Tech
posted 2025-07 to 2025-09
Perils & possibilities
A reading list (roughly in reverse chronological order) of contributions to the common pool of news/analysis/resources.
— a readers travelogue ::: to bear witness
My view of the future vs. Peter Thiel's
from Creative Good (Mark Hurst)
As I wrote in Oligarchs achieving escape velocity (Sep 10, 2025), a handful of plutocrats now exert outsize influence on our economy, politics, and society. The scale of wealth we’re talking about is hard to imagine, but it’s large enough that a plutocrat’s any whim – no matter how deranged – will be honored.
"A good example comes from Peter Thiel, who as I discussed on the Sep 8, 2025 Techtonic has been giving a lecture series about the Antichrist. This four-part lecture series at California’s prestigious Commonwealth Club features Thiel’s thoughts on the biblical Antichrist and the end of time.
"You know, just normal tech-industry stuff.
"We’ve never seen such concentration of power, ever. No wonder Peter Thiel is comfortably speaking about the end of time: perhaps he thinks that his asymmetric power over the rest of us – from wealth, from surveillance, from monopoly – will be secure for eternity.
"He’s wrong, though. It’s a pitiful misreading of the Bible to conclude that “the first” among us – the rich and powerful – are somehow favored by God. And anyway, these aren’t the last days. We’ll still be working for a more just society, and better technology, in a generation, and the one after that. That’s a future I can believe in."
Inside the everyday Facebook networks where far-right ideas grow
The Guardian spent a year studying an online community trading in anti-immigration sentiment and misinformation. Experts say such spaces can play a role in radicalisation
from the Guardian
"Far-right ideas are gaining ground. They are thriving in online worlds which are not easily visible to large swathes of the public but which spread misinformation that has real-world consequences."
Free Speech & How AI Is Radicalizing Men
I'm joined by Liz Plank and Laura Bates to discuss free speech and one of the most horrifying new developments in tech and misogyny
from Qasim Rashid
"Our two topics covered key issues surrounding free speech, and around AI and misogyny. I’m grateful to have this discussion because it is a critical discussion with two amazing leading voices. And I am fearful because I’m realizing that despite the documented and growing danger, media is woefully unprepared to address Trump’s onslaughts on free speech, and lawmakers globally are woefully unprepared to address AI’s radicalization of young men and the harm it is causing women."
We Urgently Call for International Red Lines to Prevent Unacceptable AI Risks
Launched during the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, this call has broad support from prominent leaders in policy, academia, and industry
from AI Red Lines
"AI holds immense potential to advance human wellbeing, yet its current trajectory presents unprecedented dangers. AI could soon far surpass human capabilities and escalate risks such as engineered pandemics, widespread disinformation, large-scale manipulation of individuals including children, national and international security concerns, mass unemployment, and systematic human rights violations.
"Some advanced AI systems have already exhibited deceptive and harmful behavior, and yet these systems are being given more autonomy to take actions and make decisions in the world. Left unchecked, many experts, including those at the forefront of development, warn that it will become increasingly difficult to exert meaningful human control in the coming years.
"Governments must act decisively before the window for meaningful intervention closes. An international agreement on clear and verifiable red lines is necessary for preventing universally unacceptable risks. These red lines should build upon and enforce existing global frameworks and voluntary corporate commitments, ensuring that all advanced AI providers are accountable to shared thresholds."
Digital Security Checklists for Activists
Plain language steps for digital security. Because protecting yourself helps keep your whole community safer
from Activist Checklist
Simple guides to keep us more safe. We built this because digital security shouldn't be overwhelming. We take a harm reduction approach: start where you are and do what you can."
Breaking the Social Media Prism
How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing
book by Chris Bail from Princeton Unversity Press
"In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves.
"Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off—detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit “reset” and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research."
A Facebook Insider’s Exposé
from NY Times
"For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book’s author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook (now called Meta), eventually as a director of global public policy. Now she has written an insider account of a company that she says was run by status-hungry and self-absorbed leaders, who chafed at the burdens of responsibility and became ever more feckless, even as Facebook became a vector for disinformation campaigns and cozied up to authoritarian regimes.
"In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Facebook employees embedded with the Trump campaign helped it micro-target potential voters, feeding them bespoke ads filled with “misinformation, inflammatory posts and fund-raising messages.” (The Clinton campaign declined Facebook’s offer to embed employees.) The following year, in Myanmar, a country heavily reliant on Facebook, hateful lies propagated on the platform incited a genocide against the minority Rohingya ethnic group."
5 Points for Anger 1 Point for Like
Facebook’s Formula Prioritized Anger and Ended up Spreading Misinformation
from The Hill
"Internal documents reveal Facebook’s algorithm prioritized angry reactions, which were disproportionately likely to push out misinformation to users."
Silicon Valley Enabled Brutal Mass Detention and Surveillance in China
from the AP
"The body camera hung from the top of the IV drip, recording the slightest twitch made by Yang Guoliang as he lay bloody and paralyzed in a hospital bed after a police beating with bricks.
