The tools to keep Europe cool already exist. What doesn’t? The necessary labor and incentives.
Combatting rising temperatures will require more than just air conditioning.
For the first time ever, the U.K. has exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s one of a number of records to be absolutely smashed as a record heat wave sweeps across Europe. And Europeans living with the rising heat are quickly realizing their homes aren’t equipped to deal with it.
While those across the continent will have to face current heat waves with the homes and technology they have, solutions are on the horizon to make future heat waves less dangerous. In a world where the climate crisis is making heat more intense and frequent, those solutions can’t come soon enough. Policymakers and startups alike will have to find common ground to ensure they’re deployed, though.
Air conditioning may seem like an obvious answer. But unlike the U.S. where air conditioning is ubiquitous, under 5% of homes in England have air conditioning installed, according to a 2021 report from Britain’s Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy. The U.K.’s already-burdened energy grids are feeling the strain, and adding more energy-intensive ACs could lead to blackouts (to say nothing of being costly to residents given the high energy prices).
Some startups are putting forward alternative solutions. Among them is improving energy efficiency so buildings require less cooling in the first place. EcoLocked, a Berlin-based startup developing biochar-based concrete admixes, even promises to do so while sequestering carbon.
"These heat waves are getting more and more frequent, and I can’t really see a way around that. The question is, ‘Where does the energy for the HVAC systems come from?’” Mario Vaupel, the co-founder and CEO, told Protocol.
EcoLocked’s process takes carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and stores it in concrete admix. The carbon also makes the concrete that it’s added to denser, improving insulation and decreasing the amount of energy required to heat or cool homes that are built with the material.
Incorporating biocarbon into concrete has been shown to reduce thermal conductivity by 30% to 40%, according to CTO and co-founder Micheil Gordon.
Heat pumps are another solution that has gained increasing investment and attention as a lower-carbon way to heat and cool homes. The technology already exists, but so do significant hurdles to getting more of them installed.
In Europe, a major bottleneck to widespread heat pump adoption is finding enough skilled laborers willing and able to install them, according to Mark Windeknecht, a former engineer-turned-investment manager at European climate tech VC World Fund. Most of the HVAC installers are independent small businesses with high demand for gas boilers, which are easy to install, compared to heat pumps, which are more complicated and require a more skilled workforce. Right now, there isn’t enough incentive for technicians to get trained up.
Training programs, coupled with improved incentives for homeowners to install them, could spur more widespread heat pump adoption. Doing so would offer a more energy-efficient cooling solution and ensure buildings are also heated using fossil fuel-free energy in the colder months. That has the potential to lower energy bills, improve energy security throughout Europe and lower carbon emissions.
The best solution, though, is often the simplest, Windeknecht said. He pointed to architectural solutions that have been around for generations, like passive house construction, a technique that improves homes’ energy efficiency through better weatherization, better windows, improved air flow and more, all while factoring in the regional climate.
“What we’ve done in the last 50 years is we’ve disconnected from our climate circumstances in cities. We’ve built from Sicily to Norway the same buildings not adapted to the local conditions,” he said.
Designing a passive home is more expensive than a traditional one, but you are paid back in utility bill savings over time, said Jon Hall, a Seattle-based principal focused on affordable housing and sustainable design at design firm GGLO. These solutions have also been around for years, with some passive strategies dating back to the 1970s energy crisis. Hall said there’s growing interest in these techniques “especially as city grids are being less reliable.”
These efforts could not only protect residents from overheating in their homes, but they could also reduce buildings’ carbon emissions. Buildings and construction are responsible for 36% of global energy use and a large chunk of greenhouse gas emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report shows improving energy efficiency generally could reduce emissions anywhere from 40% to 70% by 2050. The building sector stands to make real gains while also protecting residents from the climate impacts baked into the system.
But fixing individual homes alone isn’t the only solution. Other decidedly low-tech solutions, especially one favored by a number of tech companies, could also help protect people from dangerous heat.
Planting more trees in places that would otherwise be occupied by heat-absorbing asphalt has the potential to reduce temperatures by 10% to 20%, according to Daniel Aldana Cohen, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is director of the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative.
While companies can contribute to some of these fixes, Cohen told Protocol that the logistical challenges mean preparing for heat requires wartime mobilization efforts and widespread policy action. Governments need to mobilize labor, mobilize the economy, accelerate training and create the workforce needed to build and install technologies that already exist, like heat pumps.
“Everybody has the right to live in safe temperatures,” Cohen said. To get there, however, will require more than just air conditioning and individual solutions.
How tech is tackling climate change — and reckoning with its own impact on the planet.
Your information will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy
Thank you for signing up. Please check your inbox to verify your email.
Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.
A login link has been emailed to you - please check your inbox.
Michelle Ma (@himichellema) is a reporter at Protocol covering climate. Previously, she was a news editor of live journalism and special coverage for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, she worked as a staff writer at Wirecutter. She can be reached at mma@protocol.com.
To bolster its smart TV efforts, Comcast has had acquisition talks with multiple TV brands, including California-based Vizio.
Comcast is in talks with multiple TV brands.
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Cable giant Comcast has been weighing the acquisition of a TV-maker to bolster its nascent smart TV platform efforts, Protocol has learned from industry insiders. One of the companies approached by Comcast has been California-based Vizio, according to three sources with knowledge of these conversations.
