Beth holds degrees from Amherst College and the University of Missouri, Columbia. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
    Book spread 2

    Spread from “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    Seeing Silicon Valley

    Seeing Silicon Valley is a collaboration between myself and Silicon Valley culture scholar Fred Turner. During the Fall of 2017 I was invited by Turner to hold an artist’s residency at Stanford University, in order to try to see, ­through my own eyes, what life was like for the thousands of workers in that mythic place. Since then Turner and I have worked together to present what we found – a place, within one of the richest economies in the world, where life is tenuous and where people struggle to find stability, connection, and community. These portraits and narratives are meant to draw viewers in to considering Silicon Valley on an intimate, human scale, and reflecting on what it means for our future.
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    ©Mary Beth Meehan, RAVI and GOUTHAMI Between them, Ravi and Gouthami have multiple degrees — in biotechnology, computer science, chemistry, and statistics. After studying in India and working in Wisconsin and Texas, they have landed here, in the international center of technology, where they work in the pharmaceutical-technology industry. They rent an apartment in Foster City and attend a Hindu temple in Sunnyvale, where immigrants from India have been building a community since the early 1990s. Although the couple have worked hard to get here, and they make good money, they feel that a future in Silicon Valley eludes them — their one-bed-room apartment, for example, costs almost $3,000 a month. They could move somewhere less expensive, but, with the traffic, they’d spend hours each day commuting. They would like to stay, but they don’t feel confident that they can save, invest, start a family. They’re not sure what to do next. From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America”

    ©Mary Beth Meehan, RICHARD Richard has spent his entire adult life in the auto industry, loving his work and making good money. In 2010, the year that GM went bankrupt and the plant he worked at in Fremont closed, he was earning $120,000 a year. After Tesla took over the plant, Richard got a job on the manufacturing floor. He was paid $18 an hour, or less than $40,000 a year. Richard started noticing things that didn’t seem right. As a line worker assembling car doors, he was required to work twelve-hour shifts, five or six days a week. Richard had a home, but he noticed young guys “who came in broke, with a bag of clothes” being hired, working the long shifts, sleeping in their cars, showering in the break room, and doing it again the next day. When a friend invited Richard to meet with the United Automobile Workers union, he agreed. Soon after that, when people complained to him about the low pay or long hours, he’d tell them that with the union, they could stand up for themselves. He handed out buttons and T-shirts, told people they had a choice. “We don’t want to break ’em,” he said of the company. “We just want a little larger piece of the pie — so we can have a cooler of beer every now and then, go camping once in a while.” Though he’d never received a negative review, Richard was fired last October, along with more than four hundred other workers. The UAW has filed a complaint, alleging that Tesla fired workers who were trying to unionize. The worst part for Richard, he says, is that he hears the employees are now too scared to talk about the union. He believes that all his hard work has been in vain. From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    ©Mary Beth Meehan,WARREN In junior high, in Illinois, before he knew anyone else who had a personal computer, Warren got to play Lemonade Stand on his uncle Bob’s Commodore PET. At thirteen, he attended a computer trade show in Chicago: “I didn’t even know what I was looking at,” he says. “But it was cool. It piqued my curiosity profoundly.” In high school, Warren sought out a friend who could teach him all the workings of computers. After he graduated as his school’s valedictorian, Warren went to Stanford to study engineering and business. Then he became a venture capitalist, backing such fledgling firms as Skype, Hotmail, and Tesla (and turning down the founders of Theranos, one of Silicon Valley’s legendary frauds). Ten years ago, he says, “I did a very Silicon Valley thing”: he called a few of his industry pals to launch Thuuz, a service that creates highlights of sporting events in real time. He runs the company out of a bungalow in Palo Alto, adjacent to his house—just a block away from the garage where Hewlett-Packard began. Warren’s company is small, and while he wants it to be successful, he doesn’t strive to make it one of Silicon Valley’s giants. “Many of those companies are huge because they are willing to cross some lines,” he says—ethical, moral lines. “Steve Jobs was irascible,” he says, “Jobs was tough, Jobs was rude.” But, says Warren, thanks to the iPhone, billions of people in India and China now have access to information. “I put Steve Jobs above that line and say, ‘Yeah, he could have been a jerk, but he’s above that line.’” Warren feels differently about Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. “He has broken some massive, massive rules,” he says. “He is completely abusing his users.” Facebook has “corrupted our election. They corrupted Brexit, over in Europe. They’ve destroyed minorities in Asia. . . . They are below the line, below the line. Absolutely, below the line.” From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Great Reads in Photography: May 16, 2021 | PetaPixel
    https://petapixel.com/2021/05/16/great-reads-in-photography-may-16-2021

    Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy-reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!

    Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America — Lenscratch
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    Elisa and Family © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press. 2021
    Mary Beth Meehan © Molly Heller

    Acclaimed photographer Mary Beth Meehan and Silicon Valley culture expert Fred Turner join forces to give us an unseen view of the heart of the tech world.

    “With arresting photography and intimate stories, Seeing Silicon Valley makes this hidden world visible,” says Aline Smithson in Lenscratch. “Instead of young entrepreneurs striving for efficiency in minimalist corporate campuses, we see portraits of struggle—families displaced by an impossible real estate market, workers striving for a living wage, and communities harmed by environmental degradation.

    “If the fate of Silicon Valley is the fate of America—as so many of its boosters claim—then this book gives us an unvarnished look into the future.”
    From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
    Ravi and Gouthami © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press, 2021

    Silicon Valley glitters with the promise of extraordinary wealth and innovation. But behind the façade lies a world segregated by race, class, and nationality in complex and contradictory ways.
    Cristobal was born in Bakersfield, out in the desert. After high school, he served eight years in the Army, including one tour in the Iraq war. He now works full time as a security guard at Facebook. He starts at dawn, guiding cars on and off the campus, and making sure walkers looking down at their phones cross safely. Despite this job, he has no health benefits, and he can’t afford to have a home in Silicon Valley. He’d like to go back to Bakersfield, to be near his mother, but there’s no work there. So he keeps doing his best. Cristobal feels he works hard, and has given back to his country, but his pay forces him to live in a rented repurposed shed, in a back yard in Mountain View. He’s starting to get angry. “Silicon Valley is a shithole,” he says.
    Cristobal © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press, 2021

    “For those who have not been fortunate enough to make billionaire lists, for midlevel engineers and food truck workers and longtime residents, the valley has become increasingly inhospitable, testing their resilience and resolve,” say photographer Meehan and Turner in The New York Times.

