Greetings all, and hope ye had a lovely weekend.
Apologies for the slight time lag on the newsletter, blame jet lag. It turns out three long haul flights in 9 days is quite tiring. It was a really productive and fun trip to Bangkok and Kampala though, working on the UN SR FoAA’s forthcoming report on surveillance and chilling effects. Latin America up next, although with a few weeks recovery time in between. Thanks to everyone who talked to us. And the food in Bangkok, oh! That traffic tho.
So, the big news of the week is obviously that Kim Kardashian has blamed ChatGPT for failing some of her law exams. Let that be a lesson.
There’s quite a bit of facial recognition news this week. There is the absolutely insane story in the Economist about using face analysis to make determinations about who to hire. I kind of feel like that approach has been tried in the past. And it didn’t work out well? There are also reports that police in the USA are using a facial recognition app to find immigrants. Given the possibility for error, both in facial recognition and with ICE – and the reality of ICE detention – this is quite a scary turn. The EFF also discuss Amazon’s proposal to equip ring cameras with facial recognition tech.
Speaking of the rapid expansion in surveillance capabilities, the New York Times has an interesting piece on tech for citizen and city surveillance in China, which sets out the type of surveillance possible, and links to WIRED’s piece on Mamdani’s inheritance of the NYPD’s surveillance architecture.
I’ll leave you this week with ‘Berghain’ from Rosalia’s new album. I’ve only started listening to the album, but its mindblowing so far. Incredibly intense, but beautiful. Its actually kind of hard to pull out one song, because i think with this one, the album is the thing.
Stay well, stay lovely.
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War on the Rocks, Without a Standard for Autonomy, the U.S. Military Will Get Lost in the Fog of War
WIRED, Zohran Mamdani Just Inherited the NYPD Surveillance State
The New York Times, China’s Security State Sells an A.I. Dream
The Register, Mozilla fellow Esra’a Al Shafei watches the watchers
EDRi, European Parliament backs Europol expansion: “A dangerous step towards mass surveillance in the EU”
The New York Times, A.I. Is Making Death Threats Way More Realistic
NOYB, EU Commission internal draft would wreck core principles of the GDPR
EFF, The Legal Case Against Ring’s Face Recognition Feature
Business & Human Rights, 59 Microsoft shareholders push for improved human rights due diligence to prevent customer misuse of AI and cloud services (re allegations used by IDF)
EFF, License Plate Surveillance Logs Reveal Racist Policing Against Romani People
The Hill, Google Maps introduces new features supported by Gemini AI
The Hill, Leaked documents show Meta makes billions from scam ads, report says
The HIll, San Francisco leaders call for new checks on Waymo after death of beloved cat KitKat
404 media, DHS Gives Local Cops a Facial Recognition App To Find Immigrants
The Economist, Should facial analysis help determine whom companies hire? (tl;dr. no).
The Guardian, HMRC trial of child benefit crackdown wrongly suspected fraud in 46% of cases
The Hill, One Tech Tip: Modern cars are spying on you. Here’s what you can do about it
BBC, No digital ID checks until you change jobs, says No 10 – BBC News
The Guardian, US expands facial recognition technology at borders to track non-citizens
Financial Times, AI will lead one in four big UK businesses to cut staffing, research shows
The Register, Microsoft teases agents that become ‘independent users’
Financial Times, Is human imitation the right goal for technology?
The Register, Google’s Gemini Deep Research can now read your Gmail and rummage through Google Drive
The Register, AI could worsen inequalities in schools – teachers are key to whether it will