Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day; The New York Times, November 26, 2025

Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times; Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day

[Kip Currier: How disconcerting it is to see the Trump 2.0 administration make this policy change from years of recognizing December 1st's World AIDS Day, particularly when many other proclamations have been issued this year for "World Autism Awareness Day, National Manufacturing Day and World Intellectual Property Day", as reported in the New York Times article.]

[Excerpt]

"Every year since 1988, the United States has marked Dec. 1 as World AIDS Day, when people mourn those who died of the disease, honor efforts to contain the epidemic and raise awareness among the general public.

Not this year.

The State Department this month instructed employees and grantees not to use funds from the United States government to commemorate the day. The directive is part of a broader policy “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day,” according to an email viewed by The New York Times.

Employees and grantees may still “tout the work” being done through various programs “to counter this dangerous disease and other infectious diseases around the world,” the email said. And they may attend events related to the commemoration.

But they should “refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging."...

So far this year, the White House has issued proclamations for dozens of other observances, including World Autism Awareness Day, National Manufacturing Day and World Intellectual Property Day.

The Trump administration froze foreign aid early in the year, derailing many public health programs dedicated to fighting H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Modeling studies have suggested that cuts by the United States and other countries could result in 10 million additional H.I.V. infections, including one million among children, and three million additional deaths over the next five years.

To some activists, the administration’s decision was a painful reminder of the early days of the epidemic, when H.I.V. was neglected as a public health crisis...

World AIDS Day is when the State Department sends data to Congress from the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, which provides money for H.I.V. programs worldwide. The program’s budget was sharply cut back earlier this year, and the administration is reported to be planning to end it."

Trump Hatches Creepy New Plot to Target ‘Suspicious’ Drivers; The Daily Beast, November 20, 2025

Tom Latchem  , The Daily Beast; Trump Hatches Creepy New Plot to Target ‘Suspicious’ Drivers

"Border Patrol agents armed with hidden cameras and AI-driven algorithms are flagging millions of American drivers as “suspicious” and triggering covert traffic stops across the country, according to a new investigation.

The Trump administration has quietly expanded a vast domestic surveillance web that tracks and analyzes the travel patterns of millions of drivers—feeding local police tips that lead to secretive traffic stops, searches, and arrests, the Associated Press reports.

The intelligence project, built and run by Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gathers vehicle movements through a national network of covert license plate readers disguised inside roadside barrels, cones, and job-site equipment, AP reports...

Legal scholars warn that the scale of the data collection—tracking “patterns of life” for millions of ordinary drivers—could violate the Fourth Amendment. “Large-scale surveillance technology that’s capturing everyone and everywhere at every time” may be unconstitutional, Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University, told AP.

The program is powered by an enormous expansion of CBP’s intelligence capabilities since President Donald Trump returned to office. Congress has authorized more than $2.7 billion to layer artificial intelligence onto existing surveillance networks. 

Meanwhile, Operation Stonegarden—a two-decade-old federal grant scheme—now channels hundreds of millions of dollars to local sheriff’s offices to buy license-plate readers and drones, and to fund overtime that effectively deputizes local cops into Border Patrol’s mission. Under Trump, congressional Republicans increased Stonegarden to $450 million over four fiscal years."

OpenAI’s Privacy Bet in Copyright Suit Puts Chatbots on Alert; Bloomberg Law, November 18, 2025

Cassandre Coyer

, Aruni Soni, Bloomberg Law; OpenAI’s Privacy Bet in Copyright Suit Puts Chatbots on Alert

"OpenAI Inc. is banking on a privacy argument to block a court’s probe into millions of ChatGPT user conversations. 

That hasn’t worked so far as a winning legal strategy that can be used by other chatbot makers anticipating similar discovery demands in exploding chatbot-related litigation.

Instead, it threatens to turn attention to just how much information chatbots like ChatGPT are collecting and retaining about their users."

The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting our data law will only entrench their power; The Guardian, November 12, 2025

Johnny Ryan and Georg Riekeles, The Guardian ; The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting our data law will only entrench their power

"Europe is hurtling toward digital vassalage. Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, EU laws to tackle tech giants have been either not applied or delayed, for fear of offending Donald Trump. Now leaked documents reveal that the European Commission plans to gut a central part of Europe’s digital rulebook. This will hurt Europe’s innovators and hand the future of Europe’s tech sovereignty to US firms.

Once Europe’s most hyped law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now on the chopping block. Powerful forces within the European Commission, supported by the German government, hope that deregulation will boost Europe’s tech sector, particularly AI. This is a grave mistake."

Arrests in Louvre Heist Show Power of DNA Databases in Solving Crimes; The New York Times, November 3, 2025

Catherine Porter , The New York Times; Arrests in Louvre Heist Show Power of DNA Databases in Solving Crimes

"It took less than a week for the police to track down two of the suspects who they say broke into the Louvre and made off with eight of France’s historic crown jewels. A third person, a suspected accomplice, was tracked down on Wednesday.

In all three cases, DNA was an essential part of the search.

The chief prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, said the DNA of the two men who broke into the museum and snatched $100 million worth of jewelry was found on the window and on one of the two high-powered motor scooters the thieves used to get away."

Smart Beds Helped Them Sleep on a Cloud. Then the Cloud Crashed.; The New York Times, October 24, 2025

 Sopan Deb, The New York Times; Smart Beds Helped Them Sleep on a Cloud. Then the Cloud Crashed.

[Kip Currier: Another interesting example -- probably surprising for most of us who don't have "smart beds", including me -- of the ways that smart devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) can impact us. In this instance, people's sleep!

The paperback version of my book, Ethics, Information, and Technology, is available via Amazon on November 13, 2025 (link here too) and has a significant section on the ethical issues implicated by IoT and smart devices.]

[Excerpt]

"Some users of the smart-bed system Eight Sleep, who sleep atop a snug, temperature-regulating mattress cover in search of “zero-gravity rest,” were rousted from their slumber earlier this week for a surprising reason.

Eight Sleep’s collections of smart products, which the company calls “Pods,” and include those “intelligent” mattress covers, were affected by an outage involving the cloud-storage provider Amazon Web Services, which sent large sectors of the internet into disarray on Monday.

The outage, which lasted more than two hours, took down websites for banks, gaming sites and entertainment services, as well as the messaging service WhatsApp. But it also affected people trying to get some shut-eye.

(First, to answer a question readers might have: Yes, there are smart mattress covers, just as there are smart watches, smart door locks and smart refrigerators.)"

How to Secure Your Phone for the No Kings Protest; Your Time Starts Now (Substack), October 15, 2025

LORI CORBET MANN, Your Time Starts Now (Substack); How to Secure Your Phone for the No Kings Protest

"This post is about using technology safely at a protest — how to protect yourself, and the people you organise with, from unnecessary risk.

It’s a longer read than I would have liked — I’ve learned that when I just post the steps, I’m flooded with questions asking why, so I’ve explained the reasoning too. But if you prefer to skip straight to the practical advice, you’ll find a downloadable checklist at the end.

Technology is everywhere: phones, tablets, headphones, smartwatches, fitness trackers. In everyday life that’s fine, but at a protest it can expose you and others to tracking and surveillance.

This guide explains how those devices broadcast information, how that data can be used to identify or locate you, and what you can do to reduce those risks. The aim isn’t to frighten you — it’s to help you make calm, informed choices about what you carry and how you use it."

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."