Separately, Comcast has also eyed TV-maker TP Vision, according to one source with knowledge of those talks. TP Vision is best known as the owner of the Philips brand in Europe, and it already has an existing business relationship with Comcast to manufacture the company’s Sky Glass-branded TV for the U.K. market.
Talks between Comcast and Vizio are said to have occurred both in 2021 and early 2022. It’s unclear how far the discussions with each company progressed, or whether they are still ongoing.
Spokespeople for Comcast and Vizio declined to comment. TP Vision did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Comcast began its foray into the smart TV platform world last year with the introduction of the XClass TV brand. The company announced a partnership with TV-maker Hisense in September and has since been selling two XClass-branded smart TVs at Walmart. Separately, Comcast also introduced its own smart TVs via its Sky subsidiary in the U.K.
Protocol broke the news of Comcast’s smart TV plans in August of 2020 and was first to report about the XClass brand last year.
By buying its own TV manufacturer, the company would be able to put more resources behind the development, marketing and sale of its own TV sets. This, in turn, would help Comcast remain relevant in a world where an increasing number of consumers cut the cord, and stream their favorite programming via their smart TVs.
Not only have smart TVs helped to disintermediate streaming, they have also become an important source of revenue for companies like Amazon, Roku and Samsung. That’s due in large part to the growing popularity of ad-supported video, including linear ad-supported streaming channels. Just last week, Comcast put out a report highlighting that six out of 10 households with smart TVs watch these basic cable-like channels.
Vizio would make an interesting acquisition target for Comcast: The Irvine-based company has been one of the biggest TV brands in the U.S. for a number of years, thanks largely to budget-priced devices. Vizio has also been building out its own advertising business, which includes both ad targeting technology as well as its own free streaming service. In 2021, the company generated $309 million from advertising and other non-hardware revenue sources.
However, Vizio doesn’t have its own manufacturing capabilities and instead depends on contract manufacturers. The company has also struggled to compete with Chinese competitors like TCL, which has its own manufacturing capabilities, giving it more leverage on pricing. During the first quarter of this year, Vizio’s hardware gross margin fell to just 2.1%.
Vizio has in the past looked for an acquirer, and it entered a $2 billion deal with China’s LeEco in 2016. That deal fell apart when LeEco wasn’t able to secure necessary financing. Vizio held talks with multiple possible acquirers following LeEco’s decision to call off the acquisition, but ultimately decided to pursue a public offering last year.
The company’s stock has since struggled, and fell below $9 per share on Tuesday — far below the IPO price of $21 per share. The company’s current market cap is around $1.7 billion, which is less than its 2021 revenue. However, Vizio is a controlled company, and its CEO William Wang owns the vast majority of voting shares, giving him the ultimate say over any possible deal. A source close to the company expressed doubt that Wang would sell for anything close to the current valuation.
Any possible acquisition of a TV manufacturer could also be impacted by Comcast’s decision to enter a streaming joint venture with Charter. Announced in April, the deal is meant to further fuel the cable companies’ streaming platform ambitions. Comcast is looking to contribute its XClass TV efforts as well as its ad-supported streaming platform Xumo to the joint venture, while Charter is adding at least $900 million in capital. The deal is subject to regulatory approval, and it’s possible that Comcast would wait for it to close before making any major acquisitions in the space.
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Experts say Congress must fund the CHIPS Act and enact the Investment Tax Credit before their August recess to ensure critical domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
The global shortage of semiconductors has impeded the production of everything from pickup trucks to PlayStations. But there are graver implications than a scarcity of consumer goods. If the U.S. does not ensure continued domestic access to leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing, experts say our national security could suffer.
Powerful semiconductors, often called chips, are integral for everyday products from modern refrigerators to medical devices like pacemakers. They also are a necessary component of high-tech weaponry and secure communication systems that are key to America's defense.
“Semiconductors are the backbone of our military infrastructure and incredibly intertwined with our defense systems,” said Rob Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “They’re used to power crucial functions like advanced aircraft, AI, autonomous systems, next-generation computing, and our secure communications.”
Chips are in short supply due to several colliding factors, including spikes in demand for electronic products and supply chain difficulties during the pandemic. In recent decades foreign governments have increasingly incentivized chip production while the U.S. government sat on the sidelines, creating a vulnerable reliance on foreign manufacturers. Today, only 2% of global memory is manufactured in the U.S., and all of that is produced by Micron Technology. Eighty-five percent of the world’s $555.9 billion chip market is made in just three countries with low-cost manufacturing facilities: China, South Korea, and Taiwan.
“That’s a dangerous imbalance,” said Atkinson. “Why should the U.S. risk this level of foreign dependence on something as essential as microchips?”
Any disruption from suppliers could severely limit America’s ability to build and maintain secure critical infrastructure and advanced defense systems. “Almost every electronic device and system depends on semiconductor memory,” said Sumit Sadana, Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer at Micron. “A weak, easily disrupted supply chain creates far-reaching consequences to our economy and national security.”
But that’s exactly what has happened, and it could get worse.
Foreign governments are ramping up spending on semiconductor R&D and accelerating their manufacturing advantage. Chief among them is China, which increased its overall semiconductor output by 33% in 2021. Since 1979, China has used hefty state investments in infrastructure, education, and research, along with technology acquisitions and supportive business policies, to produce incredible economic growth. China’s State Council has set the goal of becoming a global leader in all segments of the semiconductor industry by 2030.