    #Visages_Silicon_Valley #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan

  • 12 则真实硅谷故事:不一样的硅谷,残酷的人生百态_详细解读_最新资讯_热点事件_36氪
    https://www.36kr.com/p/1220133179347336
    https://img.36krcdn.com/20210512/v2_d8cd77d36e0b4b2783b64ed25a14d3be_img_jpg

    Les journaux chinois en parlent... l’édition originale est en français
    https://cfeditions.com/visages

    则真实硅谷故事:不一样的硅谷,残酷的人生百态
    神译局
    昨天
    关注
    在硅谷看不到未来。

    编者按:作为全球科技精英的圣地,硅谷似乎永远与创新、财富、机会、奇迹、梦想和成功这些令人心潮澎湃的词汇紧密相连。但在创造巨额财富、改变世界进程的同时,硅谷也是美国贫富分化最严重的地区之一,生活成本极其高昂,从赤贫的流浪汉到年入百万的白领精英,硅谷各个阶层的居民们都背负着巨大的生活压力。一起来看硅谷最真实的另一面吧!本文编译自《纽约时报》,作者Mary Beth Meehan和Fred Turner,原标题Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley,希望给您带来启发。

    La véritable histoire de la Silicon Valley : une Silicon Valley différente, une vie brutale
    Le Bureau de la traduction
    Hier
    Suivez
    L’avenir n’est pas en vue dans la Silicon Valley.

    Note de l’éditeur : en tant que Mecque de l’élite mondiale de la technologie, la Silicon Valley semble être associée pour toujours aux mots enivrants d’innovation, de richesse, d’opportunités, de miracles, de rêves et de succès. Mais si la Silicon Valley a créé d’énormes richesses et changé le cours du monde, c’est aussi l’une des régions les plus polarisées des États-Unis. Le coût de la vie y est extrêmement élevé, des sans-abri démunis à l’élite millionnaire en col blanc, les habitants de la Silicon Valley de tous horizons subissent une pression énorme pour vivre. Découvrez le vrai visage de la Silicon Valley ! Cet article a été compilé à partir du New York Times par Mary Beth Meehan et Fred Turner, sous le titre initial Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley, et j’espère qu’il vous inspirera.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Providence photographer captures overlooked truths about Silicon Valley - The Boston Globe
    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/11/metro/providence-photographer-captures-overlooked-truths-about-silicon-valley
    https://bostonglobe-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/mqqHgBHUEptHJkF7FfCDhgzWBfI=/506x0/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/67J7OLM57BGGVAUNUEHMVARROA.jpg

    From Brockton to Providence, from small-town Georgia to Silicon Valley, photographer Mary Beth Meehan is challenging communities to see themselves in new ways, spurring discussions about race and inequality, the economy and the environment.

    “We want people to see beyond the myths of Silicon Valley’s wealth and innovation to the ways in which real people struggle in that environment,” Meehan said. “They struggle in terms of financial security but also to find connection and community.”

    In “Seeing Silicon Valley,” Meehan introduces us to Cristobal, a US Army veteran who makes $21 an hour working as a full-time security officer at Facebook but lives in a shed because he can’t afford a house in the area’s high-priced housing market.

    Meehan said a former colleague connected her to Turner, a Stanford communications professor who was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lived in Boston for 10 years, and graduated from Brown University. The book was designed by a Providence resident, Lucinda Hitchcock.

    Turner, who now lives two miles from Google headquarters, said Silicon Valley excels at marketing itself. “But the actual community that is here on the ground is much more diverse and much more unequal than the mythology tells us,” he said. “Very few people look or make money like Mark Zuckerberg.”

    Turner said Meehan’s large-scale portraits demonstrated her ability to capture images that tell you something about both the person and their community, and as a Brockton native, she brought to bear a working-class background.

    “I hope people can see that the seemingly magical world of technology depends on the really hard work of a whole lot of different people,” he said. “In the same way that the Industrial Revolution in Boston didn’t just depend on the people who went to Harvard, Silicon Valley is not just the Zuckerbergs and Jobs.”

    Turner said the nation’s industries need to sustain the people that build them – not just a few people at the top. “The lesson is that if you just pursue profit and innovation, you can injure your workers, pollute your landscape, and build a society you wouldn’t want to be a member of,” he said. “We can do a lot better than that.”

    As an artist-in-residence at Stanford, Meehan spent six weeks introducing herself to strangers, sitting in kitchens and living rooms, listening to their stories.

    She said she found tremendous unease among the people there, not only among the cashiers and waiters, but among the tech professionals and other high-income earners. And she found the anxieties of Silicon Valley reflect a nationwide gulf between the rich and the poor – the hollowing out of the middle class.

    “Even though the stock market is doing well, people are struggling,” Meehan said. “If people are not doing well in Silicon Valley, then what does that say about where the country is headed?”

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/business/economy/seeing-the-real-faces-of-silicon-valley.html

    The workers of Silicon Valley rarely look like the men idealized in its lore. They are sometimes heavier, sometimes older, often female, often darker skinned. Many migrated from elsewhere. And most earn far less than Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook.

    This is a place of divides.

    As the valley’s tech companies have driven the American economy since the Great Recession, the region has remained one of the most unequal in the United States.

    During the depths of the pandemic, four in 10 families in the area with children could not be sure that they would have enough to eat on any given day, according to an analysis by the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. Just months later, Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, who recently added “Technoking” to his title, briefly became the world’s richest man. The median home price in Santa Clara County — home to Apple and Alphabet — is now $1.4 million, according to the California Association of Realtors.

    For those who have not been fortunate enough to make billionaire lists, for midlevel engineers and food truck workers and longtime residents, the valley has become increasingly inhospitable, testing their resilience and resolve.

    Here are 12 of them, who originally appeared in our book, “Seeing Silicon Valley,” from which this photo essay is excerpted.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Stanford scholar’s new collaboration reveals the complexities of life in Silicon Valley
    https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2021/05/04/revealing-complee-silicon-valley

    To capture what it’s like to live and work in Silicon Valley – for the affluent, those who are barely getting by and the many people in between – Stanford communication professor and Silicon Valley scholar Fred Turner teamed up with renowned photographer Mary Beth Meehan.

    Turner hopes his new project, a collaboration with renowned photographer Mary Beth Meehan, can shine a spotlight on some of the complexities of the region known as the center of tech innovation.

    “I knew that there were things that photographers could see that I couldn’t quite put into words,” said Turner, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences, “I thought that if I worked with a photographer like Mary Beth Meehan I would find a new way to express some of the kinds of things that I wanted to express in academic work but hadn’t really found an idiom for.”

    The result of their academic-artistic collaboration is a new book, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America, (University of Chicago Press, 2021), an intimate look into the everyday experiences of people who live and work in Silicon Valley, from some of its more wealthy residents to its poorest – and the many people in between. In a collection of over 30 portraits photographed in 2017 and 2019, readers see Silicon Valley workers inside their homes and at their workplaces – images that convey the realities of what life is like in one of America’s wealthiest regions.

    Meehan, who lives in Providence, Rhode Island, had never spent much time in Silicon Valley. What she knew of the region came mostly from stories she read in newspapers and magazines that had for a long time portrayed the region as a place of the future, where tech geniuses were transforming society.

    “Silicon Valley was a mythic idea for me,” Meehan said. “I had this idea of it as a place where everything sparkled, where everything was possible, where people were young and healthy – that it was a place in which all of the best of human ingenuity was put into play.”