"By then, surveillance was nothing new for the Yang family in rural China, snared in an intricate network based on U.S. technology that spies on them and predicts what they’ll do.
"Their train tickets, hotel bookings, purchases, text messages and phone calls are forwarded to the government. Their house is ringed with more than a dozen cameras. They’ve tried to go to Beijing 20 times in the past few years, but masked men show up and grab them, often before they depart. And last year, Yang’s wife and younger daughter were detained and now face trial for disrupting the work of the Chinese state — a crime carrying a sentence of up to a decade in prison.
"Yet the Yangs say they are not criminals. They are simply farmers trying to beg Beijing to stop local officials from seizing their 1 1/2 acres of land in China’s eastern Jiangsu province.
"Across China, tens of thousands of people tagged as troublemakers like the Yangs are trapped in a digital cage, barred from leaving their province and sometimes even their homes by the world’s largest digital surveillance apparatus. Most of this technology came from companies in a country that has long claimed to support freedoms worldwide: the United States.
"Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, an Associated Press investigation found. They sold billions of dollars of technology to the Chinese police, government and surveillance companies, despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Congress and in the media that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities.
"U.S. companies did this by bringing 'predictive policing' to China — technology that sucks in and analyzes data to prevent crime, protests, or terror attacks before they happen. Such systems mine a vast array of information — texts, calls, payments, flights, video, DNA swabs, mail deliveries, the internet, even water and power use — to unearth individuals deemed suspicious and predict their behavior. But they also allow Chinese police to threaten friends and family and preemptively detain people for crimes they have not even committed."
How Thousands of ‘Overworked, Underpaid’ Humans Train Google’s AI to Seem Smart
Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent
from the Guardian
"'AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,' said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. 'These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.'"
Social Media Algorithms
How They Control What We See
from Science News Today (Muhammad Tuhin)
"Social media platforms have become an integral part of our daily lives. Whether it’s scrolling through Instagram, watching TikTok videos, or catching up with friends on Facebook, the digital landscape has dramatically shifted our interactions, entertainment, and even how we consume news and information. At the heart of this digital revolution is one invisible force that drives almost everything we see online: social media algorithms.
"Algorithms dictate much of what appears in our feeds, shaping our online experiences in ways we don’t always realize. They decide which posts are worth showing to us, what content we find engaging, and even how long we stay on a platform. But how exactly do social media algorithms work? How do they determine what we see and why? And, perhaps most importantly, how do these algorithms impact our lives, behaviors, and beliefs?"
Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media
from The New Yorker
"In late 2022, the writer Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe how social-media companies make changes that benefit them but gradually, inevitably degrade user experience. In recent years, Facebook and X have buried news by deprioritizing links to articles. Instagram and Pinterest have flooded feeds with surreally inane A.I.-generated content, making it harder to find posts of interest. Social-media users who voice dismay at such changes are accustomed to feeling as if they are petitioning uncaring gods. Bluesky staff members, by contrast, like to describe users of decentralized technology as “agentic,” a jargony way of saying that they get to choose what they see.
"All the giant social networks are what’s known as centralized platforms: most aspects of user experience, from content moderation to algorithmic recommendations, are dictated by the corporation that runs the platform. Bluesky, by contrast, originated as a radical side project within Twitter under its co-founder and former C.E.O., Jack Dorsey, to create a decentralized social-media model. Where X or Facebook runs primarily on proprietary technology, Bluesky is powered by an open-source protocol, a sort of instruction manual and set of data standards that allows anyone to build compatible software on top of it. As a result, users can customize the algorithms and content-moderation rules that govern what appears in their feeds—and, if they don’t like Bluesky, they can take their followers and their archive of posts and build or join another site running on the same protocol. The power that typically lies with corporations is thus redistributed to the users themselves.
"Bluesky has become by far the largest decentralized social network and Graber (who, citing privacy concerns, gives her age as “around thirty-three”) the most high-profile female head of a social network in an industry known for eccentrically megalomaniacal men. With Trump and Musk in power, Silicon Valley leaders have taken a rightward turn. At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has cut back on fact checking, abandoned D.E.I. efforts, and said that the corporate world needs more “masculine energy.” Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, has ordered that the paper’s opinion pages publish only pieces that support “personal liberties and free markets.” Graber, who defines her politics as “anti-authoritarian,” sees Bluesky as a corrective to prevailing social media that subjects users to the whims of billionaires. “Elon, if he wanted to, could just delete the whole X time line—just do these totally arbitrary things,” she said, adding, “I think this self-styled tech-monarch thing is worth questioning. Do we want to live in that world?”
'Enshitification' of the Web
Conversations with Cory Doctorow
from WNYC On the Media
"On this show, we’ve spent many hours dissecting the digital anatomy of the internet. We’ve chronicled concerns about privacy, the appeal of connection, the rapture of echo chambers, and the ever-bumbling attempts to regulate it all. But now we turn to the increasingly potent feeling that, when it comes to the world wide web, everything kinda seems to be getting worse.
