Finally dropping tomorrow
Tag: fascism
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The ‘End Times Fascists’ Behind the AI Industry
Brian Merchant · Blood in the Machine
A conversation with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor about what they call end times fascism in the tech industry.
As audio or video
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US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows
Daniel Boguslaw · WIRED
Spencer Reynolds [senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund] says that, despite the real if limited threat posed … a category like “anti-tech extremism” could be drawn so broad as to ensnare peaceful data center protesters, AI skeptics, and anyone with a bone to pick with technology that permeates modern life.
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“Suspicious activity reports are incredibly unreliable, often about vague or innocent behavior, issued under permissive standards. These reports, often received in large volumes, allow officers to inject their own biases and see what they want to see in the facts.”
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Among the vaguely defined activities flagged by the Northern Virginia intelligence center as suspicious are “expressed/implied threat,” “observation/surveillance,” “photography,” “testing/probing of security,” and “attempted intrusion.”
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CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples’ Movements
Joseph Cox · 404 Media
An internal DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows for the first time CBP used location data sourced from the online advertising industry to track phone locations. ICE has bought access to similar tools.
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DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) later found both CBP and ICE did not limit themselves to non-operational use. The OIG found that CBP, ICE, and the Secret Service all illegally used the smartphone location data, and found a CBP official used the data to track coworkers with no investigative purpose. CBP and ICE went on to repeatedly purchase access to location data.
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‘It beggars belief’: MoD sources warn Palantir’s role at heart of government is threat to UK’s security
Charlie Young & Carole Cadwalladr · The Nerve
“When you have that mosaic built from UK sovereign defence, health, roads, power networks, power stations, and our major industrial bases, you have a detailed understanding of virtually every aspect of the sovereign United Kingdom. For an adversary, or even a nation with whom we have a special relationship, that picture is worth more than all the fine art on Earth.”
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Hate thy Neighbor as Thyself
Timothy Snyder · Thinking about…
Then said JD unto him, Go, slay, and curse.
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Open Letter to Tech Companies: Protect Your Users From Lawless DHS Subpoenas
Mario Trujillo · EFF
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[DHS] has issued subpoenas to technology companies to unmask or locate people who have documented ICE’s activities in their community, criticized the government, or attended protests.
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With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet
Jason Koebler · 404 Media
Ring had always, explicitly been intended to assist law enforcement. In a series of investigations we did back at VICE (mostly written by Caroline Haskins, who is still covering surveillance at WIRED), we uncovered thousands of pages of documents, emails, and chats via public records requests and leaks that highlighted Ring’s surveillance ambitions. The company threw parties for police, employees wore “FUCK CRIME” shirts to internal parties, and helped police facilitate the retrieval of footage from its customers’ cameras if they initially refused to cooperate.
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With Ring’s recent partnership with Flock, which will further facilitate the sharing of video footage with police, and its new Search Party feature, the message is clear: Ring is still, again, and always will be in the business of leveraging its network of luxury surveillance consumers as a law enforcement tool.
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One Year of Trump. The Time to Act Is Now, While We Still Can.
M. Gessen · NYTimes
Ask anyone who has lived in a country that became an autocracy, and they will tell you some version of a story about walls closing in on them, about space getting smaller and smaller.
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The only way to keep the space from imploding is to fill it, to prop up the walls: to claim all the room there still is for speaking, writing, publishing, protesting, voting. It’s what the people of Minnesota appear to be doing, and it’s something each of us needs to do — right now, while we still can.
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