    What Meehan encountered was far different from what she imagined.

    “Nothing could have prepared me for the uneasiness and human stress and suffering that went along with being a part of that economy,” Meehan said.

    Over several extended trips, Meehan immersed herself in Silicon Valley culture. She approached strangers she encountered on neighborhood streets and had long conversations with the cashiers she met at the taquerias she frequented. She attended a United Auto Workers meeting and went to a party with tech entrepreneurs – and through these interactions, Meehan began to see themes emerge from the valley’s hustle and bustle.

    Some of Meehan’s observations surprised Turner, particularly the feelings of economic insecurity workers reported experiencing on a daily basis.

    “One of the things that really surprised me was how Mary Beth heard a persistent humming of anxiety in the workers that she was talking with – at every level: from folks at the taqueria up to the executive, C-suite,” he said. “Across the board, you find folks worried about whether they can make it, whether they can survive, whether they can get ahead.”

    The project was supported by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Stanford Arts Initiative and the Departments of Communication and Art & Art History. An earlier version of the book was published in 2018 by C&F Editions in Paris, France.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Silicon Valley photograph book by Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner focuses on the unseen in the uber-rich area - The Washington Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/silicon-valley-photography-book-mary-beth-meehan/2021/04/30/4867019e-a46f-11eb-85fc-06664ff4489d_story.html

    Four years ago, New England portrait photographer Mary Beth Meehan received a query out of the blue. A professor in California named Fred Turner wanted to collaborate on a project about the people who live and work in Silicon Valley.

    “It was just so bizarre,” Meehan recalls thinking. “It never occurred to me to think of Silicon Valley as an actual place where people lived.”

    This was precisely Turner’s point. A Stanford University historian and professor of communication who has studied Silicon Valley culture for 20 years, Turner has long been troubled by what he calls the “persistent mythology” of the region, a digital ecosystem in Northern California known mainly as the home of Apple, Google and Facebook, and as the hub of billionaire innovators.

    “We tell ourselves that Silicon Valley is a place where heroic geniuses invent products that somehow harness the invisible powers of electricity and information and magically change the world,” Turner said in an interview. “And the heroes in our stories are almost always White men.”

    Everybody else might as well be invisible. “You can literally be here and see the young tech bros not seeing the people cleaning the stores or their houses or the streets,” he said. “It’s a kind of low-key oblivious arrogance that comes from being genuinely brilliant, spending a lot of time with machines, working with code, which is highly abstract and rational, and being rewarded with lots of money.”
    Image without a caption
    Photographer Mary Beth Meehan. (Molly Heller)

    Turner, a photography aficionado, was familiar with Meehan’s work and knew that invisibility is one of her key themes. Her process is to immerse herself in communities and create large-scale portraits of ordinary, uncelebrated people and install them as huge banners on the sides of buildings in downtown areas. Invariably, her installations prompt townwide dialogue about race, inclusiveness and the meaning of community. Meehan’s work also is evocative of JR, the French photographer and street artist, though she has been influenced by many artists who activate public spaces.
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    “A common thread is moving past preconceptions to understand one another,” said Meehan, who has created installations in Brockton, Mass., where she grew up, Providence, R.I., where she lives now, and, most recently, in Newnan, Ga., a small town striving to embrace and celebrate change in the wake of a white nationalist rally there in 2018.

    Meehan was eager to take on a Silicon Valley project, though she and Turner were fuzzy about the end product. Banners were — and continue to be — a consideration, but, Meehan said, “I haven’t been able to get my head around what banners would look like. There’s no central Silicon Valley space. There’s no there there. It’s a conglomeration of towns.”

    They ultimately landed on a book, featuring text and Meehan’s images. “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” will be released May 3 by the University of Chicago Press.
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    “Silicon Valley has long been a shining example of those who dream of a society built around individual initiative and enabling technologies,” Turner writes in the introduction. “But what does it feel like to live in such a world? What kind of society does the relentless pursuit of technological innovation and wealth produce?”

    Meehan went to Stanford in the fall of 2018 as an artist in residence and set to work finding the answer. She introduced herself to strangers, sat in their kitchens and living rooms, met them in businesses and shops.

    “I chased them on the street,” she said. “I met people through workers’ rights groups and at a gathering of young tech engineers. I met a couple in a Hindu temple. And then there was the magic of connecting with someone in that moment, photographically.”
    Justyna, one of Meehan’s subjects: “If we want to achieve excellence in technology, why can’t we achieve excellence in being good to each other?”
    Justyna, one of Meehan’s subjects: “If we want to achieve excellence in technology, why can’t we achieve excellence in being good to each other?” (© Mary Beth Meehan)
    Mary came to the United States from Uganda more than a year ago: “I’ve discovered one thing. There are people here who are poorer than we are in Africa . . . because our community cares for each other. . . . This place is lonely.”
    Mary came to the United States from Uganda more than a year ago: “I’ve discovered one thing. There are people here who are poorer than we are in Africa . . . because our community cares for each other. . . . This place is lonely.” (© Mary Beth Meehan)

    She got to know affluent professionals, people behind cash registers and in homeless encampments, rising tech stars, a recent immigrant from Uganda, a food truck worker from Mexico who serves burritos to Tesla employees, a man in his 80s who can’t afford an apartment so he lives in a small trailer a couple of miles from the Google campus; he has no electricity or running water. She met the parents of a 19-year-old girl who had killed herself. They allowed her to photograph the suicide note, in which she apologized and wrote: “i am not super smart or talented.”
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    As Meehan pieced together a narrative about the unseen heart of the tech world, what emerged was a startling view of Silicon Valley.

    “What surprised me, and what stays with me still, was the unease that was palpable in Silicon Valley,” Meehan writes in the book’s afterword. “From those at the lowest end of the economic spectrum to those with higher incomes whose unease was more existential, people conveyed how hard it was to find balance, connection, and community. The sense of distress was so pervasive that I wondered if I was seeing things correctly.”

    Among the people she photographed was the blond-haired Justyna with a piercing gaze, originally from Poland. (No last names are used in the book.) She has a PhD, works on self-driving cars and shares a mansion with other scientists in Cupertino. She told Meehan she used to be idealistic but thinks people have lost track of the core values of integrity, respect for others and being good to each other. “We seem to be losing ourselves,” she said.

    Meehan met Mark, 39, born with severe brain damage. When his mother was pregnant, she worked in the electronics industry making the lasers that scan groceries. She later learned that the greenish substance she was inhaling was toxic — and the cause of her son’s birth defects.
    Image without a caption
    Mark is 39 and needs constant care. His mother worked in a Mountain View electronics plant making laser scanners with a mixture that contained high levels of lead known to cause birth defects. (© Mary Beth Meehan)

    Brenda and Abraham lost their home after the 2008 crash. They lived for a while in improvised shacks that are common in the region, though illegal. They now live in a trailer in a long row of other trailers in Palo Alto, parked in front of the Stanford campus.
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    Mary, from Uganda, told Meehan: “There are people here who are poorer than we are in Africa.”