"In this three part series, Brooke sat down with Cory Doctorow, journalist, activist, author of the new novel Red Team Blues, and special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to discuss his theory on why going online might feel less and more repellent, how that happened, and what we can do about it."
Beyond Our Borders
How Foreign Disinformation Exploits America’s Pain
from Will Robinson
Utah Governor Spencer Cox was right to sound the alarm this week after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. He warned that bots and troll networks from Russia, China, and other adversaries were already spreading lies about the case—trying to stir chaos, fear, and division. His caution is well-placed.
"But here’s the hard truth: we don’t need foreign adversaries to flood our feeds with hate. There is already too much domestic incitement, too much reckless speech, too many bad actors inside our own borders willing to profit from polarization. What Russia or China add is an accelerant: they pour fuel on the fire we’ve already lit.
"A pattern we have seen before ... The playbook is clear: don’t create the crisis, just magnify it. Push the most polarizing narratives, pit Americans against one another, and weaken the credibility of our institutions at home and abroad.
"We can’t just wring our hands about foreign bots. We need to harden our defenses and rebuild trust...
"Foreign adversaries are watching, waiting, and amplifying. But the most important step is ours: refusing to let our grief and anger be hijacked. Protecting democracy means owning our own voices—and making sure they’re louder, truer, and more human than any bot could ever be."
A DHS Data Hub Exposed Sensitive Intel to Thousands of Unauthorized Users
A misconfigured platform used by the Department of Homeland Security left national security information—including some related to the surveillance of Americans—accessible to thousands of people.
from Wired
"The Department of Homeland Security's mandate to carry out domestic surveillance has been a concern for privacy advocates since the organization was first created in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Now a data leak affecting the DHS's intelligence arm has shed light not just on how the department gathers and stores that sensitive information—including about its surveillance of Americans—but on how it once left that data exposed to thousands of government and private sector workers and even foreign nationals who were never authorized to see it."
Ice Obtains Access to Israeli-Made Spyware that can Hack Phones and Encrypted Apps
Trump administration contract with Paragon Solutions gives immigration agency access to one of the most powerful stealth cyberweapons
from the Guardian
"US immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.
"It means that one of the most powerful stealth cyber-weapons ever created – which was produced outside the US – is now in the hands of an agency that has repeatedly been accused by civil and human rights groups of violating people’s due process rights."
US Investment in Spyware Is Skyrocketing
from Wired
"The United States has emerged as the largest investor in commercial spyware—a global industry that has enabled the covert surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, politicians, diplomats, and others, posing grave threats to human rights and national security.
"Another notable example of a new US-based investment in spyware is the late-2024 acquisition of Israeli spyware vendor Paragon Solutions by AE Industrial Partners, a Florida-based, national-security-focused private equity firm. Paragon made headlines last week when its one-year contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—first reported by WIRED in October 2024—was suddenly reactivated after a lengthy pause.
"Civil society groups described the move by the Trump administration as 'extremely troubling' and said it 'compounds the civil liberties concerns surrounding the rapid and dramatic expansion of ICE’s budget and authority.'"
I Am An AI Hater
from moser's frame shop
Critics have already written thoroughly about the environmental harms, the reinforcement of bias and generation of racist output, the cognitive harms and AI supported suicides, the problems with consent and copyright, the way AI tech companies further the patterns of empire, how it’s a con that enables fraud and disinformation and harassment and surveillance, the exploitation of workers, as an excuse to fire workers and de-skill work, how they don’t actually reason and probability and association are inadequate to the goal of intelligence, how people think it makes them faster when it makes them slower, how it is inherently mediocre and fundamentally conservative, how it is at its core a fascist technology rooted in the ideology of supremacy, defined not by its technical features but by its political ones.
"But I am more than a critic: I am a hater. I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument, because people have already done that. If you’re pushing slop or eating it, you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider.
"I am here to be rude, because this is a rude technology, and it deserves a rude response. Miyazaki said, 'I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.' Scam Altman said we can surround the solar system with a Dyson Sphere to hold data centers. Miyazaki is right, and Altman is wrong. Miyazaki tells stories that blend the ordinary and the fantastic in ways people find deeply meaningful. Altman tells lies for money.
DOGE Put Critical Social Security Data at Risk, Whistle-Blower Says
DOGE team members uploaded a database with the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server, according to the agency’s chief data officer.
from NYTimes
"Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.
"The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.
"The account by the whistle-blower, Charles Borges, underscores concerns that have led to lawsuits seeking to block young software engineers at the agency built by Elon Musk from having access to confidential government data. In his complaint, Mr. Borges said DOGE members copied the data to an internal agency server that only DOGE could access, forgoing the type of 'independent security monitoring' normally required under agency policy for such sensitive data and creating 'enormous vulnerabilities.'"
How Plants and Fungi Trade Resources Without a Brain
Over the past few decades, scientists have come to increasingly appreciate plant intelligence
from NPR
"A billion years ago, there were no plants on land. Plants managed to expand from the oceans by trading with fungi and microbes, who could break rocks down into nutrients they needed.
