😬 "This works similar to a normal camera, the difference being that in our case, radio waves instead of light waves are used for the recognition," explains the cybersecurity expert. "Thus, it does not matter whether you carry a WiFi device on you or not."

People in southern Lebanon are living under "psychological terror" from Israeli air attacks and displacement orders https://aje.news/e5132d

BREAKING: Global Sumud Flotilla activists released from Israeli custody after Israel seized an aid flotilla bound for Gaza in international waters, say they were tortured, sexually assaulted and denied basic legal rights. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/finz9n

On the one-year anniversary of EMPIRE OF AI, I am so, so excited to announce The AI Resist List, a new project that documents examples of resistance to the AI empires around the world 😍 airesistlist.org

Today @who.int declared a PHEIC—a public health emergency of international concern—for the Bundibugyo ebolavirus outbreak in DRC/Uganda without convening an Emergency Committee. That is unprecedented. The situation is catastrophic. Six experts explain why: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKag...

NEW: Mayo Clinic, the massive U.S. hospital network, is using what it describes as “Ambient Listening” to record patient interactions with nurses, including in emergency rooms, then using AI to process that collected data.

Medical misogyny is bad for everyone, actually

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr

This is also what organizations sign up for when they align with existential risk: AI policy that does not care a wit about people who are suffering health conditions from data center expansion, or digital discrimination. Policy that accepts massive layoffs as the cost of "progress".

Oh my. This is spectacular. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

**blinks in minneapolis**

🚨 NEWS: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit just rolled back nationwide access to the abortion pill mifepristone—BLOCKING telehealth prescriptions and mail delivery allowed under a 2023 Food and Drug Administration policy.

Today @evangreer.bsky.social of @fightforthefuture.org writes on dangerous social media surveillance legislation that would force everyone in MA to upload a government ID to post, and attempts to "keep children safe" from the internet around the country. www.welcometohellworld.com/the-kids-are...

The Trump administration rejected all four women farmers chosen by their peers to represent them in an industry group called the United Soybean Board earlier this year, a rare intervention by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that three of the women suspected was because of their gender.

The data broker loophole allows agencies to buy personal data without a warrant. As Congress weighs FISA 702 and AI use, Senior Civil Rights Policy Advisor at UnidosUS, Claudia Ruiz, calls for reforms to the law that would require a court order before agencies can purchase sensitive data.

Are you 1 of the ~9 million Americans in a state where your legislators banned the sale of your precise location data? Say goodbye to that protection! The SECURE Data Act allows the sale of your location data w/ consent. Don’t want to consent? Too bad, you can’t use the app. Hope you didn’t need it!

Are you in the ~75% of Americans who think there should be more regulation to protect personal information? This bill doesn’t do that. House Republicans somehow took 65 pages to tell Big Tech “keep on doing what you’re doing.” A weak federal standard is worse than no standard at all.

The SECURE Data Act is not a serious effort at tackling the urgent privacy crisis facing this country. It is weaker than many existing state laws (the very state laws that it would wipe off the books with its broad preemption provision). Some examples:

This bill is a gift to Big Tech. It would wipe out a huge range of privacy, security, online safety, and civil rights laws w/o providing any meaningful protections for Americans. EPIC calls on any member of Congress who cares about protecting Americans online to oppose the SECURE Data Act.

A federal privacy law that preempts state privacy laws is not consumer-friendly unless it goes above and beyond the laws it replaces. This would unleash even more consumer health data into the hands of data brokers, insurers, and law enforcement while removing rights of millions of Americans.

Exclusive: The acting director of the CDC has delayed publication of a report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of ER visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists.

Meta’s Muse Spark model offers to analyze users’ health data, including lab results. Beyond the obvious privacy risks, it’s not a capable stand-in for a real doctor. www.wired.com/story/metas-...

Six months into ‘ceasefire’, Gaza suffers under persistent Israeli attacks https://aje.news/cwf0ve

NEW: The FBI was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database, multiple people present for FBI testimony in a trial told 404 Media.

People in power just take everything good this world has and ruin it.

This seems bad.

Large language models like ChatGPT have hardly stopped hitting the headlines over the past couple of years. But one topic that hasn’t received enough attention is what impact they have on our privacy.

We are not in the "AI era." We are in the "source: trust me, bro" era.

mass murder every day

This is real

⚠️ Israel bombed a synagogue in Iran this morning. The Rafie Nia Synagogue in Tehran was completely destroyed. (Photos via AryJeay on X)

This is just it: a madman is one thing. The entire government looking the other way is our undoing.

Armageddon is terrible, but our only other option was diversity trainings at work.

We could be looking at one of the worst humanitarian crises in history tonight.

Absolute lunatic

"Lenacapavir is an injectable version of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) that only needs to be administered two times per year — something that’s especially valuable for people who face barriers accessing daily or frequent medication..." 1/2

🛎🛎🛎 "Many of these people are not replacing their doctors. They are telling a chatbot the things they would never say to one. That candor fills a genuine gap, and any serious privacy framework needs to protect it rather than drive it underground."

Billions of photos are shared on social media every day. Each one of those is now a portal to your precise location. New developments in a type of artificial intelligence called Vision-Language Models are a huge threat on your privacy.

A reliable metric for a losing war: notice how often a combatant describes inputs (ordinance dropped, resources committed, duration of operation) as a substitute for outputs (effects a military operation is intending to produce).

“Sycophancy was present across all the chatbots they tested, & the bots frequently told users that their actions or beliefs were justified in cases where the user was acting deceptively, doing something illegal, or engaging in otherwise harmful or abusive behavior.”🧪

i went into this expecting the medical grievance denial rate in federal prisons to be in like the 70–80% range after crunching the numbers, i found that 98% of the 66,000 medical grievances lodged between 2014–2024 were rejected by BOP; less than 1,000 cases were granted relief in 10 years

Data brokers buy up huge amounts of information from cell phones and browsers to sell for targeted advertising. But the government, including ICE, also buys the data. n.pr/4t5Y8GQ

Data centers under scrutiny by California lawmakers as fears rise about health and energy impacts

nbd

(Reuters) - Cuba's national electric grid collapsed ​on Saturday, the ‌country's grid operator said, leaving around ​10 million ​people without power amid ⁠a U.S.-imposed ​oil blockade that ​has crippled the island's already obsolete generation system.

THREAD: Cherise Doyley was in her 12th hour of contractions at the hospital when a tablet was brought to her bedside. On the screen was a Zoom call with a judge and several lawyers and doctors. She was in court, a nurse told her. The reason? For failing to agree to a C-section.

Many Washington Post readers have been notified via email that their subscription rates are set to increase. Nestled at the bottom of these emails, you’ll find an asterisk and the following: “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.”