    She spent a lot of time with Cristobal, an Army veteran who works full time as a contract security officer at Facebook, earning $21 an hour. Meehan agreed to meet him at his home, which turned out to be a shed.

    “I was shocked,” she said. “[Cristobal and I] shared so much anger in the making of that picture. I mean, for God’s sakes. You have a full-time job, you served in the U.S. military. Should a home be so far outside your reach?”

    It was at times like this that the story she and Turner were telling became personal.

    “I was raised by working-class people, and there was a level of security that could be attained by hard work,” she said. “And when I think of the equivalent of that worker toiling away in Silicon Valley, I don’t see the same level of comfort or security or the ability to build a life or build wealth. It’s not a livable economy.

    “I don’t think the difference is in the character and ambitions of these people. I think the difference is in the system they entered. And that’s the part we’re not talking about.”

    #Mary_Beth_Meehan #Fred_Turner #Visages_Silicon_Valley

  • Visual Arts Review: “Seeing Silicon Valley” - Our Future Dystopia? - The Arts Fuse
    https://artsfuse.org/227474/visual-arts-review-seeing-silicon-valley-our-future-dystopia

    Meanwhile, Turner, now Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communications at Stanford, had embarked on similarly disillusioning project. Turner, who lives in Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley, had studied the region’s culture for some two decades. In 2017, he invited Mary Beth Meehan, known for her “large-scale, community-based portraiture,” to spend six weeks in the Valley, photographing its inhabitants and listening to their stories.

    “He told me that he was troubled by the power of the region’s mythology,” Meehan recalls, “and wanted people to see the place as it is. He asked if I’d be willing to come and try to see it through my own eyes.” After her work got underway, Turner asked Meehan to his house once a week for a home-cooked dinner and would “pepper me with questions: ‘What are you seeing? What are you finding out there?’”

    But brevity, succinctness, and personal focus are among the key strengths of this powerful and important book, an account that fans out into other developing narratives about the decline of California as America’s paradise, social media’s mendacity and lack of civic responsibility, and the super-charged rise of economic injustice and insecurity. It is likely to attract a lot of attention, discussion, and controversy.

    Nowadays, the economy of Silicon Valley is based mostly on software, biotech, product development, and gigantic, Internet-based companies like Facebook and Google. Silicon and its industrial byproducts are no longer the raw materials of the region’s wealth, which is mostly generated via brand names and intellectual property. Meehan’s photographs and stories portray a different kind of environmental damage: economic and social disruption, especially the upheavals caused by a catastrophic rise in housing costs.

    Meehan’s photographs are unsentimental. Nobody smiles. The images are saturated in California sunlight and color and classically composed, suggesting the long heritage of Western portraiture. The various poverties they encompass do not immediately strike the eye, as Evans’ images do. The pain lurks below, like Turner’s underground toxic plumes.

    #Visages_Silicon_Valley #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan

  • Short Fuse Podcast #39 : « Seeing Silicon Valley » : The Fraying of Life in America - The Arts Fuse
    https://artsfuse.org/227588/short-fuse-podcast-39-seeing-silicon-valley-the-fraying-of-life-in-america

    N’oubliez pas que la version orginale de ce livre est celle en français de C&F éditions, il y a deux ans. Le livre est toujours d’actualité, c’est pourquoi les Presses de l’Université de Chicago le publient aujourd’hui.
    https://cfeditions.com/visages

    Perception vs. Reality. For many, the words “Silicon Valley” signify the egalitarian opportunities offered by America’s cutting-edge tech industry. Stark reality reveals a much more complicated picture. Growing inequality and an ever rising cost of living are putting pressure on all of the area’s workers: at least seven percent of families live in poverty without access to quality education, health care or housing. Fred Turner and Mary Beth Meehan spotlight these realities in their new book, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America. In a recent conversation with Elizabeth Howard, they talk about the situation they found there, and what it reveals about our country as a whole.

    #Visages_Silicon_Valley #Fred_Turner #Mary_Beth_Meehan

  • Silicon Valley’s Hidden Voices
    https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/silicon-valleys-hidden-voices

    Très belle critique de la version anglaise « Seeing Silicon Valley » qui va paraître en avril aux Presses de l’université de Chicago.
    Rappel : la première édition de ce livre est parue en France :
    Visages de la Silicon Valley
    25 € - ISBN 978-2-915825-86-2 - nov. 2018
    https://cfeditions.com/visages

    Two new books — Seeing Silicon Valley and Voices from the Valley — reveal, if not the future I thought I would find, a critical part of Silicon Valley that most people never look for or think about, let alone see. These two books’ goal is the same: to reveal the Valley’s forgotten but essential communities — obscured more often than not by hyperbolic press releases, lawyers waving non-disclosure agreements, and journalists’ myopic view of what “working in tech” means. In some cases, these are the “people behind the platforms” — the unheralded engineers and programmers who, despite being paid far above the median salary still find themselves living precariously in houses they can’t afford to furnish. In other cases, they are the nannies, cooks, and gardeners whose hidden labor keeps the Valley’s financial, familial, and social circuits humming. That newly minted billionaire you read about might drive a McLaren but someone has to wash and wax it.

    After a brief essay from Fred Turner, a communications scholar at Stanford, Seeing Silicon Valley deploys an array of pictures captured in 2017 by Mary Beth Meehan, a photographer known for her “community-based portraiture.” For six weeks, Meehan rented an Airbnb in Menlo Park, introduced herself to strangers, and took photographs. She kept the statement “Invisible Community, Invisible Relationships, Invisible Human Beings” written on a sticky note above her desk.

    Meehan’s color photographs are accompanied by short but powerful life histories of her subjects. Along the way we meet, for example, Justnya, a Polish-born engineer who shares a mansion in Cupertino with other technologists, and Victor, an elderly man originally from El Salvador who lives in a small trailer a few miles from Google’s campus. Each photograph tells a story, and it’s rarely the one you might imagine. There’s a photo, for example, of “Mark,” a young white man. On closer inspection, you sense something wrong with his body position and facial expression. You learn that Mark’s mother worked for years in an electronics plant making lasers for supermarket checkout scanners. Every night she came home with “green gunk” on her face and hands. Only years later, after Mark was born with extreme developmental issues, mental and physical, did she learn this gunk was a mixture of chemicals, primarily lead. What was once billed as “the Valley of Heart’s Delight” became the eventual home of nearly two dozen Superfund sites created by now-defunct electronics companies. The non-defunct ones have taken their manufacturing, their jobs, and their gunk overseas.

    Meehan’s photos and captions sometimes reveal human warmth transcending the tragedy and unfairness. In another photograph, Abraham and Brenda are captured hugging each other in that special golden glow one sees near sunset in coastal California. But that glow can only do so much. They are in front of their dilapidated RV, which they have lived in since they lost their house in 2008. Normally, they parked on the edge of Stanford University’s land holdings along El Camino Real. But not on game days when the university forces them to move. On those days, like Steinbeck’s Okies, they drive their aged vehicle over the Santa Cruz Mountains to Half Moon Bay and look at the ocean together.