"This led to a 90% reduction in CO2 levels," says Kiers. "We owe our atmosphere, we owe our forests, we owe our grasslands to this partnership."
"(Mycorrhizae are still responsible for drawing down so much CO2 each year—the equivalent of 1/3 the emissions from fossil fuels—that Kiers co-founded an organization, SPUN, to "protect the underground" the same way we protect the Amazon Rainforest and biodiversity hotspots like the Galapago.)
"'I do think there's something to be said about intact networks,' she says. 'They really offer a lot of resilience.'"
Carlo Acutis, ‘God’s influencer’ who died aged 15, declared a saint by Pope Leo
London-born Italian, who died in 2006, built websites to spread Catholic teaching and is credited with two miracles
from the Guardian
"Acutis was particularly interested in computer science and devoured college-level books on programming even as a youngster. A skilful coder, his whiz-kid reputation started to grow when he created websites for Catholic organisations
"Carlo, who died of leukaemia, built websites to spread Catholic teaching, earning him the nickname 'God’s influencer'. He was canonised alongside Pier Giorgio Frassati, another young Catholic activist, who died a century ago.
"Leo said both men created 'masterpieces' out of their lives by dedicating them to God. A hour before the Mass, St Peter’s Square was already full with pilgrims, many of them young millennial Italians.
"'The greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan,' Leo said in his homily. The new saints 'are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces'."
Center for Democracy & Technology
the leading nonpartisan, nonprofit organization fighting to advance civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age
"We shape technology policy, governance, and design with a focus on equity and democratic values. Established in 1994, CDT has been a trusted advocate for digital rights since the earliest days of the internet."
Surveillance Self-Defense
Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications
from Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Read the basics to find out how online surveillance works. Dive into our tool guides for instructions to installing our pick of the best, most secure applications. We have more detailed information in our further learning sections. If you’d like a guided tour, look for our list of common security scenarios."
Digital Security Education
Explore resources, training, and other services you can use to protect your work and your sources in the digital age
from Freedom of the Press Foundation
"Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Digital Security training team is dedicated to safeguarding journalists, documentary filmmakers, and their sources from digital threats. Our team of experts provides training services and resources designed to protect you from surveillance, prevent hacking attacks, mitigate online harassment, and much more."
U.S. J-School Digital Security Curriculum
A semester-long curriculum made specifically for journalism students
from Freedom of the Press Foundation
"Mastering digital security is one of the best ways journalists can protect themselves and their sources in the digital age. We regularly work with news organizations to lock down their social media accounts, encrypt their communications, and mitigate online harassment."
AI is starting to secretly edit your files
from Mark Hurst (Creative Good)
"One of the scarier headlines I’ve recently comes from the BBC: YouTube secretly used AI to edit people’s videos (August 24, 2025). This is just as I predicted on Techtonic a few weeks ago in my episode on three emerging dystopias (July 28, 2025), in which I warned that Big Tech AIs would – at some point in the future – start modifying the primary sources that we rely on as sources of truth.
"I never guessed that it would happen so soon."
Thinking About Google in Terms of Zombies
from Tedium
"Google announces a plan to add yet another barrier to the ease of getting an ultra-simple Web search. Great."
"Based on a data point about how people are less likely to click on a link when they see an AI overview, the story helps to highlight how AI just ruins what made Google searches good. It’s not just what Google adds to them—it’s how it obfuscates original reporting and even favors LLM-generated content over the real thing"
Online News Publishers Face 'Extinction-Level Event' from Google's AI-Powered Search
from NPR
"Publishers worry about a time when Google stops sending traffic to websites altogether. Tech observers and publishers have dubbed such a scenario "zero-click" searching, or Google Zero. It's an event that would be catastrophic to many major news sites and other online publishers that rely on traffic-based online advertising revenue, according to advocates for the media organizations.
"'Google is using our content without compensation, offering no meaningful way to opt out without disappearing from search entirely — and then turning around and using that same content to compete with us,' said Danielle Coffey, who leads the News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 outlets. 'It's parasitic, it's unsustainable and it poses a real existential threat to many in our industry.'"
Not just electricity — water supplies will be taxed by data centers
from Minnesota Reformer
"One large-scale data center can consume as much water as 12,000 households, according to the the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
"...proposed mines, factories and data centers threaten to deplete the underground aquifers that supply up to 40% of the Great Lakes’ volume — and drinking water reserves for nearly three-quarters of Minnesotans."
BlackRock’s bid for Minnesota Power worries consumer advocates
from Minnesota Reformer
"A private equity buyout of the electric utility serving large swathes of northern Minnesota could weaken its finances and jeopardize its compliance with Minnesota’s carbon-free power standard — while raising rates and reducing reliability for more than 150,000 customers, administrative law judge Megan J. McKenzie said on July 15. McKenzie’s lengthy report called on the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission — or the PUC — to reject the proposed deal."
Fully Automated Hacking
from Control/AI
"AI agents are rapidly improving across crucial domains such as math, cybersecurity, biology, and chemical engineering, and conclude that since controlling agents pursuing long-term goals is harder, AI development 'follows a dangerous trajectory'."