Any major supply chain disruption or intentional blockage could severely limit the U.S.’s ability to build and maintain secure critical infrastructure and advanced defense systems.
“Simply catching up to China is not sufficient,” said Jamil Jaffer, executive director of the National Security Institute as well as an Assistant Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. “We need American labs and American companies to develop the next generation of chips. We need to build here and then get ahead. That's going to cost money, time and effort.”
To ensure American security, prosperity and technological leadership, industry leaders say the U.S. must encourage domestic manufacturing of chips in order to reduce our reliance on East Asia producers for crucial electronics components.
Leading-edge memory production requires such ongoing government support “to create and sustain an environment that will enable ambitious expansion of memory and storage manufacturing capabilities in the U.S.,” said Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.
Some advances are being made. In October, the Department of Defense awarded more than $197 million to strengthen the American microelectronics industrial base and help create state-of-the-art facilities to design and build at scale. Through the Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes (RAMP) plans, the DoD hopes to create a reliable and resilient domestic source of chips for its artificial intelligence, 5G communications, quantum computing, and autonomous vehicle needs.
Congress is also trying to incentivize investment in the U.S. semiconductor industry through direct funding and an investment tax credit. The Senate passed the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which includes $52 billion in funding for chips, last summer. The House passed its version of the legislation — the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) for America Act — in February, but the two chambers have yet to agree on a compromise bill.
The CHIPS Act and Investment Tax Credit will help level the playing field for domestic manufacturers and bring many high-paying advanced manufacturing jobs to the U.S. “An American semiconductor manufacturing industry will produce tens of thousands of jobs, high-skilled jobs,” Mehrotra said. “If we don't get this legislation across the finish line, then these jobs will go overseas.”
Micron’s Executive Vice President of Global Operations Manish Bhatia testified before the House Science Committee in December 2021, highlighting the 35-45% cost delta that building and operating a fab in America incurs over lower-cost markets, mainly in Asia. “‘The gap that we have with Asia was not created overnight, it was created over the last 20 years. And while action in the U.S. continues to stall, the rest of the world is moving forward aggressively. The gap is getting bigger, not closing.”
“We must get this done now.”
That transition to building a competitive U.S. semiconductor industry is underway. In June, TSMC started construction at a site in Arizona where it plans to spend $12 billion to build a computer chip factory. The factory remains on track to start volume production of chips using the company's 5-nanometer production technology starting in 2024. In addition, Micron is investing more than $150 billion over the next decade in leading-edge memory manufacturing and R&D.
Experts say that chip shortages are likely to remain into 2024. In the meantime, U,S, technological strength in this area can be reinforced by investing more in basic science and government research at home. And legislation is key.
In the coming weeks before their August recess, U.S. lawmakers are expected to reconcile various versions of legislation that include the CHIPS Act into final form. This is an important part of the multi-step process to turn proposed legislation into law.
Industry leaders say that Congress needs to get the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk quickly. “We must get this done now,” said Mehrotra. “We must have a secure a supply chain here to address national security considerations. We need to get CHIPS and an investment tax credits measure across the finish line.”
Congress' delay in passing these measures could jeopardize a key industry at a critical time. Noted Atkinson: “A failure to support domestic semiconductor manufacturing would place national security at significant risk. This may be the only opportunity we have to turn the situation around and make sure the U.S. has a viable semiconductor industry going forward.”
Amazon’s One Medical purchase is unlikely to deter consumers and employers from the service, experts said.
What does Amazon's plan to acquire One Medical mean for health data?
Lizzy Lawrence ( @LizzyLaw_) is a reporter at Protocol, covering tools and productivity in the workplace. She's a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied sociology and international studies. She served as editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, her school's independent newspaper. She's based in D.C., and can be reached at llawrence@protocol.com.
Amazon is increasingly hard to escape: It's your grocer via Whole Foods, your convenience store via Prime, your home assistant via Alexa. And soon, it could be your primary care provider.
"I am less than pleased to learn that Amazon is acquiring my doctor," tweeted cloud consultant Corey Quinn after catching wind of Amazon's plan to acquire One Medical for roughly $3.9 billion. It was a common reaction among some One Medical patients, of which there were 736,000 as of December 2021.
The deal will not only shake up direct-to-consumer care; it could transform employer-based health care as well. One Medical works with more than 8,500 enterprises that offer employees access to the provider’s in-person and telehealth services. Some employers even house One Medical clinics on-site.
The acquisition may ring antitrust alarm bells, but it will be difficult for regulators to target, as primary care is a new space for Amazon. This means consumers and human resource managers will likely have to decide themselves whether to embrace an Amazonified One Medical, weighing data concerns against convenience. Many may be inclined to choose the latter, considering the mess that is the American health care system.
“For so many people, convenience trumps anything else,” said Christina Farr, a health tech investor with OMERS Ventures. “If they're going to offer a convenient, affordable experience for people, then that might be the thing that causes them to join a service like this versus cancel their membership.”
Your medical information should be safe. Compromising individual One Medical records would be devastating for Amazon. It is illegal, folks! An Amazon spokesperson told Protocol that One Medical customers’ HIPAA-protected information will be “handled separately from all other Amazon businesses” should the deal close.
“As required by law, Amazon will never share One Medical customers’ personal health information outside of One Medical for advertising or marketing purposes of other Amazon products and services without clear permission from the customer,” the spokesperson wrote.