    The aforementioned essay by Stanford professor Fred Turner, which heads the Meehan collection of photographs, is titled “The Valley on the Hill.” It compares Silicon Valley’s present to the worldview of 17th-century Pilgrims recently arrived in the New World and seeking to build a “City Upon a Hill.” Technologists, many from outside the United States, flock to the Bay Area with “their sense of mission and their search for profits,” and — like their Puritan ancestors — they are motivated by deep, almost compulsive work ethics, argues Turner. He doesn’t say quite enough to give the analogy the depth it deserves — in part because his essay is a mere six pages, a disappointment given his oft-cited expertise on the topic. Still, in his erudite yet truncated telling, the idea of a “New Jerusalem,” a.k.a. Silicon Valley, goes back some 50 years to when Santa Clara County became a hotbed of innovation, albeit one eventually strewn with oozing Superfund sites.

    Turner’s comparison to the Puritans perfunctorily cuts in a couple of other ways. As a religious sect, the Puritans were notoriously dogmatic, and eager to sacrifice heretics. Some programmers share their belief in eschatology and denial of the body, he suggests. It thus makes a kind of sense that Soylent — a start-up company based on marketing a meal-replacement product named after a creepy post-apocalyptic movie — was developed there. But Turner sees present-day “denials of the body” primarily in people’s eager atomization into digital data to be “aggregated and repurposed.” He could go further. Believers in a coming technological Singularity imagine dispensing with the body altogether by uploading their minds. A hundred years ago, the mirage factory of Los Angeles produced the evangelist-huckster Aimee Semple McPherson. Today we have engineer and self-confessed felon Anthony Levandowski and his scheme for a religion based around worship of artificial intelligence. Long live the new flesh. Or, if another variant of Silicon Valley’s fixations is to be believed, long live the old flesh, rejuvenated by steroids and blood transfusions from the young.

    Eventually fruit and vegetable production in the Valley became the dominant crop. The number of workers needed — then and now — exceeded the local population. And so the labor-intensive work of picking and preserving the fruit fell largely to invisible Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Filipino, and Mexican workers. Much of it was performed by women employed as seasonal contractors and segregated by race and ethnicity, and they were the first to be let go when hard times came. The xenophobia, discrimination, and misogyny that runs throughout both books thus goes back a lot farther than when William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and committed racist, arrived in the Valley in 1956 and started an electronics company.

    Shockley Semiconductor begat Fairchild Semiconductor begat Intel and scores of other companies, large and small. Engineers accordingly multiplied. They flocked to the region and in general came to represent the second largest segment of American professionals — behind school teachers. Engineering was the most common occupation pursued by white-collar men.

    Along with their readers, the people who cover “tech” — whatever that term even means these days — too often portray Silicon Valley as a place apart from America. But, as Seeing Silicon Valley and Voices from the Valley reveal, with its racism, casual misogyny, economic inequality, and environmental devastation concentrated among poor communities, Silicon Valley is America. Given its innumerable sins, venal and moral alike, punching at Silicon Valley is as easy as ordering an Uber. Critiques of it take many forms, and the best of these are informed by an understanding of the region’s long and fraught history. These two books don’t fully take that history into account but they do point to the heart of what makes the region run: people, many of them hidden or invisible. Making them visible is a start to creating a more praiseworthy place. Silicon Valley may never be the Puritan’s “City Upon a Hill.” But in its pursuit of the future, it can and must do better.

    #Fred_Turner #Mary-Beth_meehan #Visages_silicon_valley

  • Artificial intelligence : #Frontex improves its maritime surveillance

    Frontex wants to use a new platform to automatically detect and assess „risks“ on the seas of the European Union. Suspected irregular activities are to be displayed in a constantly updated „threat map“ with the help of self-learning software.

    The EU border agency has renewed a contract with Israeli company Windward for a „maritime analytics“ platform. It will put the application into regular operation. Frontex had initially procured a licence for around 800,000 Euros. For now 2.6 million Euros, the agency will receive access for four workstations. The contract can be extended three times for one year at a time.

    Windward specialises in the digital aggregation and assessment of vessel tracking and maritime surveillance data. Investors in the company, which was founded in 2011, include former US CIA director David Petraeus and former CEO’s of Thomson Reuters and British Petroleum. The former chief of staff of the Israeli military, Gabi Ashkenazi, is considered one of the advisors.

    Signature for each observed ship

    The platform is based on artificial intelligence techniques. For analysis, it uses maritime reporting systems, including position data from the AIS transponders of larger ships and weather data. These are enriched with information about the ship owners and shipping companies as well as the history of previous ship movements. For this purpose, the software queries openly accessible information from the internet.

    In this way, a „fingerprint“ is created for each observed ship, which can be used to identify suspicious activities. If the captain switches off the transponder, for example, the analysis platform can recognise this as a suspicuous event and take over further tracking based on the recorded patterns. It is also possible to integrate satellite images.

    Windward uses the register of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) as its database, which lists about 70,000 ships. Allegedly, however, it also processes data on a total of 400,000 watercraft, including smaller fishing boats. One of the clients is therefore the UN Security Council, which uses the technology to monitor sanctions.

    Against „bad guys“ at sea

    The company advertises its applications with the slogan „Catch the bad guys at sea“. At Frontex, the application is used to combat and prevent unwanted migration and cross-border crime as well as terrorism. Subsequently, „policy makers“ and law enforcement agencies are to be informed about results. For this purpose, the „risks“ found are visualised in a „threat map“.

    Windward put such a „threat map“ online two years ago. At the time, the software rated the Black Sea as significantly more risky than the Mediterranean. Commercial shipping activity off the Crimea was interpreted as „probable sanction evasions“. Ship owners from the British Guernsey Islands as well as Romania recorded the highest proportion of ships exhibiting „risky“ behaviour. 42 vessels were classified as suspicious for drug smuggling based on their patterns.

    Frontex „early warning“ units

    The information from maritime surveillance is likely to be processed first by the „Risk Analysis Unit“ (RAU) at Frontex. It is supposed to support strategic decisions taken by the headquarters in Warsaw on issues of border control, return, prevention of cross-border crime as well as threats of a „hybrid nature“. Frontex calls the applications used there „intelligence products“ and „integrated data services“. Their results flow together in the „Common Integrated Risk Analysis Model“ (CIRAM).

    For the operational monitoring of the situation at the EU’s external borders, the agency also maintains the „Frontex Situation Centre“ (FSC). The department is supposed to provide a constantly updated picture of migration movements, if possible in real time. From these reports, Frontex produces „early warnings“ and situation reports to the border authorities of the member states as well as to the Commission and the Council in Brussels.