How you can stop Peter Thiel’s Palantir
from Robert Reich
"As I have written, Palantir is at the nexus of several worrisome realities: artificial intelligence, Trump’s use of the U.S. military on American civilians, his attack on immigrants, his collection of personal information on millions of Americans, and the parts of Silicon Valley dedicated to turning the U.S. from a democracy into a dictatorship led by tech bros.
"Palantir sells an AI-based platform that allows its users — among them, military and law enforcement agencies — to analyze personal data, including social media profiles, personal information, and physical characteristics. These are used to identify and surveil individuals.
"In March, Trump signed an executive order requiring all agencies and departments of the federal government to share data on Americans. To get the job done, Trump chose Palantir Technologies.
"According to New York Times reporting, Palantir’s software may now be used to combine data gleaned from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, the administration wants access to citizens’ and others’ bank account numbers and medical claims."
Fighting the Firehose
How to Counter Right-Wing Disinformation Without Playing Their Game
"The modern right’s media strategy is built on volume, speed, emotion, and repetition.
"It borrows from Russian propaganda playbooks, supercharges them with American capitalism, and distributes it through everything from podcasts to Facebook groups to memes. It's powered by think tanks, billionaire donors, fringe influencers, and culture war entrepreneurs.
"The goal isn’t to persuade people logically — it’s to shape the entire information environment. To confuse, demoralize, distract, and isolate."
So how do we fight back?
"Not by shouting into the void. Not by trying to fact-check every lie. But by using strategic, tested, and community-driven techniques - many drawn from how Eastern European democracies pushed back against Russian disinformation without becoming authoritarian themselves."
De Flock
Flock Camera Locations
"Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are cameras that capture images of all passing license plates, storing details like the car's location, date, and time. These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles—regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. While these systems can be useful for tracking stolen cars or wanted individuals, they are mostly used to track the movements of innocent people.
"LPRs are a threat to your privacy and civil liberties. They're regularly used to track everyone's movements without a warrant, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion. Law enforcement agencies use them for various purposes, including ICE raids and tracking abortion seekers across state lines.
"Learn more about how Flock, the most popular ALPR vendor1, is being used in your community on the independent site: Eyes on Flock."
Surveillance Company Flock Now Using AI to Report Us to Police if it Thinks Our Movement Patterns Are 'Suspicious'
from the ACLU
"The police surveillance company Flock has built an enormous nationwide license plate tracking system, which streams records of Americans’ comings and goings into a private national database that it makes available to police officers around the country. The system allows police to search the nationwide movement records of any vehicle that comes to their attention. That’s bad enough on its own, but the company is also now apparently analyzing our driving patterns to determine if we’re 'suspicious.' That means if your police start using Flock, they could target you just because some algorithm has decided your movement patterns suggest criminality."
Agencies that use License Plate Readers (LPR)
from Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (MN)
"This page contains information provided by Minnesota law enforcement agencies about their use of License Plate Reader (LPR) technology. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) publishes this information on the BCA website as required by Minnesota law."
Surveillance locations in St. Louis County
Flock Camera Locations
- Co. Rd. 7 S/B @ Co. Rd. 133 (Meadowlands, MN)
- Midway Rd. N/B @ Seville Rd. (Hermantown, MN)
- Lavaque Rd. S/B @ Martin Rd. (Duluth, MN)
- Co. Rd. 7 N/B @ Co. Rd. 101 (Iron, MN)
- Rice Lake Rd N/B @ Martin Rd. (Duluth, MN)
- Co. Rd. 21 S/B @ Wahlsten Rd. (Embarrass, MN)
- Co. Rd. 4 N/B @ Co. Rd. 16 (Aurora, MN)
- US Hwy 53 S/B @ MN 194 (Duluth, MN)
- Co. Rd. 77 N/B @ Lost Lake Rd (Tower, MN)
- US Hwy 5 S/B @ Hobson Lake Rd. (Hibbing, MN)
Minnesota sheriff’s departments seek to cooperate with ICE
from Minnesota Post
"While Minnesota has been derided as a ‘sanctuary’ by the Trump administration, seven counties have agreed to help implement federal immigration law."
Data Center Download — Water
from MCEA
"Proposals for data centers are popping up all over the state. In some cases, cities aren't even revealing if large industrial proposals are for data centers at all, using non-disclosure agreements to keep communities in the dark. In response we've started making information requests for communications between the cities and companies that they're legally obligated to provide.
"In fact, as it stands, these data centers don't need to apply for their own water withdrawal permits at all. Instead, they are using a permit that the city already has, and asking the city to apply for larger withdrawals. From the outside, it may look as if the city needs more water for residents and businesses, but in fact, a single user has come in and doubled the demand.
"This also creates a perverse incentive for cities to compete against each other to market their water resources to attract these facilities, and disincentives cooperation among cities to plan for sustainable regional water use. With at least 10 data centers proposed on the outer edges of the Twin Cities, and no scrutiny of individual permits or analysis of the cumulative effects of these large increases, this is an unsustainable situation that will harm Minnesota's water resources."
