Dogs and drones: how scientists are saving Washington’s endangered orcas; The Guardian, October 2, 2025

 The Guardian; Dogs and drones: how scientists are saving Washington’s endangered orcas

"Dressed in a bright orange lifejacket – and sometimes goggles – Eba perches atop Giles’s research boat, scanning the wind. When she catches a whiff of orca faeces, she raises her nose, sometimes whimpering or wagging her tail to point Giles in the right direction. Orca-detecting dogs have become an unlikely ally in the fight to save the whales.

“We wanted to use Eba because it allows us to stay really far away from the whales and not stress them out,” says Giles, a member of the marine conservation organisation SeaDoc Society.

Through the study of whale faeces, researchers can uncover a wealth of biological insights from a single sample, including diet, hormone levels, exposure to toxins, pregnancy, gut microbiome composition and the amount of microplastics in their system, as well as the presence of parasites, bacteria and fungi...

Out on the boat with Giles are James Sheppard, a scientist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and Charlie Welch, an SDZWA volunteer and head of Proper Voltage, a company focused on sustainable battery technology. Together, they have spent a decade developing conservation drones that can capture samples of the cloud-like plumes of breath from orcas’ blowholes with mounts holding petri dishes.

Sheppard says: “We need to get data that is robust and as close to real-time as possible, so that we can find out if there’s a real problem. Then the animal-care staff can go in and stage an intervention if it’s needed.”"

Why I gave the world wide web away for free; The Guardian, September 28, 2025

Tim Berners-Lee, The Guardian ; Why I gave the world wide web away for free

"Sharing your information in a smart way can also liberate it. Why is your smartwatch writing your biological data to one silo in one format? Why is your credit card writing your financial data to a second silo in a different format? Why are your YouTube comments, Reddit posts, Facebook updates and tweets all stored in different places? Why is the default expectation that you aren’t supposed to be able to look at any of this stuff? You generate all this data – your actions, your choices, your body, your preferences, your decisions. You should own it. You should be empowered by it.

Somewhere between my original vision for web 1.0 and the rise of social media as part of web 2.0, we took the wrong path. We’re now at a new crossroads, one where we must decide if AI will be used for the betterment or to the detriment of society. How can we learn from the mistakes of the past? First of all, we must ensure policymakers do not end up playing the same decade-long game of catchup they have done over social media. The time to decide the governance model for AI was yesterday, so we must act with urgency.

In 2017, I wrote a thought experiment about an AI that works for you. I called it Charlie. Charlie works for you like your doctor or your lawyer, bound by law, regulation and codes of conduct. Why can’t the same frameworks be adopted for AI? We have learned from social media that power rests with the monopolies who control and harvest personal data. We can’t let the same thing happen with AI.

So how do we move forward? Part of the frustration with democracy in the 21st century is that governments have been too slow to meet the demands of digital citizens. The AI industry landscape is fiercely competitive, and development and governance are dictated by companies. The lesson from social media is that this will not create value for the individual.

I coded the world wide web on a single computer in a small room. But that small room didn’t belong to me, it was at Cern. Cern was created in the aftermath of the second world war by the UN and European governments who identified a historic, scientific turning point that required international collaboration. It is hard to imagine a big tech company agreeing to share the world wide web for no commercial reward like Cern allowed me to. That’s why we need a Cern-like not-for-profit body driving forward international AI research.

I gave the world wide web away for free because I thought that it would only work if it worked for everyone. Today, I believe that to be truer than ever. Regulation and global governance are technically feasible, but reliant on political willpower. If we are able to muster it, we have the chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity and compassion across cultural borders. We can re-empower individuals, and take the web back. It’s not too late."

Documents offer rare insight on Ice’s close relationship with Palantir; The Guardian, September 22, 2025

 Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian; Documents offer rare insight on Ice’s close relationship with Palantir

"Over the past decade, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) has amassed millions of data points that it uses to identify and track its targets – from social media posts to location history and, most recently, tax information.

And there’s been one, multibillion-dollar tech company particularly instrumental in enabling Ice to put all that data to work: Palantir, the data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, the rightwing mega-donor and tech investor.