    More surveillance capacity in Warsaw

    According to its own information, Windward’s clients include the Italian Guardia di Finanza, which is responsible for controlling Italian territorial waters. The Ministry of the Interior in Rome is also responsible for numerous EU projects aimed at improving surveillance of the central Mediterranean. For the training and equipment of the Libyan coast guard, Italy receives around 67 million euros from EU funds in three different projects. Italian coast guard authorities are also installing a surveillance system for Tunisia’s external maritime borders.

    Frontex now wants to improve its own surveillance capacities with further tenders. Together with the fisheries agency, The agency is awarding further contracts for manned maritime surveillance. It has been operating such a „Frontex Aerial Surveillance Service“ (FASS) in the central Mediterranean since 2017 and in the Adriatic Sea since 2018. Frontex also wants to station large drones in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, it is testing Aerostats in the eastern Mediterranean for a second time. These are zeppelins attached to a 1,000-metre long line.

    https://digit.site36.net/2021/01/15/artificial-intelligence-frontex-improves-its-maritime-surveillance
    #intelligence_artificielle #surveillance #surveillance_maritime #mer #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #AI #Windward #Israël #complexe_militaro-industriel #militarisation_des_frontières #David_Petraeus #Thomson_Reuters #British_Petroleum #armée_israélienne #Gabi_Ashkenazi #International_Maritime_Organisation (#IMO) #thread_map #Risk_Analysis_Unit (#RAU) #Common_Integrated_Risk_Analysis_Model (#CIRAM) #Frontex_Situation_Centre (#FSC) #Frontex_Aerial_Surveillance_Service (#FASS) #zeppelins

    ping @etraces

    • Data et nouvelles technologies, la face cachée du contrôle des mobilités

      Dans un rapport de juillet 2020, l’Agence européenne pour la gestion opérationnelle des systèmes d’information à grande échelle (#EU-Lisa) présente l’intelligence artificielle (IA) comme l’une des « technologies prioritaires » à développer. Le rapport souligne les avantages de l’IA en matière migratoire et aux frontières, grâce, entre autres, à la technologie de #reconnaissance_faciale.

      L’intelligence artificielle est de plus en plus privilégiée par les acteurs publics, les institutions de l’UE et les acteurs privés, mais aussi par le #HCR et l’#OIM. Les agences de l’UE, comme Frontex ou EU-Lisa, ont été particulièrement actives dans l’#expérimentation des nouvelles technologies, brouillant parfois la distinction entre essais et mise en oeuvre. En plus des outils traditionnels de surveillance, une panoplie de technologies est désormais déployée aux frontières de l’Europe et au-delà, qu’il s’agisse de l’ajout de nouvelles #bases_de_données, de technologies financières innovantes, ou plus simplement de la récupération par les #GAFAM des données laissées volontairement ou pas par les migrant·e·s et réfugié∙e∙s durant le parcours migratoire.

      La pandémie #Covid-19 est arrivée à point nommé pour dynamiser les orientations déjà prises, en permettant de tester ou de généraliser des technologies utilisées pour le contrôle des mobilités sans que l’ensemble des droits des exilé·e·s ne soit pris en considération. L’OIM, par exemple, a mis à disposition des Etats sa #Matrice_de_suivi_des_déplacements (#DTM) durant cette période afin de contrôler les « flux migratoires ». De nouvelles technologies au service de vieilles obsessions…

      http://www.migreurop.org/article3021.html

      Pour télécharger le rapport :
      www.migreurop.org/IMG/pdf/note_12_fr.pdf

      ping @karine4 @rhoumour @_kg_ @i_s_

    • La #technopolice aux frontières

      Comment le #business de la #sécurité et de la #surveillance au sein de l’#Union_européenne, en plus de bafouer des #droits_fondamentaux, utilise les personnes exilées comme #laboratoire de recherche, et ce sur des #fonds_publics européens.

      On a beaucoup parlé ici ces derniers mois de surveillance des manifestations ou de surveillance de l’espace public dans nos villes, mais la technopolice est avant tout déployée aux #frontières – et notamment chez nous, aux frontières de la « forteresse Europe ». Ces #dispositifs_technopoliciers sont financés, soutenus et expérimentés par l’Union européenne pour les frontières de l’UE d’abord, et ensuite vendus. Cette surveillance des frontières représente un #marché colossal et profite grandement de l’échelle communautaire et de ses programmes de #recherche_et_développement (#R&D) comme #Horizon_2020.

      #Roborder – des essaims de #drones_autonomes aux frontières

      C’est le cas du projet Roborder – un « jeu de mots » entre robot et border, frontière en anglais. Débuté en 2017, il prévoit de surveiller les frontières par des essaims de #drones autonomes, fonctionnant et patrouillant ensemble. L’#intelligence_artificielle de ces drones leur permettrait de reconnaître les humains et de distinguer si ces derniers commettent des infractions (comme celui de passer une frontière ?) et leur dangerosité pour ensuite prévenir la #police_aux_frontières. Ces drones peuvent se mouvoir dans les airs, sous l’eau, sur l’eau et dans des engins au sol. Dotés de multiples capteurs, en plus de la détection d’activités criminelles, ces drones seraient destinés à repérer des “#radio-fréquences non fiables”, c’est-à-dire à écouter les #communications et également à mesurer la #pollution_marine.
      Pour l’instant, ces essaims de drones autonomes ne seraient pas pourvus d’armes. Roborder est actuellement expérimenté en #Grèce, au #Portugal et en #Hongrie.

      Un #financement européen pour des usages « civils »

      Ce projet est financé à hauteur de 8 millions d’euros par le programme Horizon 2020 (subventionné lui-même par la #Cordis, organe de R&D de la Commission européenne). Horizon 2020 représente 50% du financement public total pour la recherche en sécurité de l’UE. Roborder est coordonné par le centre de recherches et technologie de #Hellas (le #CERTH), en Grèce et comme le montre l’association #Homo_Digitalis le nombre de projets Horizon 2020 ne fait qu’augmenter en Grèce. En plus du CERTH grec s’ajoutent environ 25 participants venus de tous les pays de l’UE (où on retrouve les services de police d’#Irlande_du_Nord, le ministère de la défense grecque, ou encore des entreprises de drones allemandes, etc.).

      L’une des conditions pour le financement de projets de ce genre par Horizon 2020 est que les technologies développées restent dans l’utilisation civile, et ne puissent pas servir à des fins militaires. Cette affirmation pourrait ressembler à un garde-fou, mais en réalité la distinction entre usage civil et militaire est loin d’être clairement établie. Comme le montre Stephen Graham, très souvent les #technologies, à la base militaires, sont réinjectées dans la sécurité, particulièrement aux frontières où la migration est criminalisée. Et cette porosité entre la sécurité et le #militaire est induite par la nécessité de trouver des débouchés pour rentabiliser la #recherche_militaire. C’est ce qu’on peut observer avec les drones ou bien le gaz lacrymogène. Ici, il est plutôt question d’une logique inverse : potentiellement le passage d’un usage dit “civil” de la #sécurité_intérieure à une application militaire, à travers des ventes futures de ces dispositifs. Mais on peut aussi considérer la surveillance, la détection de personnes et la #répression_aux_frontières comme une matérialisation de la #militarisation de l’Europe à ses frontières. Dans ce cas-là, Roborder serait un projet à fins militaires.