The trillion-dollar AI arms race is here
from the Guardian
"Tech companies are fighting to claim the title of having the world's most advanced AI. The goal is to supercharge their bottom line and keep investors and Wall Street happy. But developing the world's most advanced AI means spending billions on data centers and other physical infrastructure to house and power the supercomputers needed for AI. It also means a drain on natural resources and the grid in the areas surrounding data centers worldwide."
"Claims that artificial intelligence will help solve the climate crisis are misguided, with the technology instead likely cause rising energy use and turbocharge the spread of climate disinformation, a coalition of environmental groups has warned."
In a first-of-its-kind decision, an AI company wins a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by authors
from NPR
"AI companies could have the legal right to train their large language models on copyrighted works — as long as they obtain copies of those works legally.
"That's the upshot of a first-of-its-kind ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco on Monday in an ongoing copyright infringement case that pits a group of authors against a major AI company.
"The ruling is significant because it represents the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems."
Phone Searches at the US Border Hit a Record High
from Wired
"Customs and Border Protection agents searched nearly 15,000 devices from April through June of this year, a nearly 17 percent spike over the previous three-month high in 2022.
"United States Custom and Border Protection officials have sweeping powers to search anyone’s phone when they are entering the country—including US citizens. Newly released figures show that over the past three months, CBP officials have been searching more phones and other devices than ever before.
"The increase in phone and device searches at the border comes as the second Trump administration takes aggressive actions on migration, with a vast increase in budget for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and thousands of arrests taking place. Since the start of the year, people traveling to the US have reported long detentions, intrusive phone searches and allegedly being denied entry due to content on their devices. In recent months, some European travelers have canceled trips to the US, while the number of Canadian visitors to the US has dropped for seven consecutive months."
ICE is Detaining Journalists
from the ACLU
"ICE is detaining journalist Mario Guevara for reporting on law enforcement activity – so the ACLU and ACLU of Georgia are petitioning the court for his immediate release.
"Two months ago, millions showed up across the country to protest the Trump administration's massive abuses of power. This 'No Kings' protest was the largest yet in a series of protests condemning President Trump's attacks on our rights.
"Among those in attendance to document the event was Mario Guevara, a prominent Georgia journalist who's been covering immigration and law enforcement activity for over 20 years. That day, even though he was wearing a press vest and attending in his capacity as a journalist, he was detained and arrested by local police.
"Even though all criminal charges against him were dropped and an immigration judge granted bond, ICE has refused to release him – arguing that his livestreaming and reporting are dangerous. Guevara is still in custody today, over two months since he was arrested while reporting on a protest, five hours away from his family."
FEMA Now Requires Disaster Victims to Have an Email Address
from Wired
"The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will now require disaster survivors to register for federal aid using an email address—a departure from previous policy where email addresses were optional. The move, FEMA employees tell WIRED, puts people across the US with little to no access to internet services at risk of losing out on crucial federal financial assistance after disasters.
"In 2022, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the government agency that advises the president on telecoms and information policy, reported that one in five American households had no access to the internet in their homes. While the majority of offline households said they had no desire to be online, nearly 20 percent said that they couldn’t afford internet access. Offline households, NTIA data shows, are more likely than their online counterparts to make less than $25,000 a year, and are more likely to be racial and ethnic minorities. NTIA data from November 2023 shows that nearly 17 percent of households in Missouri and 20 percent of households in Tennessee—the two states where FEMA workers spoke to WIRED—had no internet use at all in the home.
"'Email is already a MAJOR barrier for a lot of survivors, especially the elderly,' they say. 'They must use the email to create a profile on disasterassistance.gov, and this is where their correspondence is. They receive an email informing them they have a new letter, but the actual letter is within their online profile. They have to do all these verifications to access it, and it’s too much for a lot of people. A lot need postal, and email is a terrible option for them even if they have an email address and know how to read their emails.'
"The changes come amid a wider push from the agency to shift aid following disasters from the federal government to the state. As WIRED reported in May, the agency has phased out door-to-door surveying of survivors this summer. FEMA workers worry what even more obstacles to aid could mean for those in need."
Christian Militants Are Using Instagram to Recruit—and Becoming Influencers in the Process
from Wired
"An emerging guard of paramilitary activists are using social media and edgy aesthetics to build a new brand of anti-government, Christian nationalist militias."
Day Zero: The Empire Strikes Again
AIs surpass humans at hacking, while the dangerous AI race continues with GPT-5, Claude 4.1, and Genie 3.
from Control AI
"AI hacking systems could be a double-edged sword. Systems like XBOW can be used to find and patch vulnerabilities in computer systems, but in the wrong hands they could potentially be used to launch unprecedented cyberattacks.
"This should be viewed within the context of AIs becoming more capable across the board, including in dangerous domains. OpenAI's recent ChatGPT Agent was the first system classified as "High" capability in biological and chemical domains, able to "meaningfully help a novice to create severe biological harm".