For Quinn, the concern lies in Amazon simply having access to this data. In his view, Amazon is too large a company with too many opportunities for internal data misuse. Amazon’s track record of data protection on Prime is by no means perfect. A 2020 Wall Street Journal investigation found that Amazon employees used data about independent sellers to develop competing products, which then-CEO Jeff Bezos couldn’t deny to Congress. In late 2021, Wired revealed carelessness by employees in handling Amazon’s retail customer data.
“When you have 1.4 million employees, you can’t guarantee that anything has never happened,” Quinn said. “I don't particularly want the notes from my therapy appointments being something that anyone at Amazon has access to.”
Not all health information is protected by HIPAA, which focuses on privacy in a patient-provider relationship. Amazon can already access a lot of this kind of data. A simple Prime purchase can provide valuable insight into our health — a fact that has especially crystallized for Americans in a post-Roe world. Data privacy expert Debbie Reynolds said Amazon’s direct access to much of this secondary health information, coupled with ownership of the portals holding more sensitive health data, is where people’s concern lies.
I don't particularly want the notes from my therapy appointments being something that anyone at Amazon has access to.
“The concern is having such a big, powerful company that has [its] hands in so many different areas of people’s lives being able to also gather data about people, even tangentially, around their health,” Reynolds said.
When it comes to digital data security, the consequences for individuals are hypothetical and murky. But the end result for Amazon is clear: It’s a win. One Medical’s data might help inform future Amazon AI-based health products. “When you’re a first-party data holder, which Amazon will be, there’s more that you can do with data,” Reynolds said.
Quinn canceled his One Medical membership and exported his medical records, but he isn’t sure whether the company will accommodate his request to delete all of his medical data. One Medical did not respond to Protocol’s request for comment on the company’s data deletion policies.
Yes, it could. Farr said the deal may represent Amazon’s ambitions to build a “digital front door” to health care. Primary care is increasingly elusive for most Americans. One Medical, which some describe as “concierge medicine,” isn’t exactly the picture of accessibility just yet. It has a $199 annual membership fee and is primarily urban. Still, a Prime-like digital interface for health care could be transformative.
“There’s no real shopping experience for health care,” Farr said. “Nobody’s done that.”
Josh Bersin, an HR industry analyst, is in favor of bringing retail and health care closer together. He described a scenario that, depending on your data and surveillance inclinations, might strike you as either useful or dystopian.
“Imagine you're clicking through the Amazon web page, you click on a bottle of aspirin, and the website says, ‘Are you having problems with headaches?’” Bersin said. “‘Would you like to visit a clinic? Click here to make an appointment.’ I mean, that's not a bad idea.”
Michael Yang, health tech and workplace tech investor at OMERS Ventures, said the deal likely doesn’t change One Medical’s appeal to enterprises, even if employees have concerns about health data. He thinks the One Medical purchase will go better for Amazon than its previous attempt to disrupt employee health care, Haven.
“You’re able to take a job and be matched with a primary care physician through a clinic type of model,” Yang said. “And then you have different modalities. It could be in person, it could be virtual. It could be at a pop-up.”
What about competitors, like Google, that provide One Medical memberships for employees and host clinics on-site? Yang doesn’t see the deal deterring Google or other companies’ adoption of One Medical. One Medical’s primary care model may bring self-insured employers’ health care expenses down, and the telehealth, near-site and on-site offerings are too convenient, he said.
“It would be penny-wise, pound-foolish to take a stand against a quote-unquote competitor when your employees need it and you as an employer want them to have it,” Yang said.
But One Medical isn’t the only boutique primary care outfit out there, competing against direct health care companies like Premise Health and Crossover Health (which Amazon previously partnered with to launch employee health centers). If nervous employees lobby against an Amazon-backed One Medical or employers become spooked, they have other options.
“We’ll see how it goes with Amazon being part of that bidding process,” Farr said. “They’re certainly not the only ones.”
Lizzy Lawrence ( @LizzyLaw_) is a reporter at Protocol, covering tools and productivity in the workplace. She's a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she studied sociology and international studies. She served as editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, her school's independent newspaper. She's based in D.C., and can be reached at llawrence@protocol.com.
Less than two years after passing an ordinance that outlawed facial recognition technologies, New Orleans city council voted last week to allow police to use the controversial tech.
The quick reversal of the ban illustrates the fragility of laws attempting to restrict surveillance tech in the face of violent crime.
Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.
A groundbreaking New Orleans prohibition on surveillance tech is disintegrating.
Less than two years after passing an ordinance that outlawed facial recognition technologies, the New Orleans city council voted on Thursday to hand the keys to the controversial surveillance tool back to the city’s police department. The quick reversal illustrates the fragility of laws attempting to restrict increasingly pervasive surveillance tech in the face of violent crime.
New Orleans was already a place where culture bearers and the tourists who flocked to experience their vibrant home could be watched from the city’s Real-Time Crime Center through an expanding network of connected surveillance cameras. Some residents worry that the existing network of cameras will be juiced with added surveillance features as the city contemplates a smart city project.
The 4-2 vote allows the New Orleans Police Department to request use of facial recognition technology to assist in identifying suspects or witnesses in investigating crimes including murder, rape, kidnapping, terrorism, arson and even purse snatching.