      De plus, dans les faits, comme le montre The Intercept (https://theintercept.com/2019/05/11/drones-artificial-intelligence-europe-roborder), une fois le projet terminé celui-ci est vendu. Sans qu’on sache trop à qui. Et, toujours selon le journal, beaucoup sont déjà intéressés par Roborder.

      #IborderCtrl – détection d’#émotions aux frontières

      Si les essaims de drones sont impressionnants, il existe d’autres projets dans la même veine. On peut citer notamment le projet qui a pour nom IborderCtrl, testé en Grèce, Hongrie et #Lettonie.

      Il consiste notamment en de l’#analyse_d’émotions (à côté d’autres projets de #reconnaissances_biométriques) : les personnes désirant passer une frontière doivent se soumettre à des questions et voient leur #visage passer au crible d’un #algorithme qui déterminera si elles mentent ou non. Le projet prétend « accélérer le #contrôle_aux_frontières » : si le #détecteur_de_mensonges estime qu’une personne dit la vérité, un code lui est donné pour passer le contrôle facilement ; si l’algorithme considère qu’une personne ment, elle est envoyée dans une seconde file, vers des gardes-frontières qui lui feront passer un #interrogatoire. L’analyse d’émotions prétend reposer sur un examen de « 38 #micro-mouvements du visage » comme l’angle de la tête ou le mouvement des yeux. Un spectacle de gadgets pseudoscientifiques qui permet surtout de donner l’apparence de la #neutralité_technologique à des politiques d’#exclusion et de #déshumanisation.

      Ce projet a également été financé par Horizon 2020 à hauteur de 4,5 millions d’euros. S’il semble aujourd’hui avoir été arrêté, l’eurodéputé allemand Patrick Breyer a saisi la Cour de justice de l’Union Européenne pour obtenir plus d’informations sur ce projet, ce qui lui a été refusé pour… atteinte au #secret_commercial. Ici encore, on voit que le champ “civil” et non “militaire” du projet est loin de représenter un garde-fou.

      Conclusion

      Ainsi, l’Union européenne participe activement au puissant marché de la surveillance et de la répression. Ici, les frontières et les personnes exilées sont utilisées comme des ressources de laboratoire. Dans une optique de militarisation toujours plus forte des frontières de la forteresse Europe et d’une recherche de profit et de développement des entreprises et centres de recherche européens. Les frontières constituent un nouveau marché et une nouvelle manne financière de la technopolice.

      Les chiffres montrent par ailleurs l’explosion du budget de l’agence européenne #Frontex (de 137 millions d’euros en 2015 à 322 millions d’euros en 2020, chiffres de la Cour des comptes européenne) et une automatisation toujours plus grande de la surveillance des frontières. Et parallèlement, le ratio entre le nombre de personnes qui tentent de franchir la Méditerranée et le nombre de celles qui y laissent la vie ne fait qu’augmenter. Cette automatisation de la surveillance aux frontières n’est donc qu’une nouvelle façon pour les autorités européennes d’accentuer le drame qui continue de se jouer en Méditerranée, pour une “efficacité” qui finalement ne profite qu’aux industries de la surveillance.

      Dans nos rues comme à nos frontières nous devons refuser la Technopolice et la combattre pied à pied !

      https://technopolice.fr/blog/la-technopolice-aux-frontieres

    • Artificial Intelligence - based capabilities for European Border and Coast Guard

      In 2019, Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, commissioned #RAND Europe to carry out an Artificial intelligence (AI) research study.

      The purpose of the study was to provide an overview of the main opportunities, challenges and requirements for the adoption of AI-based capabilities in border managament. Frontex’s intent was also to find synergies with ongoing AI studies and initiatives in the EU and contribute to a Europe-wide AI landscape by adding the border security dimension.

      Some of the analysed technologies included automated border control, object recognition to detect suspicious vehicles or cargo and the use of geospatial data analytics for operational awareness and threat detection.

      As part of the study, RAND provided Frontex in 2020 with a comprehensive report and an executive summary with conclusions and recommendations.

      The findings will support Frontex in shaping the future landscape of AI-based capabilities for Integrated Border Management, including AI-related research and innovation projects which could be initiated by Frontex (e.g. under #EU_Innovation_Hub) or recommended to be conducted under the EU Research and Innovation Programme (#Horizon_Europe).

      https://frontex.europa.eu/media-centre/news/news-release/artificial-intelligence-based-capabilities-for-european-border-and-co

    • Pour les réfugiés, la #biométrie tout au long du chemin

      Par-delà les murs qui poussent aux frontières du monde depuis les années 1990, les réfugiés, migrants et demandeurs d’asile sont de plus en plus confrontés à l’extension des bases de #données_biométriques. Un « #mur_virtuel » s’étend ainsi à l’extérieur, aux frontières et à l’intérieur de l’espace Schengen, construit autour de programmes et de #bases_de_données.

      Des réfugiés qui paient avec leurs #iris, des migrants identifiés par leurs #empreintes_digitales, des capteurs de #reconnaissance_faciale, mais aussi d’#émotions… Réunis sous la bannière de la « #frontière_intelligente », ces #dispositifs_technologiques, reposant sur l’#anticipation, l’#identification et l’#automatisation du franchissement de la #frontière grâce aux bases de données biométriques, ont pour but de trier les voyageurs, facilitant le parcours des uns et bloquant celui des autres.

      L’Union européenne dispose ainsi d’une batterie de bases de données qui viennent compléter les contrôles aux frontières. Depuis 2011, une agence dédiée, l’#Agence_européenne_pour_la_gestion_opérationnelle_des_systèmes_d’information_à_grande_échelle, l’#EU-Lisa, a pour but d’élaborer et de développer, en lien avec des entreprises privées, le suivi des demandeurs d’asile.

      Elle gère ainsi plusieurs bases compilant des #données_biométriques. L’une d’elles, le « #Entry_and_Exit_System » (#EES), sera déployée en 2022, pour un coût évalué à 480 millions d’euros. L’EES a pour mission de collecter jusqu’à 400 millions de données sur les personnes non européennes franchissant les frontières de l’espace Schengen, afin de contrôler en temps réel les dépassements de durée légale de #visa. En cas de séjour prolongé devenu illégal, l’alerte sera donnée à l’ensemble des polices européennes.

      Se brûler les doigts pour ne pas être enregistré

      L’EU-Lisa gère également le fichier #Eurodac, qui consigne les empreintes digitales de chacun des demandeurs d’asile de l’Union européenne. Utilisé pour appliquer le #règlement_Dublin III, selon lequel la demande d’asile est déposée et traitée dans le pays européen où le migrant a été enregistré la première fois, il entraîne des stratégies de #résistance.

