The three biggest (and arguably most innovative) companies in America are Nvidia, Apple, and Google. Two of the three were created by immigrants who came to America from Taiwan and the Soviet Union. The third was created by the son of a Syrian immigrant.

Imagine if we could have AI developed not by a bunch of billionaires whose brains were fried by misreading sci-fi but by a group more representative of society, a group that was thoughtful and responsible and concerned about the impact. Then, AI might actually be a force for good.

I love Internet bros freaking out about amour in the Odyssey trailer being historically inaccurate. My , they’re a bunch of Caucasian dudes speaking English and also they’re fighting a 20 foot cyclops monster.

This was literally one of the concerns raised during the immunity case, and the majority hand waved it away.

Tech Policy Press Fellow Ariana Aboulafia highlights the perspectives of four professors teaching at the intersection of disability rights and technology on their experiences under the Trump Administration’s policies targeting higher education, including lost research support and chilled classrooms.

Yeah, brilliant idea to grant the franchise to infinitely replicable digital entities controlled by cadres of tech executives. Muskbrained.

If you were Nick Fuentes coming up with a mean-spirited and bigoted “satirical” character to mock and belittle Jews or to discredit complaints about antisemitism you would wind up with something very like Eve Barlow, who said it was a “pogrom” to be called Eve Fartlow

Imagine watching Sinatra, son of Dolly & Antonini born in Genoa & Sicily, respectively, and Martin, son of Gaetano & Angela, born in Montesilvano, Italy & Ohio respectively, (Angela to parents born in Monasterolo, Italy), and crusading against the value of children of immigrants to the U.S.

The internet is revolutionary to free speech because it empowers individuals and citizens to route around censorship in all its forms—even a captured “free” press. This is why private platform governance; law on internet access or online content, and anonymity online will always matter.

New: We obtained thousands of internal chat messages from the ICE team creating viral videos of raids and "EPIC takedowns." A scramble to satisfy the White House and "feed the beast" spawned a new "propaganda" machine, current and former officials told us. "It's a war!" wapo.st/4s6YnC5

One of the more important stock-taking moments to watch a bootlegged news program censored in your country.

We've already achieved full Streisand Effect for this news segment. Any effort by CBS to pull it off platforms it's been uploaded to is just going to amplify that.

Recommend everyone take 15 minutes and watch and share this segment, which CBS executives did not want you to see.

NEW: The federal government has retreated from gun enforcement in Baltimore and elsewhere this year as more of its investigators turn their attention to President Donald Trump’s new priority for law enforcement: hunting immigrants in the U.S. illegally to deport. www.reuters.com/world/how-im...

Tech Policy Press Fellow Ariana Aboulafia highlights the perspectives of four professors teaching at the intersection of disability rights and technology on their experiences under the Trump Administration’s policies targeting higher education, including lost research support and chilled classrooms.

this is a good reminder of how things that are shitty but have been accepted as normal and inevitable can actually turn out to be abnormal and evitable with some science, time, education and political will

Question: When the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights division tweets out a false statement about an individual that results in them being barraged with death threats based on their religion and ethnicity, which governmental agency would look into whether that student’s Civil Rights had been infringed?

CATO INSTITUTE: Despite DOGE slashing jobs, government spending in every month of 2025 “was greater than in every other year .. An observer who did not know when DOGE started could not identify it” on a chart. 🤡 www.cato.org/blog/doge-pr...

Reminds me of a FISA Court opinion 😬

I’m currently outside of the Kennedy Center:

I read through these (more in the comments) and hoped maybe this was some cheeky lefty publication that went looking for the most extremist nuts they could find to make the right look bad. Nope. It’s City Journal, published by the far right Manhattan Institute. Horrifying.

It’s easier for a lot of white men who haven’t excelled to blame something (especially vague undefined cause like “DEI!”) than admit that either 1) they’re mediocre or 2) the world is tough and tons of people are smart, hardworking and still don’t achieve major success without a lucky break

Trump's DOJ has been ordered to embark on a sweeping crackdown on "left-wing domestic terrorism." Civil liberties experts warn it could lead to a level of politicized FBI surveillance of Americans not seen since the era of J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO. Our story today: wapo.st/3L9lpr4 (gift link)

The US TikTok sale has been signed. The company will be controlled by a joint venture including Oracle, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, Abu Dhabi-based MGX. Adding a UAE company really makes it clear that this was never about national security concerns. www.axios.com/2025/12/18/t...