For the police and its supporters, facial recognition is seen as one of many ways to help solve crime. “This is all about adding a tool to the toolbox and using it in a rightful, meaningful, constitutional way to give our detectives the support that is needed to further their investigation,” said NOPD Chief Shaun Ferguson during Thursday’s city council meeting.
But when it comes to evaluating the tool’s efficacy, the police department is going on a hunch.
There are hundreds of networked surveillance cameras installed throughout the city of New Orleans.Photo: Kate Kaye/Protocol
“We keep hearing NOP needs this. This is the silver bullet that is going to stop crime, this facial recognition. But you have no data, sitting here today, telling me that this actually works, that it leads to arrests, convictions or clearance,” said Lesli Harris, one of two New Orleans city council members who voted against the facial recognition measure, during the meeting.
Indeed, despite the fact that the NOPD had used facial recognition technology before the 2020 surveillance tech ban was passed, the department never kept records of how often it was used or whether it facilitated investigations or led to arrests or convictions.
The city’s new rules also clawed back other tech use outlawed in 2020. They now allow police to use cell-site simulators when they obtain a search warrant to locate a known violent crime suspect or help find a missing person in imminent danger. Often called stingrays, cell-site simulators mimic cell phone towers to trick mobile phones in their vicinity into connecting to them to reveal their unique ID and location.
Predictive policing software, which was outlawed in the 2020 ban, still remains off-limits.
"[Y]ou have no data, sitting here today, telling me that this actually works, that it leads to arrests, convictions or clearance.”
NOPD Detective Sgt. David Barnes said during the council meeting that the police department does not intend to use facial recognition to prevent crime, but rather to improve investigations of crimes that have already occurred. “The way that we use this is not to prevent crime. This is not a predictive policing tool; this is an investigative tool,” Barnes said.
People like Renard Bridgewater have anticipated the potential change to the surveillance tech ordinance for months. Bridgewater, a hip-hop artist and community engagement coordinator for the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans who has advocated against surveillance tech in the city as a member of the Eye On Surveillance Coalition, has spent hours observing city council meetings this year expecting a vote on legislation that could dilute the impact of the original surveillance ordinance his group supported.
Renard Bridgewater, a hip-hop artist and community engagement coordinator for the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, has advocated against surveillance tech in the city.Photo: Kate Kaye/Protocol
“The general consensus that I've observed both online as well as from the submitted public comments in opposition to this ordinance, is that this is not something that a decent majority of residents wanted,” Bridgewater told Protocol in an email after Thursday’s vote. He cited “the lack of information provided by NOPD regarding the cost of the tech, how any collected data would be stored, retained and hopefully purged, how citizens would be able to view any increase in public safety due to the use of this tech and most importantly, the ineffectiveness of these surveillance tools in decreasing criminal activity.”
“This will not stop crime, but it’s something the police need to be better police,” said New Orleans city council member Freddie King III, who voted in support of the ordinance change.
According to Barnes, the police department will not license facial recognition software themselves; rather, the NOPD will request use of software licensed by the Louisiana State Analytical and Fusion Exchange, a hub for data and tech used by law enforcement agencies. To find matches and identify possible crime suspects in investigations, the NOPD can now request that the Fusion Exchange use its facial recognition software to perform searches of its database, which includes photos from criminal mugshots and of people who have been fingerprinted or passed through security clearances such as those at airports.
The new legislation states that evidence obtained from facial recognition would not be sufficient on its own to establish probable cause for arrest.
Idemia makes the facial recognition software licensed by the state that NOPD will access, according to New Orleans city council staff. Headquartered in France, Idemia provides algorithmic systems that use biometric data representing fingerprints, irises, faces and tattoos for identification services used by law enforcement and government ID programs such as India’s immense Aadhaar program.
“People commit crime because they are hungry, sick and disenfranchised, and pushed to those extremes, crimes will still be committed no matter what police do.”
Vendor payment records from the state of Louisiana analyzed by Protocol show the state has paid Idemia Identity and Security USA around $1.9 million thus far in 2022, and around $1.6 million in 2021. Idemia, which is currently registered as a lobbyist with the Louisiana Board of Ethics, received far less from the state in 2019 and 2020 – around $164,000 for both years combined. It is not known whether those payments cover the cost to use Idemia’s facial recognition software or other software used for fingerprinting or state identification services. Following an inquiry, a representative for Louisiana’s Fusion Exchange and its Office of Technology Services said the appropriate people with knowledge of the state's use of facial recognition technology were not available to comment for this story.
During Thursday’s meeting, Marvin Arnold, a representative of New Orleans anti-surveillance tech advocacy group Eye on Surveillance, gave a presentation claiming that facial recognition is biased and racist.
Facial recognition technology has been found to produce inaccurate results that disproportionately affect people with darker skin tones. For instance, a 2019 study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a U.S. agency that provides detailed assessments of facial recognition algorithms, quantified accuracy of face recognition algorithms according to demographic groups defined by sex, age and race or country of birth.
The NIST study found false-positive rates were highest among West and East African and East Asian people and lowest among Eastern European people — generally with a factor of 100 more false positives.
Hundreds of companies submit specific facial recognition algorithms for NIST testing and often publicize incremental improvements in accuracy according to a variety of metrics, such as how frequently they produce false positives or how well they perform in matching one photo to several images in a database. Idemia claims its identification system ranks highly when it comes to accuracy, demographic parity and speed when measured in NIST tests. It is not known which versions of Idemia’s algorithmic models are used in software licensed by Louisiana’s Fusion Exchange.