Disaster in the Making
Trump to Open 401(k)s to Crypto, Private Equity Vultures
from Common Dreams
"U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday that would allow private equity and cryptocurrencies into Americans' 401(k)s, appeasing corporate interests that lobbied for the change and disregarding warnings about the risks it poses to retirement accounts."
Sesame Street, State Media, and the Fast March to Fascism
& How We Fight Back
from Qasim Rashid
"It’s hard to overstate how devastating the Trump regime’s latest move is: the total defunding and shutdown of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). This calculated attack will kneecap NPR and PBS, strip millions of children of educational programming, and further erode one of the few remaining pillars of independent, public-minded journalism and storytelling in America. Adding to this injury is the insult of a required 'bias monitor' before Trump’s FCC approves the Skydance/Paramount merger. We are one step closer to state media, and we need to keep ourselves informed...
"Once, the media was called the 'fourth estate,' a watchdog to hold power accountable. Today, much of it has been reduced to a lapdog, justifying its own subservience under the guise of 'neutrality.' But there is nothing neutral about normalizing fascism.
"So we’re left with a choice: accept this collapse, or build something better."
Flock's Surveillance System Might Already Be Overseeing Your Community
Millions in Public Funds, Zero Public Input
from Drop Site
"Flock is a $7.5 billion surveillance technology company, operating in over 5,000 communities across 49 states. Flock has a proven playbook to expand through securing local government contracts, often behind closed doors.
"Flock's technology has been used to assist with everything from ICE investigations in Illinois to abortion investigations in Texas. 'Local police around the country are performing lookups in Flock's AI-powered automatic license plate reader (ALPR) system for 'immigration' related searches and as part of other ICE investigations, giving federal law enforcement side-door access to a tool that it currently does not have a formal contract for,' 404 Media reported in May. A Johnson county sheriff searched over 83,000 cameras to prosecute a woman traveling over state lines to obtain an abortion, including searches of thousands of cameras in Washington and Illinois where abortion is legal, according to data obtained by 404 Media.
"The technology brings into question the presumption of innocence, the legal principle that people are innocent until proven guilty. Charles Siefe, the former NSA employee who spoke at the June 10th meeting in Scarsdale, explained to Drop Site how Flock provides a system of 'persistent severance' through interconnected Live View Cameras (LVCs) and License Plate Readers (LPRs). 'You can actually go into the database and look for stuff to see if you can tag that person with a crime.' He compares this to traffic stops, saying, 'police officers know if you follow someone in a car for a couple of miles, the likelihood is you'll be able to pull them over for something.'"
How Big Tech Powered A Justice Department Coup
from The Lever
"After a secret lobbying effort, Trump's Justice Department ousted staff and reversed course on Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proposed megamerger."
DOJ Demands Access to Minnesota’s Voter Rolls
from Democracy Docket
"The Minnesota letter, sent to Secretary of State Steve Simon (D) on June 25, asked the state to provide information on HAVA-related questions involving voter registration, voter roll maintenance procedures and the state’s security measures to ensure unauthorized individuals can’t access voter rolls."
How Do We Stop Trump, Thiel & Their Approaching AI Autocracy?
from Blue Amp
"Trump’s second term is already a constitutional demolition derby:
- ICE raiding sanctuary cities with no due process.
- Mass deportation orders streamlined through algorithmic 'targeting' lists.
- Tariff trade wars launched without congressional oversight—crashing small businesses, jacking up prices, creating global instability with no accountability.
- Militarized responses to protest and domestic surveillance of political opponents.
- A provision hidden in Trump’s budget bill making it easier for him to ignore court orders without being held in contempt.
- A DOJ that declared there is no Epstein client list after promising one existed—and nobody inside Trump World wants to talk about who’s protecting who…
And now? They want to plug AI into all of it."
Peter Thiel Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
from Blue Amp
"Billionaire Peter Thiel hints at replacing democracy with elite tech rule in shocking NYT interview—what it means for 2025, AI, and the future of freedom."
"In a recent New York Times podcast interview, billionaire technocrat Peter Thiel pulled back the curtain—just a little bit—on the ideology that has guided his decades-long mission (some might say obsession) to reshape American power.
"What Thiel revealed in this interview didn’t resemble a vision of progress. It was a peek inside the heart of darkness, moral decay and a blueprint for authoritarian control.
"Thiel, the gay Silicon Valley billionaire who has backed Donald Trump since 2016, dismissed democracy as inefficient. He also questioned whether 'too much participation' in our democracy has slowed America down. He openly fantasized about a post-liberal world governed by elite, centralized forces.
"Thiel believes in acceleration. Not just of technology, but of upheaval. Collapse. Of a civilization and democracy so paralyzed by complexity that it must be reset by something stronger—smarter, harder, colder. Something more 'rational.'
"This 'rational' ideology—which has a cult-like devotion among its followers—is called accelerationism. It un-ironically borrows from Karl Marx, and is shared by white supremacist groups who lead terror attacks against modern society to *hasten acceleration* of its fall."
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
from Freedom of the Press Foundation
"President Trump received a total of $32 million to settle his claims against ABC News and CBS News. With ongoing suits against the Des Moines Register and The Wall Street Journal, he is more emboldened than ever to pursue claims against the news media."
