walk and chew gum, etc

Facebook plans to put facial recognition in its glasses and they think we’re too stupid to fight back. Their internal memo: “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

WAS 🚈 CVS

@reckless.bsky.social for your consideration for this week’s podcast within a podcast

hello! curious if anyone knows the following: what consulting firm specializing in civil rights law the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System contracted with in 1978 "to improve its efforts in assuring compliance with civil rights statutes." is the firm's study available publicly?

This is the second account - the first being in Chicago - of DHS agents mass detaining people and then *sorting them by race*.

I confess I do not understand why “the left should prepare for the worst case scenario with AI and jobs” seems to have elicited such a strong negative reaction bsky.app/profile/chri...

so for the DOJ, when a lender engages in predatory targeting of Hispanic borrowers, the way to settle the case is provide zero money to victims of discrimination, but instead have the lender spend $20 million on immigration enforcement in the areas in which the lend. www.justice.gov/opa/pr/civil...

PHL 🚅 WAS

WAS 🚅 PHL

This Equifax takedown letter from Senators Warren, Wyden, and Sanders is encouraging, but it's insane we need Senators to demand public price transparency from a contractor that works for the public

something proponents of algorithmic impact assessments should carefully assess is how new regulatory interventions (even in distinct technological contexts) with compliance burdens have or have not cashed out the past few decades.

DSA compliance can be massively wasteful. I testified about that to the EU Parliament during drafting. It's gotten worse since I wrote about it in 2024. It's really depressing for Trust & Safety people to spend their days on elaborate, pointless transparency reporting for an audience of zero. 23/

this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway

I wrote some words for TechCrunch about how Homeland Security is using administrative subpoenas, which aren't subject to judicial oversight, to seek data from tech giants about Trump critics and anonymous accounts of ICE trackers. Featuring really great reporting by Bloomberg & Washington Post.

reposting from 2021: "improvements in the technology’s accuracy will not address the fundamental problem: face recognition expands the scope and power of law enforcement, an institution that has a long and documented history of racial discrimination and racial violence that continues to this day."

4 federal agents pull over an elderly US citizen for the suspected crime of being brown, break her car window, throw her to the ground, then drive off after they find her US Passport in her purse. The Salem Police, when called, say there’s nothing they can do. www.salemreporter.com/2026/01/31/u...

"It may take time to prove you're right, but you have to stick to it." - Fred Korematsu Jailed for refusing to abide by FDR's Exec Order 9066, he took his case against internment all the way to the Supreme Court - and lost. Remember him on Korematsu Day, January 30th. 1/

Scoop: Federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/u...

The policy of mass deportation and mass repression requires significant technical infrastructure. Technology and surveillance companies are the core backbone — not an additional component. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/t...

A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.

"ICE Pivots to Warehouses." Reprehensible.

On camera, immigration agents are shooting and killing people in broad daylight. Behind closed doors, ICE is also killing people with chokeholds, medical neglect, inadequate food, and other inhumane conditions. The needless deaths and suffering must end.

this is absurd. would you like pedestrians to remain on the ice-covered sidewalks that businesses have not taken care of? or would you like them to walk where it is safer for them to do so?

people should really read this — it's a massive problem across the administration of public benefits, something the OBBBA significantly exacerbated from an already terrible baseline.

Corporations are extracting billions from America’s safety net and their payday is about to be supercharged by new rules. I lay out how programs like Medicaid have become vulnerable to corporate capture and what we need to build to stop it. @lpeblog.bsky.social lpeproject.org/blog/the-mea...

I've been surprised just how little we've been talking about privacy implications of frontier AI beyond training data. tl;dr -- the architecture of AI systems will matter a lot, and developers can act now to do better. New piece in @technologyreview.com: www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/28/1...

just as last year revealed: the homes in DC who do not shovel the sidewalk in front of their home are almost always the nicest, largest, and most expensive homes on the block.

imagining the world in which ICE and CBP raided the offices of the major AI labs, then maybe leaders of those organizations would speak up — but only because their capital and organizations would be under threat. which explains their current behavior.

"Machine learning research is not serious research & therefore hallucinated references are not necessarily a big deal, agrees prestigious group of ML researchers" I ❤️ when the titles write themselves But seriously, I don't think there's much to debate statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/01/26/m...

it is remarkable that these employees somehow do not know that their company literally engineers the mass deportation machine for ICE. Literally "ImmigrationOS." And a targeting app. Incredible.

this is because they affirmatively allied with Trump and Vance. they spend millions to support the regime because they see the administration *as a vehicle to get their policy agenda through.* the only time they speak up is when their money is on the line (SVB collapse, wealth tax, etc.)

Nonviolence is, in fact, working. This administration is weaker than it was a year ago. More and more of the public is becoming galvanized against it; its agents are being impeded.

what we saw was a state-backed lynching

to me, the most direct, tangible effect of AI data center power demand that deserves more attention is pollution. more pollutants + toxins emitted from dirty power generation in essentially only low-income communities, *right now*. www.reuters.com/business/ene...

The memo cites no legal authority, only a further secret DHS's General Counsel (replaced in the early days with a Trump loyalist) opinion saying administrative warrants filled out by an ICE officer are sufficient to break into homes of people ordered removed. Here's what such a warrant looks like.

🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional! ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.

I only recently read this article, but I now really believe that more folks working in and around policy on how AI systems impact our material conditions should read this: scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scho...

Dr.King’s words still ring loud and true. When machines and AI, profit, greed, and property rights are treated as more important than people, systems of oppression like poverty, racism, and authoritarianism don’t merely survive; they scale, and they scale hard.

How much more in your face can it be? "Why are you asking me for my paperwork?" "Because of your accent." "You have an accent too." "Where were you born sir?" "Where were you born at?" "Put your hands behind your back."

when one sees the vast array of AI tools and devices that ICE and CBP use to terrorize communities across America, a reminder that the AI Action Plan basically said that agencies like ICE and CBP should have a free hand to adopt whatever they want, to whatever end.

a good case study for the following: deciding when fixing technology is a useful focus for advocacy and when it is just a distraction from the underlying policies.

We released a new report in partnership with the Center for Tech Responsibility at Brown University on how policymakers and researchers can better analyze AI legislation to protect our civil rights and liberties.

an important piece from @riana.bsky.social on how "federal laws are ironically making A.I. model safety more difficult."

new: the OBBBA's new Medicaid eligibility rules go into effect in 2027. depending on state implementation, millions could lose healthcare. our new guide reviews specific policy + technical implementation choices to reduce procedural terminations within work requirement exemptions and reporting.

to counteract a significant over-supply, going forward we should all be allocated one yearly use of the word "epistemic."

proposal: strip ICE of the $75 billion in funding that OBBBA allocated, divert that to support immediate construction of 1 million affordable homes across the US.

a recent New York State audit of NYC's Local Law 144 — designed to ostensibly regulate potential bias and discrimination in automated employment tools — is fairly scathing in its assessment of how implementation and enforcement of the law is going. simply put, LL 144 does not work.

Have you noticed 🇺🇸 ICE vehicles screeching to a halt and snatching people off the street? Ever wonder how they knew about that person's location? Here's how 👇 www.404media.co/inside-ices-...

a recent New York State audit of NYC's Local Law 144 — designed to ostensibly regulate potential bias and discrimination in automated employment tools — is fairly scathing in its assessment of how implementation and enforcement of the law is going. simply put, LL 144 does not work.