Letters sent by @epic.org yesterday calling on the FTC and nine states to investigate and block Meta's plan to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. A privacy, safety, and civil liberties disaster in the making—unless enforcers step up. epic.org/epic-urges-f...

Letters sent by @epic.org yesterday calling on the FTC and nine states to investigate and block Meta's plan to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban smart glasses. A privacy, safety, and civil liberties disaster in the making—unless enforcers step up. epic.org/epic-urges-f...

Meta thinks now is a great time to launch facial recognition surveillance tech in their creepy glasses because EFF will be too distracted by fascism to notice. We noticed. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Meta hoped to slip one past busy privacy watchdogs and quietly embed facial recognition in its Ray-Ban glasses. Now they're the target of letters from @epic.org calling on the FTC and state enforcers to step in. Kudos to my EPIC colleagues, and bravo @kashhill.bsky.social & team for the scoop!

The FTC and state AGs need to act *now* to stop this. Last time Meta slipped facial rec into its products (face tagging), enforcers dawdled. Meta took 11 years to wind it back. We can't afford a decade of roving FRT-enabled surveillance cameras in every bathroom, clinic, classroom, and protest.

That Ring ad

Concentration camps: “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh. We are all in one big room with no doors or windows. We can’t see any grass or trees. We are all constantly sick."

Biblically accurate Olympic cauldron

"Whatever is happening with your data, it is important enough to the most egregiously lawless admin in Am. history that it be collected & consolidated. It is important enough that a federal cowboy kept one hand on his phone even as his other hand reached for his gun." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/o...

Minnesota CEOs sent a letter calling for “de-escalation.” They left out that many of them and their trade groups backed the bill that flooded ICE & CBP with $170 billion. Yes, Palantir helps ICE. But ICE was helped along by a bunch of boring companies you interact with daily.

ICE isn’t just brutal. It’s also big business. From 2008 to 2021 ICE spent *$1.2 billion* on geolocation tracking, $561M on data analysis, $252M on government databases, and $97M on data brokers. Most of that went to companies who will lobby for this system to stay in place.

Two sad, fallen Lime scooters glowing beneath the ice

"Fraud" is this administration's roving license to perpetrate authoritarian shit. I point that out because if we ever emerge from this, we're going to have to put some guardrails on how "fraud" is defined, investigated, and enforced.

Very glad to see this! wjla.com/news/local/d...

absolutely insane to see Musk feted at Davos as the icon of a boldly "optimistic" future in 2026, as if he hadn't just spent the last year buying elections for fascists, making Nazi salutes, condemning millions in Africa to death, and building "Mechahitler," and a nonconsensual porn/CSAM generator

Huge, sweeping report from my colleague @sarageoghegan.bsky.social and the @epic.org team on how unregulated tech, mass surveillance, and yawning gaps in privacy law have created a health privacy crisis, as covered by WIRED’s @dell.bsky.social: www.wired.com/story/survei...

They can kidnap you, they can shoot you dead in the street, they can terrorize your neighbors and threaten World War 3, and the Democrats will always sign the check.

"Abolish ICE" is the moderate position. "Try everyone involved in ICE for crimes against humanity" is the progressive one.

X basically industrialized the creation of fake porn of women who don't consent. Others did it first, but Grok made it normalized and centralized: publicly visible, instantly creatable by anyone, regardless of who's being targeted and dehumanized. Only question now is will X suffer any consequences

If you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

Hey Californians -- DROP launches tomorrow! FREE Single click deletion from hundreds if data brokers. bsky.app/profile/calp...

concerning but unsurprising move by the FTC, who vacated the order with Rytr, the AI tool facilitating fake reviews at scale its in line with the tech cos > people regulatory ethos of this admin To read more about how it worked, check out our comment from last yr: consumerfed.org/wp-content/u...

Captured FTC beclowns itself, eagerly lets lawbreaking AI company off the hook: www.ftc.gov/news-events/...