During the meeting, King said the contention that using facial recognition is racist was a faulty one because he, the city’s police chief and some people supporting use of the technology by law enforcement are Black.
Marvin Arnold, a representative of Eye on Surveillance, a New Orleans anti-surveillance tech advocacy group, spoke during Thursday's city council meeting.Screenshot: Kate Kaye/Protocol
Arnold and others fighting the ordinance reversal argued that giving police access to additional surveillance tech tools will not assuage the root causes of crime. “People commit crime because they are hungry, sick and disenfranchised, and pushed to those extremes, crimes will still be committed no matter what police do,” said Arnold, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Surveillance is trash.”
City residents have reason to be skeptical of the police department’s intentions when it comes to surveillance tech use. After years of assertions that the NOPD did not use face recognition, a 2020 report revealed that the department did have access to the technology through its state and federal partners.
The revelation followed an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010 and 2011 of the New Orleans Police Department for an alleged pattern of civil rights violations. As a result, the DOJ established a consent decree with the city of New Orleans and the police department in hopes of establishing effective, constitutional and professional law enforcement in the city.
“All I want is a safer city,” said King, who noted during the council meeting that 159 murders had taken place in New Orleans in 2022. A July report showed there were 145 murders in the first half of 2022 in New Orleans, a rate of around 37 murders per 100,000 residents, the highest in the nation. Research from the Council on Criminal Justice shows an upward trending cyclical pattern in the homicide rate in cities throughout the country during the pandemic and amid protests against police violence following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
The mission to make New Orleans safer inspired a sprawling network of connected cameras; however, use of those cameras and the crime center’s data use was never covered by the city’s 2020 surveillance tech ordinance.
The city’s camera network started small. When New Orleans first began installing security cameras in 2017 as part of a broader $40 million citywide public safety initiative, the plan called for them in just 20 crime hotspots. Today there are at least 800 networked cameras installed in all city council and police districts, some government-owned and some private. The cameras are connected to the New Orleans Real-Time Crime Center, where staff can access video imagery to investigate a crime or monitor for fires or floods.
The Real-Time Crime Center operates under the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and is not part of the New Orleans Police Department. Civil rights advocates who have fought against the slow creep of more cameras and surveillance tech use in New Orleans say decentralized ownership of the cameras and the crime center clouds responsibility, transparency and accountability for camera and data policies and use.
NOPD vehicles also are equipped with license plate readers to help capture carjackers or conduct covert surveillance on drug traffickers. The LPRs are another form of surveillance tech not covered by the ordinance in its old or new form.
Concerned that the updated law “impacts civil rights that has future repercussions on women, on people of color or same-sex couples,” following Thursday’s vote, Harris co-sponsored a new ordinance that would ensure that facial recognition cannot be used in relation to crimes involving abortion and consensual sexual acts. That ordinance would be eligible for a vote at the next city council meeting, in August. “It was important for me to add language so that we had some guardrails around reproductive rights, protecting the rights of gay people and data collection,” Harris told Protocol on Monday.
The promise of increased safety, interconnected infrastructure and improved government services has lured officials in New Orleans toward more tech integration. The city’s surveillance ordinance rollback comes in the wake of a scandal over an effort to install connected streetlights, traffic signals, water meters, WiFi kiosks and data-harvesting sensors all tied into a “city command center” through a now-stalled broadband and “smart city” plan.
"All I want is a safer city."
The project, which involved telco giant Qualcomm and an investment firm founded by former NBA player Magic Johnson, has been held up by a bid-rigging investigation.
Ultimately, if New Orleans does install additional networked city infrastructure, surveillance tech such as facial recognition software could be integrated with hardware hooked up to city streetlamps and other street furniture.
Bridgewater said he recognizes the potential for the so-called smart city plan to supercharge surveillance in New Orleans.
“I do see some form of connection between this new smart cities proposal and the surveillance ordinance,” Bridgewater told Protocol in June. “If we're thinking about the various ways that this surveillance ordinance could potentially correlate with the smart cities proposals, if we already have cameras on the smart city light poles, we could easily put facial recognition in,” Bridgewater said. “We could easily do any number of other forms of surveillance tech, because we already have the infrastructure.”
Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.
The crypto crash is “a failure of risk management,” says CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham. But, she says, the U.S. still has a chance to do regulation the right way.
CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham speaks at the Nasdaq Technology of the Future Conference in New York City on June 28, 2022.
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.
Just months after being named a CFTC commissioner, Caroline Pham emerged as one of crypto’s most important defenders last week when the SEC filed insider trading charges against a former Coinbase product manager and two other people. Pham criticized the move as “a striking example of ‘regulation by enforcement.’”
“Major questions are best addressed through a transparent process that engages the public to develop appropriate policy with expert input,” she wrote in a statement. “Regulatory clarity comes from being out in the open, not in the dark.”
A CFTC commissioner speaking out against an SEC move was striking, and pointed to a widening turf war between the SEC and the CFTC, two agencies that could be tasked with figuring out a division of labor for regulating digital assets under one prominent proposal for crypto regulation.