"In July, we received reports of dozens of additional aggressions against journalists across the country, from Atlanta to Spokane. We've documented 14 arrests or detentions, 64 assaults, eight instances of journalists' equipment being damaged, and two where it was searched. Of the more than 75 affected journalists, most reported exposure to chemical irritants at least once.
"While the Tracker is investigating two dozen additional reports, one thing is already clear: Law enforcement officers responding to the protests — including federal agents — either don't care that members of the press are being injured or are deliberately targeting them."
Data Center Download
from Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy
"Right now, some of the world's largest tech companies are quietly planning massive data centers across Minnesota. These facilities could use as much electricity as every home in our state combined, consume millions of gallons of water daily, and operate with minimal public oversight."
"Across the state, these facilities are moving forward without comprehensive environmental review or meaningful public input."
"Before we hand over our water, energy, and natural resources to Big Tech, Minnesotans deserve answers to four essential questions:
- Energy - Where will the electricity come from?
- Water - Would our ground and surface waters be protected?
- Materials - Would these operations drive more appeals for mining?
- Community Impact - How would neighbors be affected?"
In a first-of-its-kind decision, an AI company wins a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by authors
from NPR
"AI companies could have the legal right to train their large language models on copyrighted works — as long as they obtain copies of those works legally.
"That's the upshot of a first-of-its-kind ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco on Monday in an ongoing copyright infringement case that pits a group of authors against a major AI company.
"The ruling is significant because it represents the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems."
Privacy scholar Daniel Solove: "We're entering a dark age"
from Creative Good
"I started the interview by asking Solove about the "nothing to hide" argument – that is, the reason many people give for not being worried about intrusive surveillance. You've probably heard it: "I don't mind if they know everything about me, because I have nothing to hide."
"As Solove points out, such a response misses the point entirely about what's at stake in a society devolving into a surveillance state. For starters, individual data is being tracked and analyzed largely without citizens' knowledge or consent, which first harms the marginal and vulnerable but eventually creates negative effects for everyone else. But that's just the beginning.
"The more systemic issue, Solove says, is that privacy is a fundamental requirement for a free and democratic society. Conversely, the loss of privacy creates the conditions for autocrats and totalitarian ideologies to take over."
ICE Is Getting Unprecedented Access to Medicaid Data
from Wired
"Per the agreement, ICE officials will get login credentials for a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) database containing sensitive medical information, including detailed records about diagnoses and procedures. Language in the agreement says it will allow ICE to access personal information such as home addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, banking data, and social security numbers."
U.S. Companies Honed Their Surveillance Tech in Israel. Now It's Coming Home.
from The Intercept
"Since he took office barely six months ago, Donald Trump has handed billionaire Peter Thiel's surveillance company, Palantir, contracts reportedly worth more than $113 million to build detailed profiles of Americans. Here's what they're planning to do with that data:
"Track immigrants' movements in real time. Monitor their social media. Map where they live, work, and travel. Generate instant reports on visa holders that include what they look like and with whom they associate.
"And targeting immigrants is just the beginning.
"Palantir specializes in mining personal data from thousands of sources — your social media, financial records, travel patterns, associations — and converting it all into searchable databases that map connections between individuals and organizations. This isn't speculation. It's already happening — and Trump is turbocharging it.
"U.S. spy agencies plan to create a master surveillance database that would make it even easier for them to surveil anyone they choose. This massive database would be a one-stop shop for authorities that want to track, intimidate, and retaliate against Americans — all built with our tax dollars.
"The Intercept also recently highlighted how U.S. companies like Palantir first honed these surveillance technologies on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. After Trump's reelection, the companies thought they could now operate with little pushback at home, so they're bringing those same tools to American soil."
Preparing devices for travel through a US border
from Freeedom of the Press Foundation
"We wrote this checklist to help journalists prepare for transit through a U.S. port of entry while preserving the confidentiality of your most sensitive information, such as unpublished reporting materials or source contact information. It's important to think about your strategy in advance, and begin planning which options in this checklist make sense for you."
Micro-Creator Training
from Indivisible
- When:
- Sep 30, 3:00pm
- Where:
- Virtual via Zoom
Join us for the kickoff of Indivisible’s brand-new Micro-Creator Training Series, a 4-part monthly program designed to turn local leaders into powerful digital storytellers.
The Fourth Estate
and Its Role in Democracy
from Scot Nakagawa (the Anti-Authoritarian Playbook)
"The press is supposed to be the Fourth Estate; the watchdog that keeps the three branches of government in check. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches have formal checks and balances, but the media is supposed to function as the unofficial fourth pillar, making sure none of them get away with abusing power in the dark…
"This is why authoritarians, oligarchs, and corrupt elites hate independent journalism. It’s one of the only institutions that can meaningfully challenge their power. And this is also why they’ve spent decades trying to dismantle or co-opt it…
"Fighting back requires two things: protecting independent journalism from state repression and breaking corporate control of the media. Here’s how..."