      « On a vu des migrants refuser de donner leurs empreintes à leur arrivée en Grèce, ou même se brûler les doigts pour ne pas être enregistrés dans Eurodac, rappelle Damien Simonneau, chercheur à l’Institut Convergences Migrations du Collège de France. Ils savent que s’ils ont, par exemple, de la famille en Allemagne, mais qu’ils ont été enregistrés en Grèce, ils seront renvoyés en Grèce pour que leur demande y soit traitée, ce qui a des conséquences énormes sur leur vie. » La procédure d’instruction dure en effet de 12 à 18 mois en moyenne.

      La collecte de données biométriques jalonne ainsi les parcours migratoires, des pays de départs jusqu’aux déplacements au sein de l’Union européenne, dans un but de limitation et de #contrôle. Pour lutter contre « la criminalité transfrontalière » et « l’immigration clandestine », le système de surveillance des zones frontières #Eurosur permet, via un partage d’informations en temps réel, d’intercepter avant leur arrivée les personnes tentant d’atteindre l’Union européenne.

      Des contrôles dans les pays de départ

      Pour le Transnational Institute, auteur avec le think tank Stop Wapenhandel et le Centre Delàs de plusieurs études sur les frontières, l’utilisation de ces bases de données témoigne d’une stratégie claire de la part de l’Union européenne. « Un des objectifs de l’expansion des #frontières_virtuelles, écrivent-ils ainsi dans le rapport Building Walls (https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/building_walls_-_full_report_-_english.pdf), paru en 2018, est d’intercepter les réfugiés et les migrants avant même qu’ils n’atteignent les frontières européennes, pour ne pas avoir à traiter avec eux. »

      Si ces techniques permettent de pré-trier les demandes pour fluidifier le passage des frontières, en accélérant les déplacements autorisés, elles peuvent également, selon Damien Simonneau, avoir des effets pervers. « L’utilisation de ces mécanismes repose sur l’idée que la #technologie est un facilitateur, et il est vrai que l’#autonomisation de certaines démarches peut faciliter les déplacements de personnes autorisées à franchir les frontières, expose-t-il. Mais les technologies sont faillibles, et peuvent produire des #discriminations. »

      Ces #techniques_virtuelles, aux conséquences bien réelles, bouleversent ainsi le rapport à la frontière et les parcours migratoires. « Le migrant est confronté à de multiples points "frontière", disséminés un peu partout, analyse Damien Simonneau. Cela crée des #obstacles supplémentaires aux parcours migratoires : le contrôle n’est quasiment plus lié au franchissement d’une frontière nationale, il est déterritorialisé et peut se produire n’importe où, en amont comme en aval de la frontière de l’État. »

      Ainsi, la « politique d’#externalisation de l’Union européenne » permet au contrôle migratoire de s’exercer dans les pays de départ. Le programme européen « #SIV » collecte par exemple dès leur formulation dans les #consulats les données biométriques liées aux #demandes_de_visas.

      Plus encore, l’Union européenne délègue une partie de la gestion de ses frontières à d’autres pays : « Dans certains États du Sahel, explique Damien Simonneau, l’aide humanitaire et de développement est conditionnée à l’amélioration des contrôles aux frontières. »

      Un programme de l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations (OIM), le programme #MIDAS, financé par l’Union européenne, est ainsi employé par 23 pays, majoritairement en Afrique, mais aussi en Asie et en Amérique. Son but est de « collecter, traiter, stocker et analyser les informations [biométriques et biographiques] des voyageurs en temps réel » pour aider les polices locales à contrôler leurs frontières. Mais selon le réseau Migreurop, ces données peuvent également être transmises aux agences policières européennes. L’UE exerce ainsi un droit de regard, via Frontex, sur le système d’information et d’analyse de données sur la migration, installé à Makalondi au Niger.

      Des réfugiés qui paient avec leurs yeux

      Un mélange des genres, entre organisations humanitaires et États, entre protection, logistique et surveillance, qui se retrouve également dans les #camps_de_réfugiés. Dans les camps jordaniens de #Zaatari et d’#Azarq, par exemple, près de la frontière syrienne, les réfugiés paient depuis 2016 leurs aliments avec leurs iris.

      L’#aide_humanitaire_alimentaire distribuée par le Programme alimentaire mondial (PAM) leur est en effet versée sur un compte relié à leurs données biométriques. Il leur suffit de passer leurs yeux dans un scanner pour régler leurs achats. Une pratique qui facilite grandement la gestion #logistique du camp par le #HCR et le PAM, en permettant la #traçabilité des échanges et en évitant les fraudes et les vols.

      Mais selon Léa Macias, anthropologue à l’EHESS, cela a aussi des inconvénients. « Si ce paiement avec les yeux peut rassurer certains réfugiés, dans la mesure où cela les protège contre les vols, développe-t-elle, le procédé est également perçu comme une #violence. Les réfugiés ont bien conscience que personne d’autre au monde, dans une situation normale, ne paie ainsi avec son #corps. »

      Le danger de la fuite de données

      La chercheuse s’inquiète également du devenir des données ainsi collectées, et se pose la question de l’intérêt des réfugiés dans ce processus. « Les humanitaires sont poussés à utiliser ces nouvelles technologies, expose-t-elle, qui sont vues comme un gage de fiabilité par les bailleurs de fonds. Mais la #technologisation n’est pas toujours dans l’intérêt des réfugiés. En cas de fuite ou de hackage des bases de données, cela les expose même à des dangers. »

      Un rapport de Human Rights Watch (HRW) (https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/15/un-shared-rohingya-data-without-informed-consent), publié mardi 15 juin, alerte ainsi sur des #transferts_de_données biométriques appartenant à des #Rohingyas réfugiés au Bangladesh. Ces données, collectées par le Haut-commissariat aux réfugiés (HCR) de l’ONU, ont été transmises par le gouvernement du Bangladesh à l’État birman. Si le HCR a réagi (https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2021/6/60c85a7b4/news-comment-statement-refugee-registration-data-collection-bangladesh.html) en affirmant que les personnes concernées avaient donné leur accord à ce #transfert_de_données pour préparer un éventuel retour en Birmanie, rien ne permet cependant de garantir qu’ils seront bien reçus si leur nom « bipe » au moment de passer la frontière.

      https://www.rfi.fr/fr/technologies/20210620-pour-les-r%C3%A9fugi%C3%A9s-la-biom%C3%A9trie-tout-au-long-du-chemin

      #smart_borders #tri #catégorisation #déterritorialisation #réfugiés_rohingyas

      –---

      Sur les doigts brûlés pour ne pas se faire identifier par les empreintes digitales, voir la scène du film Qu’ils reposent en paix de Sylvain George, dont j’ai fait une brève recension :

      Instant tragique : ce qu’un migrant appelle la « prière ». Ce moment collectif où les migrants tentent de faire disparaître leurs empreintes digitales. Étape symbolique où ils se défont de leur propre identité.

      https://visionscarto.net/a-calais-l-etat-ne-peut-dissoudre