Both agencies are gearing up to regulate crypto more closely. The SEC under Gary Gensler has been beefing up its ranks for what many fear is a major enforcement offensive against crypto companies. On Monday, a top CFTC official said it was setting up a new Office of Technology Innovation to enhance its ability to monitor the crypto market.
The regulatory establishment is a small world: Pham interned at both the CFTC and SEC early in her career, then worked as a special counsel and policy adviser at the CFTC when Gensler chaired that agency.
In an interview with Protocol, Pham explained why she felt the need to speak out against the SEC action, the importance of the SEC and the CFTC working together in regulating crypto and why that’s not happening.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
Can you talk about the decision to issue a statement reacting to the SEC’s legal action against the former Coinbase product manager?
First, I have to say that my views are only my own views and don't reflect those of the CFTC or any other commissioner.
As a general matter, I can't speak about investigations, or enforcement actions. But what I can say about this is that when I found out about the SEC complaint, and once I read the complaint, based on the broad implications that this case could have — that you could have a judge determining, at a fairly preliminary stage, legal precedents as to the application of the securities laws to certain digital assets, given the open questions around utility tokens — I felt very strongly that anything that implicates or impacts the CFTC's jurisdiction, the CFTC should be there at the table.
The commission has been charged with upholding the Commodity Exchange Act and, in Dodd-Frank, the CFTC was granted insider trading authority. The CFTC has jurisdiction over commodities and commodity derivatives. So in my mind, we should be vigorously enforcing the law and upholding the Commodity Exchange Act and our jurisdiction because that is our job.
Did you have any conversations with the SEC or with Chair Gensler himself on what they did?
I can't talk about investigations.
How common is it for the SEC and the CFTC to have major differences of opinion on a regulatory issue?
In my experience — and I was previously at the CFTC during the Dodd-Frank rulemaking when Gary Gensler was the CFTC’s chairman — there are areas, particularly with Dodd-Frank, where the SEC and the CFTC have jurisdictional questions that get worked out.
So in my experience, even if there are differences of opinion, there is a collaborative and cooperative approach between the SEC and the CFTC. In fact, that's why SEC Commissioner [Hester] Peirce and I co-authored an op-ed where we said we thought that, in the long tradition of the SEC and the CFTC working together, we should have joint roundtables to look into the crypto crash and the events surrounding it and come up with a thoughtful approach towards crypto regulation and providing regulatory clarity that engages the public through these roundtables.
Where do you stand on the debate over whether crypto assets are securities or commodity tokens?
The determination whether a particular digital or crypto asset is a security or commodity is a very complex legal analysis that's really based on the specific facts and circumstances surrounding that particular token. So there's not a way to come out with a broad blanket statement. Each one needs to have and deserves to have its own tailored analysis to determine whether or not it's a commodity or a security.
But I will say that the CFTC, starting first in 2015, came out and said that bitcoin was a commodity. Since that time, the CFTC has brought a number of cases where we have said that various digital or crypto assets are commodities. For example, we have in our cases said that bitcoin is a commodity as well as ether, litecoin, I think also dogecoin. And there might be a couple other ones that we have over the last couple of years, in our cases, that are commodities.
How should the crypto industry react given that two major agencies have different classifications for different types of digital assets?
Well, I can't advise anybody. But I do think it is very unfortunate that we are in this position where we have a lack of regulatory clarity, instead of working together with the public to come up with clear rules of the road so that people can invest, grow and build compliant digital asset markets, and we can keep the investment in American innovation here onshore, and not have it leave the United States because of an unclear regulatory environment. I think that's very disappointing.
You worked at the CFTC when it was being led by Gary Gensler. How would you compare the way he led the CFTC and the way he's leading the SEC currently?
I don't think it's appropriate for me to discuss any conversation between the SEC and the CFTC. I would rather keep it to what's in the public domain.
You said in your statement, “Regulatory clarity comes from being out in the open, not in the dark.” What prevents the CFTC and the SEC from holding a public process to settle these issues and come up with clear rules?
Nothing stops the SEC or the CFTC from following the Administrative Procedure Act and engaging with the public in a transparent way that goes through a rule-making process or even a process just to have public roundtables. That's why I felt it's really important to make a statement.
Why isn't it happening in your view?
I think the best way to answer that question is the way that the SEC and the CFTC are set up with a bipartisan commission of five commissioners each, but only the chair has the ability to set the agenda for the agency and to direct the staff.
I believe that Commissioner Peirce said this previously as well in her interviews. It is only the chair of each agency that can, for example, call for an open meeting or … call for a vote on a particular matter. Really, that question lies with the chair of each agency. I can't speak for either chair.
When you joined the CFTC early this year, the crypto market was starting to slide after going through a time of spectacular growth. What lessons are top of mind for you as a CFTC commissioner?
When I look at what's happening in the crypto market, what you see really is a failure of risk management. A lot of what's happening now is not something that is unknown. It's not something that we've never seen before, that we don't know how to deal with, not only as regulators or policymakers, but also as responsible industry actors.
This is just basic risk management. It's basic credit management. Any time you're a financial institution, which many of these crypto firms are, there are minimum standards around risk management, capital, liquidity, underwriting and other things that need to be undertaken.
It's just going back to basics and having the right prudential regulation or minimum financial resource requirements and minimum standards for risk management in place.
Beyond that, I think there certainly needs to be strong protections in place for the retail public. Sometimes, many people don't understand what they're getting into. You've had news reports where people didn't understand that their money wasn't protected or that, in the event of a bankruptcy, their money wasn't gonna be coming back to them necessarily.