For years, little was known about how Ice uses Palantir’s technology. The company has consistently described itself as a “data processor” and says it does not play an active role in any of its customers’ data collection efforts or what clients do with that information.

Now, a cache of internal Ice documents – including hundreds of pages of emails between Ice and Palantir, as well as training manuals, and reports on the use of Palantir products – offer some of the first real-world examples of how Ice has used Palantir in its investigations and during on-the-ground enforcement operations.

The documents, which were obtained by immigrant legal rights group Just Futures Law through a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by the Guardian, largely cover Palantir’s contract with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of Ice that is responsible for stopping the “illegal movement of people, goods, money, contraband, weapons and sensitive technology”."

License plate camera company halts cooperation with federal agencies; Associated Press via ABC News, August 25, 2025

JOHN O'CONNOR Associated Press; License plate camera company halts cooperation with federal agencies

"One of the nation's leading operators of automated license-plate reading systems announced Monday it has paused its operations with federal agencies because of confusion and concern — including in Illinois — about the purpose of their investigations.

Flock Safety, whose cameras are mounted in more than 4,000 communities nationwide, put a hold last week on pilot programs with the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection and its law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations, according to a statement by its founder and CEO, Garrett Langley. 

Among officials in other jurisdictions, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias raised concerns. He announced Monday that an audit found Customs and Border Protection had accessed Illinois data, although he didn't say that the agency was seeking immigration-related information. A 2023 law the Democrat pushed bars sharing license plate data with police investigating out-of-state abortions or undocumented immigrants."

Lost in the wild? AI could find you; Axios, August 10, 2025

• Ashley May, Axios ; Lost in the wild? AI could find you

"Hikers stranded in remote areas with no cell service or WiFi might have a new lifeline: AI.

The big picture: AI is helping some rescue teams find missing people faster by scanning satellite and drone images.

Zoom in: "AI's contribution is that it can dramatically reduce the time to process imagery and do it more accurately than humans," David Kovar, director of advocacy for NASAR and CEO of cybersecurity company URSA Inc., tells Axios.

Context: It's just one of many resources rescue teams use to help them, Kovar stresses.

AI already is eerily good at geolocating where photos are taken.

• Last month, the body of a hiker lost for nearly a year was found in Italy in a matter of hours after The National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps used AI to analyze a series of drone images.
• 
  

The intrigue: We also know when people are given the option to share their location as a safety measure, they do it.

What's next: AI agents could be trained to fly drones via an automated system. It's a theory Jan-Hendrik Ewers made the subject of his PhD at the University of Glasgow. 

• "You could have a fully automated system that monitors reports and triggers drone-based search efforts before a human has lifted a finger," Ewers tells Axios.
• 
  
• Barriers to implementing this kind of system are many: money, politics and the fact that when lives are at stake, relying on experimental AI could complicate efforts. 
• 
  

The other side: Some lost people don't want to be found. And, lost people can't consent.

• Nearly everyone will want this help, but "there will be cases where, for example, a person who is a victim of domestic violence says she's going out hiking, but she's not. She's not intending to come back," Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project tells Axios.
• 
  

AI ethics depend on the circumstances, and who is using it, William Budington, senior staff technologist at nonprofit advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells Axios.

• If it's used to save lives and private data used in a rescue operation is wiped after a hiker is found, there is less of a concern, he says.
• 
  
• "But, using it to scan images or locate and surveil people, especially those that don't want to be found — either just for privacy reasons, or political dissidents, perhaps — that's a worrying possibility."

The USDA wants states to hand over food stamp data by the end of July; NPR, July 19, 2025

Jude Joffe-Block, NPR ; The USDA wants states to hand over food stamp data by the end of July

"When Julliana Samson signed up for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help afford food as she studied at the University of California, Berkeley, she had to turn in extensive, detailed personal information to the state to qualify.

Now she's worried about how that information could be used.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made an unprecedented demand to states to share the personal information of tens of millions of federal food assistance recipients by July 30, as a federal lawsuit seeks to postpone the data collection...

She and three other SNAP recipients, along with a privacy organization and an anti-hunger group, are challenging USDA's data demand in a federal lawsuit, arguing the agency has not followed protocols required by federal privacy laws. Late Thursday, they asked a federal judge to intervene to postpone the July 30 deadline and a hearing has been scheduled for July 23.