Looks like the Selective Service is planning to disclose (or already disclosing) personal data to unspecified agencies regarding 'potential violation[s]' of law—which in the present context may well include sending immigrants' records to DHS/ICE: public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-23111.pdf

Big Tech firms have been complaining about the “patchwork” of state laws ever since Californians adopted their landmark privacy law in 2020, Alan Butler writes. Trump's AI executive order is thus an escalation of a fight that has been brewing for years.

Sauer saying something is unconstitutional because it "would be unconstitutional under Justice Scalia's dissent" is a remarkably cogent statement of the Roberts Court's approach to precedent.

Y'all, tmrw is a BIG DAY for civil rights and tech. @markey.senate.gov, @repyvetteclarke.bsky.social, @jayapal.house.gov, @pressley.house.gov, & @repsummerlee.bsky.social are introducing the AI Civil Rights Act: the new gold standard AI bill endorsed by 85+ civil society orgs. Pull up a chair. 1/n

"a single person of this demographic may have committed a crime, therefore we must punish the entire demographic" is a policy response you may recognize from fascist governments dedicated to ethnic cleansing elsewhere.

The Senate phone records provision in last week's CR is egregiously self-serving, but there's a silver lining: Congress has officially valued invasions of privacy at $500,000 per violation (even without public disclosure). Quite a helpful benchmark! www.hollandlawfirm.com/invasion-of-...

Honored for @epic.org to be among 40 consumer protection and privacy organizations supporting Commissioner Slaughter’s challenge to the President's unlawful attempt to fire her. The FTC’s independence has been critical over the years to protecting consumers and open markets. epic.org/press-releas...

even when the democratic party has leverage and one of the craziest election swings the party intentionally self immolates it’s just so exhausting what is even the point of these people

Remember when they said the reason they caved in March was so they could get a better deal in September lmao

The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person. The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person. People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives. And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.

My family has been without half our income for 40 days. It has been.. very hard. We are willing to feel that pain so people can have health care next year, or to undo these illegal recissions. We are not willing to have been put through this for NOTHING.

The NYT has used some version of this sentence in multiple stories about the Columbia settlement but it is highly misleading. Yes, the Columbia settlement included that pledge, but it also included multiple terms that “dictate academic matters.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...

Meanwhile, in the 1903 World Series: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1903_Wo...

That a federal judge had to block the Trump administration from pushing millions of Americans into hunger says everything about this President and the party he leads. Grateful to our Attorney General for being on the frontlines of this fight.

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

Sometimes you do need to beat a dead horse

A couple of folks have asked me what I’m working on now. This is what I’m trying to fix. We need way more non-profits AND small firms standing up for workers, farmers, and small businesses against the oligarchs. I’m trying to get them the resources they need to do that

In the Baltimore Sun today we ask Governor Wes Moore to cancel Avelo Airlines' contract with BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. He can do it today. It doesn't require the assembly. It will help stop ICE & help our patients and neighbors. Please share widely. www.baltimoresun.com/2025/10/11/w...

Every time another university wins a case against the Trump administration, I am reminded yet again of the folly of Columbia's effort to strike a "deal."

Update: she's back home to her owner!

If you were concerned about Kimmel, here's another for you… Journalist Mario Guevara has been detained for 100+ days, ironically arrested as he reported on a "No Kings" protest. The Trump-Vance admin just issued an order of final removal, to send him to El Salvador—where he fled from 21 years ago.

DC folks—anyone recognize this dog? Found her wandering yesterday in North Michigan Park (8th & Buchanan NE). Small, white, and has a brown left ear. Very friendly, but no collar. We're taking care of her for now and will get her checked for a chip tomorrow. Hoping to find her owner soon!

A district court's 100+-page opinion and a circuit's court's 100+-plus page opinion affirming get vacated by the judicial equivalent of a fart noise, an unsigned shadow docket order containing 0 syllables of reasoning.

With the news cycle focused on ABC's suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, a journalist with a valid US work permit and pending green card application is about to be deported for the crime of reporting www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

In Columbia Heights D.C., memorial signs are going up for residents abducted by the state. (📸 Igor Bobic)