Has anything changed in the way you view the need to regulate crypto given how some companies have gone bankrupt and many consumers have lost their savings and been really hurt by this downturn?
Well, absolutely. What I've said before is that with these horrible losses and really very personal and tragic stories that come out of this, you know, regulators cannot fail to act. But when we take action we need to do so in a responsible way that is inclusive of the public and their views.
The approach that we should take in dealing with this, as we have with other financial crises in the past, is we need to make sure that there is appropriate risk management and minimum financial resource requirements, that there are sound prudential or other requirements around how these firms are assessing their business.
Equally, there needs to be strong protections in place. Those protections, particularly for retail, can include things like disclosures, suitability requirements, education requirements, fair dealing and fair communication requirements, market conduct rules. And of course, conflict of interest is something very important that I think really has been called out in these particular market events.
The SEC made its move against the Coinbase ex-product manager shortly after the Supreme Court issued a decision related to the EPA and climate change-related regulations. Many believe it potentially weakens the authority of regulators like the SEC and the CFTC. How do you think the Supreme Court decision will impact the efforts to regulate crypto?
I can't specifically comment on that case. I will say that my general perspective is that it is Congress who makes the laws of our country. It is Congress' responsibility to make the laws and each regulatory agency can only act within the bounds of this statute where Congress has clearly delegated authority to that agency. I think it's very important for regulators to be mindful of their mission and their purpose and the authorities that they have as well as don't have to make sure that we are acting in a way that is upholding the law and serving the American people within the bounds that Congress has granted the authority to us.
What do you think of the Lummis-Gillibrand bill?
I think it's great that Congress has been working on so many different proposals, including the Lummis-Gillibrand bill, which is very comprehensive, on what's the right way to delineate the authority and to provide greater clarity over digital assets. That is why I'm surprised that the SEC is taking this route to again essentially determine what is a security or to lay claim to various digital assets or types of digital assets as securities without having that direction from Congress through the various proposals that they are working on or through engaging with the public.
Sen. Lummis told me in an interview, to clarify that the CFTC and the SEC will both play key roles in regulating crypto based on their proposal, that while two of the biggest cryptocurrencies today, bitcoin and ether, will likely be considered commodities, most other cryptocurrencies will likely have to be regulated as securities. What's your reaction to that?
I don't disagree with that comment on its face. But I think what's really important and the point that I was trying to make with my statement is No. 1, if we're going to be coming up with rules for the public to follow, it needs to be done through the right process, which is through the Administrative Procedure Act, or through some other form of guidance that engages with the public.
My second point is where the CFTC has jurisdiction, the CFTC must vigorously enforce and uphold the law. It is incumbent upon us that if we see wrongdoing in our markets, we need to go and prosecute it with all the tools that we have. That includes our new Dodd-Frank authority, which we've used multiple times, for insider trading. If there is something that is implicating the CFTC’s jurisdiction, the CFTC should be there at the table. We should not just be standing to the side.
You played a part in coming up with rules for segments of the Dodd-Frank Act. That process underscores how making these rules for a new law can take a very long time. How do you reflect on how this process can take a long time given how fast crypto is known to be growing and evolving?
I think that we have tools right now that we can use to provide greater clarity to the crypto-asset markets without needing to take a long time. There are ways that agencies can work more quickly. It certainly does not need to take 10 or 12 years to come up with more regulatory clarity for the industry. We have tools right now. We can use them right now to provide more clarity.
One of the lessons from Dodd-Frank is how important it is to get it right the first time. What is unfortunate, what has been going on, is that there have been a number of no-action letters and other efforts to sort of tweak the Dodd-Frank rules because they didn't quite work when they were first put out. The confusion, the lack of clarity, the market fragmentation in the cross-border space, the challenges that the U.S. had with non-U.S. authorities over our overbroad approach to Dodd-Frank really has resulted in loose ends that we still need to tie up and we are continuing to tie up.
That's why I think that when it comes to the digital asset markets, we need to be taking a proactive, forward-looking approach so that we're building the regulatory framework the right way the first time and not unnecessarily creating overly burdensome or costly requirements through, frankly, confusion or because the rules aren't workable.
A lot of the debate related to crypto is playing out in social media, especially Twitter. Many of the attacks against Gary Gensler, the SEC and others critical of the industry have been pretty harsh. What are your thoughts on how a lot of this is playing out in the open, on Twitter and social media?
It's really important that we have these public forums for people to share their opinions and to debate important issues. That's one of the greatest things about democracy and about America, is that you can have a voice, and we have freedom of speech, and that's so critical. But I don't believe that there should ever be bullying. I don't believe in having hateful speech or no common decency in some of these Twitter wars. In civil discourse, there's no room for bullying and just unbelievably inappropriate comments.
What is your biggest worry related to crypto, the way it's evolving and the efforts to regulate it?
Process is very important. When you have good process, you have good outcomes. When we think about digital assets, more broadly and the United States approach to digital assets, the things that I'm concerned about are, first and foremost, national security and the implications that go together with that. Making sure that we are supporting robust digital asset markets that uphold the U.S.’s and the dollar’s place in the world — that's very important for us as a country. It is incumbent upon us and it is part of the CFTC’s mission and mandate that we have responsible innovation and fair competition.
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.