"I am worried my personal information will be used for things I never intended or consented to," Samson wrote recently as part of an ongoing public comment period for the USDA's plan. "I am also worried that the data will be used to remove benefits access from student activists who have views the administration does not agree with."

RFK Jr. wants everyone to use wearables. What are the benefits, risks?; ABC News, July 3, 2025

Mary Kekatos , ABC News; RFK Jr. wants everyone to use wearables. What are the benefits, risks?

[Kip Currier: Probably not a good idea, given the current administration's documented disregard for the rights of people to control access to their own data.

See here, here, here, and here.]

[Excerpt]

"Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the agency was launching a campaign to encourage all Americans to use wearables to track health metrics.

Wearables come in the form of watches, bands, rings, patches and clothes that can be used for a variety of reasons including monitoring glucose levels, measuring activity levels, track heart health and observe sleeping patterns.

"It's a way … people can take control over their own heath. They can take responsibility," Kennedy said during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Health."

Peter Thiel’s Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans; The Guardian, June 30, 2025

Robert Reich , The Guardian; Peter Thiel’s Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans

"Draw a circle around all the assets in the US now devoted to artificial intelligence.

Draw a second circle around all the assets devoted to the US military.

A third around all assets being devoted to helping the Trump regime collect and compile personal information on millions of Americans.

And a fourth circle around the parts of Silicon Valley dedicated to turning the US away from a democracy into a dictatorship led by tech bros.

Where do the four circles intersect?

At a corporation called Palantir Technologies and a man named Peter Thiel.

In JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, a “palantír” is a seeing stone that can be used to distort truth and present selective visions of reality. During the War of the Ring, a palantír falls under the control of Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive.

Palantir Technologies bears a striking similarity. It sells an AI-based platform that allows its users – among them, military and law enforcement agencies – to analyze personal data, including social media profiles, personal information and physical characteristics. These are used to identify and surveil individuals."

Copyright Cases Should Not Threaten Chatbot Users’ Privacy; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), June 23, 2025

 TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Copyright Cases Should Not Threaten Chatbot Users’ Privacy

"Like users of all technologies, ChatGPT users deserve the right to delete their personal data. Nineteen U.S. States, the European Union, and a host of other countries already protect users’ right to delete. For years, OpenAI gave users the option to delete their conversations with ChatGPT, rather than let their personal queries linger on corporate servers. Now, they can’t. A badly misguided court order in a copyright lawsuit requires OpenAI to store all consumer ChatGPT conversations indefinitely—even if a user tries to delete them. This sweeping order far outstrips the needs of the case and sets a dangerous precedent by disregarding millions of users’ privacy rights.

The privacy harms here are significant. ChatGPT’s 300+ million users submit over 1 billion messages to its chatbots per day, often for personal purposes. Virtually any personal use of a chatbot—anything from planning family vacations and daily habits to creating social media posts and fantasy worlds for Dungeons and Dragons games—reveal personal details that, in aggregate, create a comprehensive portrait of a person’s entire life. Other uses risk revealing people’s most sensitive information. For example, tens of millions of Americans use ChatGPT to obtain medical and financial information. Notwithstanding other risks of these uses, people still deserve privacy rights like the right to delete their data. Eliminating protections for user-deleted data risks chilling beneficial uses by individuals who want to protect their privacy."

Pope: Intelligence is seeking life's true meaning, not having reams of data; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, June 20, 2025

Carol Glatz , United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Pope: Intelligence is seeking life's true meaning, not having reams of data

"Access to vast amounts of data and information is not the same thing as having intelligence, which is uniquely human and requires being open to truth, goodness and the real meaning of life, Pope Leo XIV told AI experts and executives.

"Authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life than with the availability of data," he said in a written message released by the Vatican June 20.

"Acknowledging and respecting what is uniquely characteristic of the human person is essential to the discussion of any adequate ethical framework for the governance of AI," he wrote.

The message, written in English, was addressed to people attending the second annual Rome conference on AI, Ethics and the Future of Corporate Governance being held in Rome and at the Vatican June 19-20.

The conference "brings together executives from leading AI companies as well as large enterprises using AI with policymakers, scholars, ethicists and lawyers to consider in a holistic way the challenges facing the ethics and governance of AI, both for companies developing this revolutionary technology as well as the enterprises incorporating AI into their businesses," according to the event's website."

OpenAI to appeal copyright ruling in NY Times case as Altman calls for 'AI privilege'; Foxbusiness, June 6, 2025

 Bradford Betz, Foxbusiness; OpenAI to appeal copyright ruling in NY Times case as Altman calls for 'AI privilege'

"The OpenAI co-founder said the case has accelerated the need for a conversation about "AI privilege," in which "talking to an AI should be like talking to a lawyer or a doctor.""

Government AI copyright plan suffers fourth House of Lords defeat; BBC, June 2, 2025

 Zoe Kleinman , BBC; Government AI copyright plan suffers fourth House of Lords defeat

"The argument is over how best to balance the demands of two huge industries: the tech and creative sectors. 

More specifically, it's about the fairest way to allow AI developers access to creative content in order to make better AI tools - without undermining the livelihoods of the people who make that content in the first place.

What's sparked it is the Data (Use and Access) Bill.

This proposed legislation was broadly expected to finish its long journey through parliament this week and sail off into the law books. 

Instead, it is currently stuck in limbo, ping-ponging between the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

A government consultation proposes AI developers should have access to all content unless its individual owners choose to opt out. 

But 242 members of the House of Lords disagree with the bill in its current form.

They think AI firms should be forced to disclose which copyrighted material they use to train their tools, with a view to licensing it."

It’s called the Library of Congress. But Trump claims it’s his.; The Washington Post, May 31, 2025

Meryl Kornfield

 and 

Hannah Natanson

, The Washington Post ; It’s called the Library of Congress. But Trump claims it’s his.

[Kip Currier: The Library of Congress (LC) is not a traditional "lending library" and access to its materials is largely limited to research purposes.

The books and materials in LC's collections are not borrowable by children.

Repeat: Not Borrowable by Children.

Karoline Leavitt fundamentally misrepresents what LC does and would be well-advised to do some basic homework on the nation's de facto national library.]

[Excerpt]

"White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had decried the prior library leadership, referring to books that were not appropriate for children, even though the library does not lend books to children. Individuals cannot borrow directly from the Library of Congress, though the research library does lend its books to other libraries.

“There were quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children,” she said in a press briefing, referring to former librarian Carla Hayden and diversity, equity and inclusion programs...

Controlling the Library would give the administration the ability to shape and inspect millions of records, everything from copyright documents to confidential research requests from lawmakers, said three library employees, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The list of the library’s domains is long and impressive.

The library runs the Congress.gov website, which aggregates all data and records from the legislative branch. It also maintains the copyrights database and registration portals, which include any idea ever submitted for copyright protection, and houses the Congressional Office for International Leadership, which conducts civic leadership training for politicians in former communist countries, including Ukraine. The library’s Adams Building is home to the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, which handles and stores sexual harassment complaints, among other things."

U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent; The Washington Post, April 25, 2025

Ariana Eunjung Cha

, 

Caitlin Gilbert

 and 

Fenit Nirappil

 , The Washington Post; U.S. autism data project sparks uproar over ethics, privacy and intent

"The Trump administration has retreated from a controversial plan for a national registry of people with autism just days after announcing it as part of a new health initiative that would link personal medical records to information from pharmacies and smartwatches.

Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, unveiled the broad, data-driven initiative to a panel of experts Tuesday, saying it would include “national disease registries, including a new one for autism” that would accelerate research into the rapid rise in diagnoses of the condition.

The announcement sparked backlash in subsequent days over potential privacy violations, lack of consent and the risk of long-term misuse of sensitive data.

The Trump administration still will pursue large-scale data collection, but without the registry that drew the most intense criticism, the Department of Health and Human Services said."

Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You.; The New York Times, April 9, 2025

Emily Badger and Sheera Frenkel, The New York Times ; Trump Wants to Merge Government Data. Here Are 314 Things It Might Know About You.

"The federal government knows your mother’s maiden name and your bank account number. The student debt you hold. Your disability status. The company that employs you and the wages you earn there. And that’s just a start...

These intimate details about the personal lives of people who live in the United States are held in disconnected data systems across the federal government — some at the Treasury, some at the Social Security Administration and some at the Department of Education, among other agencies.

The Trump administration is now trying to connect the dots of that disparate information. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the “consolidation” of these segregated records, raising the prospect of creating a kind of data trove about Americans that the government has never had before, and that members of the president’s own party have historically opposed.

The effort is being driven by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his lieutenants with the Department of Government Efficiency, who have sought access to dozens of databases as they have swept through agencies across the federal government. Along the way, they have elbowed past the objections of career staff, data security protocols, national security experts and legal privacy protections."

Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now; The Washington Post, March 24, 2025

 Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now

"The company said there will be “no changes” to the way it protects consumer data while in bankruptcy court. But unless you take action, there is a risk your genetic information could end up in someone else’s hands — and used in ways you had never considered. It took me just a minute to delete my data on the 23andMe website, and I’ve got instructions on how to do it below.

It’s a privacy nightmare, but also an example of how state privacy laws pioneered in California can help protect Americans — at least the proactive ones...

The California Consumer Protection Act of 2018 gives you the right to delete data from businesses that collect it. While the law specifically applies to California residents, many other states have passed similar laws.

And California also has a separate law pertaining to DNA data, called the Genetic Information Privacy Act. It gives you the right to delete your account, have your biological sample destroyed, and revoke consent you may have previously given to use or disclose your genetic data."

Why I regret using 23andMe: I gave up my DNA just to find out I’m British; The Guardian, November 30, 2024

 Kari Paul, The Guardian; Why I regret using 23andMe: I gave up my DNA just to find out I’m British

"With the future of 23andMe in peril, the overarching question among previous customers now is what will happen to the data that has already been collected. Leuenberger noted that by entering DNA into a database, users sacrifice not only their own privacy but that of blood relatives. Because an individual’s DNA is similar in structure to that of their relatives, information about others can be gleaned from one person’s sample. This is especially pronounced with the rise of open-access DNA sites like GEDMatch, on which users can upload genetic data that can be compared to other samples. A consumer genealogy test contributed to the identification of serial killer Joseph James DeAngelo.

“What is ethically tricky with genetic data is that it’s not just about self-knowledge – it’s also knowledge about all of your relatives,” Leuenberger said. “Morally speaking, it is not necessarily information that is yours to give – and this risk is exacerbated if this company goes down and the fate of the data becomes more perilous.”"

What 23andMe Owes its Users; The Hastings Center, November 18, 2024

 Jonathan LoTempio, Jr,, The Hastings Center; What 23andMe Owes its Users

"In the intervening years, 23andMe has sent you new findings related to your health status. You wonder: Is my data protected? Can I get it back?

There are protections for users of 23andMe and other direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. Federal laws, including the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and the Affordable Care Act, protect users from employment and insurance discrimination. Residents of certain states including California have agencies where they can register complaints. 23andMe, which is based in California, has a policy in line with California citizens’ new right to access and delete their data. European residents have even more extensive rights over their digital data.

American users can rest assured that there are strong legal mechanisms under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. that can block foreign acquisition of U.S. firms on national security grounds. For certain critical sectors like biotech, the committee may consider, among other factors, whether a proposed transaction would result in the U.S. losing its place as a global industry leader as part of its review.

Any attempt by a foreign company to acquire 23andMe would be subject to a CFIUS review and could be blocked on national security grounds, particularly if the foreign company is headquartered in a “country of special concern” such as China, Russia, or Iran. As for acquisitions by U.S. companies, the legal landscape is a bit more Wild West. Buyers based in the U.S. could change policies to which users agreed long ago, in a world rather different than ours.

November 2024: With a new board the immediate crisis at 23andMe has been averted. However, long-term concerns remain regarding potential buyers and how they might respond to 23andMe’s layoffs and shuttering of its drug development arm, both of which suggest instability of the company. 23andMe and other DTC genetic testing companies should consider what they owe their users.

One thing they owe users is to implement a policy that, in the case of a sale, the companies will notify users multiple times and in multiple ways and give them the option of deleting their data."