FOUR new deaths in ICE detention. That puts the total this year at 30 people dead; the highest in ICE's history and worse than even during the COVID years. It's clear that the system is breaking down. Many of these are preventable deaths.

Little while ago I was in a "AI Policy Exercise" - folks spent a day playing roles to game out AI policy over the decade. Our Trump Admin team pushed for a Big Deal involving sale of chips to China, a Bigger Deal with China giving us a peace prize, and then we started Trump AI company. Anyways...

NEW: ICE has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes “AI agents” to rapidly track down targets. AI Solutions 87 did not respond to a request for comment on how its AI agents work.

The Trump admin says it aims to file 100-200 denaturalization cases per month, a huge increase. But these cases are hard to file and win, and require a lot of DOJ resources, and the DOJ is incredibly stretched thin already. So we’ll see; I have serious doubts about their ability to do this.

AI is that AMC Theater that single-handedly props up the mall economy, but you know it won’t last.

Preorder today. “Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance.” #books

NEW: CBP is doubling down on a surveillance strategy built around small, human-portable drones, pushing border enforcement toward a distributed surveillance network that can operate in harsh climes and mixed terrain to rapidly cue agents.

Deathloop; Inscryption Deathloop was greay and fun but I do wish had more replayability - it didn’t take too long to find most fun nuggets & different events you could trigger. I do wish it had a bigger world and more domino effects Discovered Inscryption last year and was really wowed by it.

Actual government job posting for position to work on AI. I get the idea here of wanting to see if someone can effectively give AI tools prompts to get desired answers but … how are they reviewing/evaluating this? Do you need to give a good answer, or just what an AI scan says is a good answer?

By the logic the Court is applying here ,your web browsing activities, your emails, your photos you store on a cloud web service, all your texts and private messages on apps become freely available for the government to grab up.

Dealing with Technology’s Hazards – Wed, Dec 17, at 2 PM ET REGISTER (FREE) teachprivacy.com/video-dealin... @Daniel-Solove.bsky.social Excited to talk to Dan about my book!

I would be willing to watch a "Taste of Things" style food-focused film that centers on the various breakfast dishes Gaston makes that allows him to meet his daily quota of consuming 5 dozen eggs each morning

As protests surge nationwide, AI surveillance tools, biometric identification, and mask bans are creating new barriers for disabled people seeking to safely exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble, argues Tech Policy Press Fellow Ariana Aboulafia.

As we mourn Rob Reiner, don’t skip this: he was, pretty much, personally responsible for overturning California’s Prop 8 banning same sex marriage. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

The underlying story here is wild: We’re seeing in action ICE policy adopted earlier this year of using facial recognition as a “definitive ID” and even having matched overrule someone’s citizenship documentation. Here AI scan was the only option, not even interesting in reviewing documentation

What a great piece! This just gets better and better as you read. prospect.org/2025/12/11/s...

An executive order is not Oz the Great and Powerful. It is the frantic gesticulations of an old man behind a curtain. The media ought to act like it.

404 Media zine has apparently outsold American Canto. Help continue that trend here: 404media.myshopify.com/products/pre... www.404media.co/behind-the-b...

Exactly the type of bulk surveillance Congress sought to ban when it passed the USA FREEDOM Act a decade ago. I remember the example of flight manifests being discussed in the room as staffers were drafting the bill. Nationwide travel dragnet is not how the system is supposed to work.

I agree with the notion that the anti-accountability reflex exists and is a problematic one, but it is worth considering downstream impacts. On this case: Mass deployment of cameras -> mass deployment of automated license plate readers -> an incredibly powerful weapon for current ICE operations

"A former US attorney, a conservative litigator, a civil liberties advocate, and a tech-policy analyst—urged Congress to impose a probable-cause warrant requirement on searches of a vast government database built under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)"

Experts tell US lawmakers that a crucial spy program’s safeguards are failing, allowing intel agencies deeper, unconstrained access to Americans’ data. www.wired.com/story/warnin...

Two things about this EO are true: 1) it is a despicable, sloppy, and unacceptable act that reflects Trumps well documented affinity for his tech buddies 2) it does nothing by itself — CNN and the NYTimes get it BIG wrong here, giving Trump the headline he wants to scare states and create apathy

ICE has stated it will have a facial recognition match from a scan on the street serve as a definitive ID (something police universally say is unsafe) and even override documents showing citizenship A glitchy AI system is enough “cause” to detain individuals www.techpolicy.press/ices-reckles...

The effect of Kavanaugh Stops law playing out across America: