The alarming rise of US officers hiding behind masks: ‘A police state’; The Guardian, June 25, 2025

Sam Levin, The Guardian ; The alarming rise of US officers hiding behind masks: ‘A police state’

Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions’

"Some wear balaclavas. Some wear neck gators, sunglasses and hats. Some wear masks and casual clothes.

Across the country, armed federal immigration officers have increasingly hidden their identities while carrying out immigration raids, arresting protesters and roughing up prominent Democratic critics.

It’s a trend that has sparked alarm among civil rights and law enforcement experts alike.

Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers’ widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. “Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has insisted masks are necessary to protect officers’ privacy, arguing, without providing evidence, that there has been an uptick in violence against agents...

Were you surprised by the frequent reports of federal officers covering their faces and refusing to identify themselves, especially during the recent immigration raids and protests in Los Angeles?

It is absolutely shocking and frightening to see masked agents, who are also poorly identified in the way they are dressed, using force in public without clearly identifying themselves. Our country is known for having democratic control over law enforcement. When it’s hard to tell who a masked individual is working for, it’s hard to accept that that is a legitimate use of authority. It’s particularly important for officers to identify themselves when they are making arrests. It’s important for the person being arrested, and for community members who might be watching, that they understand this is a law enforcement activity."

See Vaccine Recommendations Backed by Science in These Handy Charts; Scientific American, June 25, 2025

 JEN CHRISTIANSEN & MEGHAN BARTELS EDITED BY SARAH LEWIN FRASIER , Scientific American; See Vaccine Recommendations Backed by Science in These Handy Charts

"Vaccines are a marvel of modern medicine: the carefully tested and regulated technologies teach people’s immune systems how to fight off potentially fatal infections, saving both lives and health care costs.

But for as long as vaccines have existed, people have opposed them, and in recent years the antivaccine movement has gained visibility and power. Now the Department of Health and Human Services is led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—an environmental lawyer with no medical training and a history of antivaccine activism. And these lifesaving medical interventions are coming under threat.

Access to COVID vaccines this fall is already expected to be limited to people aged 65 years or older and to those with underlying health conditions that make them more vulnerable to severe disease. And in June Kennedy dismissed all 17 sitting members of a crucial vaccine oversight group, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which, in the past, has made independent, science-based recommendations on vaccine access for people in the U.S. The dismissals came just weeks before the panel’s next scheduled meeting; Kennedy appointed eight new members in advance of the meeting, which is still set to begin on June 25.

As a public resource, Scientific American has created graphics outlining the vaccines recommended by ACIP as of its final meeting in 2024.

Vaccine recommendations have always been in flux as new products have been developed and continuing research has suggested better practices: The COVID pandemic required brand-new vaccines for a novel virus, for example. And in the U.S., the stunning success of the HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine led to its recommendation for everyone aged 26 or younger, meanwhile the oral polio vaccine was discontinued in favor of the inactivated injected vaccine.

But traditionally, these decisions have been made by scientists based on solid research done within the confines of accepted ethical practices. These principles mean, for example, that a vaccine’s side effects are carefully monitored and evaluated against its immune benefit and that potential replacement vaccines are tested against their predecessors, not—as Kennedy has proposed—an inert placebo that would leave people vulnerable to an infection that doctors already have the tools to combat."

Trump knocks down barriers around personal data, raising alarm; The Hill, June 25, 2025

 AMALIA HUOT-MARCHAND, The Hill ; Trump knocks down barriers around personal data, raising alarm

"The Trump administration is shattering norms around the handling of Americans’ personal — and sometimes private — information, dismantling barriers around data in the name of government efficiency and rooting out fraud. 

Privacy experts say the moves bring the country closer to a surveillance state, increase the government’s vulnerability to cyberattacks and risk pushing people away from public services. 

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sought and nearly always received access to Social Security numbers, addresses, medical histories, tax histories, welfare benefits, bank accounts, immigration statuses and federal employee databases.

These moves have shattered walls that have long kept data within the agencies that collect it."

Whistleblower: Trump judge nominee told DOJ lawyers to ignore court orders; Axios, June 24, 2025

 

• Jason Lalljee, Axios; Whistleblower: Trump judge nominee told DOJ lawyers to ignore court orders

"Why it matters: The official in question, Emil Bove, is Trump's former personal attorney and a current Trump nominee for a federal appeals court judge.

Driving the news: DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni and the whistleblower, identified as a fired DOJ lawyer, told the DOJ's internal watchdog and members of Congress in a letter that Bove told attorneys to consider telling judges "f––k you" in order "to implement the administration's removal priorities."

Those removal priorities include the Trump admin's efforts to deport immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, which the Supreme Court blocked in March.

Bove, during a March 14 meeting with the whistleblower, Reuveni and others in the department, "stressed to all in attendance that the planes [carrying the immigrants] needed to take off no matter what," per the letter.

"Mr. Reuveni, almost immediately after receiving notice of his promotion to serve as Acting Deputy Director of OIL, became aware of the plans of DOJ leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens, and further became aware of the details to execute those plans," the letter states.

The letter comes as multiple federal judges have said that the DOJ has failed to comply with court orders and as the DOJ antagonizes judges who run afoul of the Trump administration."

Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support; The New York Times, June 25, 2025

Stephanie Nolen , The New York Times; Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support

"This was supposed to be a breakthrough year in the 44-year-long struggle against H.I.V.

Decades of research and investment produced new approaches to vaccines that were going into their first significant clinical trials.

The hunt for a cure was homing in on key mechanisms to block the virus, which can lurk dormant and near-untraceable in the body for years.

Most critically, a breakthrough preventive drug, lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that offers total protection from H.I.V., was to be rapidly rolled out across eastern and southern Africa. The main target: young women. About 300,000 of them were newly infected with the virus last year — half of all new infections worldwide.

Every one of these plans has been derailed by the Trump administration’s slashing of foreign assistance."

Ball State University Libraries Launches Research Guide on Ethical AI Use; Ball State University, June 24, 2025

Ball State University; Ball State University Libraries Launches Research Guide on Ethical AI Use

"In an era in which artificial intelligence tools are rapidly reshaping how we access and share information, Ball State University Libraries has introduced a new research guide to help students, faculty, staff, and community members use AI more thoughtfully and effectively.

The interactive guide, now available at bsu.libguides.com, equips users with foundational skills to assess the credibility, accuracy, and ethical implications of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and image generators. Through five short videos and practical examples, the guide teaches users to identify potential misinformation, recognize AI-generated bias, and apply AI output in meaningful and responsible ways.

Key learning outcomes include:"

Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits; The Guardian, June 25, 2025

Simon Goodley , The Guardian; Second study finds Uber used opaque algorithm to dramatically boost profits

"A second major academic institution has accused Uber of using opaque computer code to dramatically increase its profits at the expense of the ride-hailing app’s drivers and passengers.

Research by academics at New York’s Columbia Business School concluded that the Silicon Valley company had implemented “algorithmic price discrimination” that had raised “rider fares and cut driver pay on billions of … trips, systematically, selectively, and opaquely”."

Anthropic’s AI copyright ‘win’ is more complicated than it looks; Fast Company, June 24, 2025

 CHRIS STOKEL-WALKER, Fast Company;Anthropic’s AI copyright ‘win’ is more complicated than it looks

"And that’s the catch: This wasn’t an unvarnished win for Anthropic. Like other tech companies, Anthropic allegedly sourced training materials from piracy sites for ease—a fact that clearly troubled the court. “This order doubts that any accused infringer could ever meet its burden of explaining why downloading source copies from pirate sites that it could have purchased or otherwise accessed lawfully was itself reasonably necessary to any subsequent fair use,” Alsup wrote, referring to Anthropic’s alleged pirating of more than 7 million books.

That alone could carry billions in liability, with statutory damages starting at $750 per book—a trial on that issue is still to come.

So while tech companies may still claim victory (with some justification, given the fair use precedent), the same ruling also implies that companies will need to pay substantial sums to legally obtain training materials. OpenAI, for its part, has in the past argued that licensing all the copyrighted material needed to train its models would be practically impossible.

Joanna Bryson, a professor of AI ethics at the Hertie School in Berlin, says the ruling is “absolutely not” a blanket win for tech companies. “First of all, it’s not the Supreme Court. Secondly, it’s only one jurisdiction: The U.S.,” she says. “I think they don’t entirely have purchase over this thing about whether or not it was transformative in the sense of changing Claude’s output.”"

Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics receives grant to advance love-based ethical framework; University of Notre Dame, June 23, 2025

Laura Moran Walton, University of Notre Dame ; Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics receives grant to advance love-based ethical framework

"The University of Notre Dame has received a $10 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to support a project titled Love and Social Transformation: Empowering Scholars and Social Innovators to Develop the Love Ethic. Implementation of this grant, which is the largest Notre Dame has ever received from the Templeton Foundation, will be led by the Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Center for Virtue Ethics, the locus for research and moral formation within the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good.

“We are deeply grateful to the Templeton Foundation for its generous support of this important work. By emphasizing the ethics of abundant love, Notre Dame’s Jenkins Center for Virtue Ethics has a critical role to play in contributing to contemporary ethics,” said University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C. “The Catholic tradition of virtue ethics, like those of other world religions, offers a richer, fuller understanding of hope to the world, and this is a most fitting topic for the Jenkins Center’s first major initiative.”

The Love and Social Transformation project will bring scholars, writers, nonprofit leaders and others together to advance a framework that captures the power, richness and applicability of the love ethic — a core component of many faith traditions throughout the world.

“In our fractious, uncertain time, there is an urgent need for serious reflection on an ethic of love,” said University President Emeritus Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. “Emerging from the great religious traditions, the call to love has been behind some of the most transformative and enduring advances in human history. I am grateful to the Templeton Foundation for giving Notre Dame this opportunity.”

Love-based ethical insights have powered some of the most important social movements of the past century, such as Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement in India and Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights leadership in the United States. But in the 21st century, the more common approaches to ethical decision-making — especially in policy realms — focus instead on cost-benefit analysis.

“These frameworks neglect the dimensions of life that fit into the rich tradition of virtue ethics — moral touchpoints such as love, dignity and awe,” said Meghan Sullivan, the Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy, director of the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and the Notre Dame Ethics Initiative, and principal investigator for the grant.

“In contrast, the love ethic has three components: It holds that a widespread, non-merit-based trait like dignity is what grounds moral significance for each one of us; it is built around principles that situate interpersonal love at the foundations of our ethical reasoning; and it suggests love-oriented policies on diverse social issues as well as a love-oriented way of life.”"

The plan to vaccinate all Americans, despite RFK Jr.; The Washington Post, June 24, 2025

 

 Lena H. Sun

 and 

Rachel Roubein

, The Washington Post; The plan to vaccinate all Americans, despite RFK Jr.

"Professional medical societies, pharmacists, state health officials and vaccine manufacturers, as well as a new advocacy group, are mobilizing behind the scenes to preserve access for vaccines as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. works to upend the nation’s decades-old vaccine system, according to public health experts.

The groups are discussing ordering vaccines directly from manufacturers and giving greater weight to vaccine recommendations from medical associations. And they are asking insurance companies to continue covering shots based on professional societies’ guidance instead of the federal government’s, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the conversations, including some who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.

The moves come as Kennedy has replaced members of the key federal vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that decides which vaccines are recommended for whom and whether they’ll be covered by insurance. Kennedy fired the 17-member committee earlier this month and handpicked eight new members,several of whom are vaccine critics."

Cassidy, in Break With Kennedy, Calls for Vaccine Meeting Delay; The New York Times, June 24, 2025

Sheryl Gay Stolberg , The New York Times; Cassidy, in Break With Kennedy, Calls for Vaccine Meeting Delay

"The chairman of the Senate health committee, in his first significant break with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has called for a delay in this week’s meeting of a panel of vaccine advisers, saying the group Mr. Kennedy appointed lacks the experience and diversity of opinion necessary to ensure public faith in its recommendations.

The chairman, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, made his comments in a social media post on Monday night. Mr. Cassidy, a physician and a strong proponent of vaccines, voted reluctantly to confirm Mr. Kennedy after announcing that the secretary had agreed to consult with him on significant matters and not to disband the advisory committee. The senator has carefully parsed his words about Mr. Kennedy.

“Although the appointees to ACIP have scientific credentials, many do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology or immunology,” Mr. Cassidy wrote, using the acronym for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“In particular,” Mr. Cassidy added, “some lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines, and may even have a preconceived bias against them.”"

The copyright war between the AI industry and creatives; Financial Times, June 23, 2025

MARTIN WOLF, Financial Times ; The copyright war between the AI industry and creatives

"One is that the government itself estimates that “creative industries generated £126bn in gross value added to the economy [5 per cent of GDP] and employed 2.4 million people in 2022”. It is at the very least an open question whether the value added of the AI industry will ever be of a comparable scale in this country. Another is that the creative industries represent much of the best of what the UK and indeed humanity does. The idea of handing over its output for free is abhorrent...

Interestingly, for much of the 19th century, the US did not recognise international copyright at all in its domestic law. Anthony Trollope himself complained fiercely about the theft of the copyright over his books."

Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors' copyright lawsuit; Reuters, June 24, 2025

 Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors' copyright lawsuit

 "A federal judge in San Francisco ruled late on Monday that Anthropic's use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law.

Siding with tech companies on a pivotal question for the AI industry, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthropic made "fair use" of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train its Claude large language model.

Alsup also said, however, that Anthropic's copying and storage of more than 7 million pirated books in a "central library" infringed the authors' copyrights and was not fair use. The judge has ordered a trial in December to determine how much Anthropic owes for the infringement."

Study: Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book; Ars Technica, June 20, 2025

 TIMOTHY B. LEE  , Ars Techcnica; Study: Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book

"In recent years, numerous plaintiffs—including publishers of books, newspapers, computer code, and photographs—have sued AI companies for training models using copyrighted material. A key question in all of these lawsuits has been how easily AI models produce verbatim excerpts from the plaintiffs’ copyrighted content.

For example, in its December 2023 lawsuit against OpenAI, The New York Times Company produced dozens of examples where GPT-4 exactly reproduced significant passages from Times stories. In its response, OpenAI described this as a “fringe behavior” and a “problem that researchers at OpenAI and elsewhere work hard to address.”

But is it actually a fringe behavior? And have leading AI companies addressed it? New research—focusing on books rather than newspaper articles and on different companies—provides surprising insights into this question. Some of the findings should bolster plaintiffs’ arguments, while others may be more helpful to defendants.

The paper was published last month by a team of computer scientists and legal scholars from Stanford, Cornell, and West Virginia University. They studied whether five popular open-weight models—three from Meta and one each from Microsoft and EleutherAI—were able to reproduce text from Books3, a collection of books that is widely used to train LLMs. Many of the books are still under copyright."

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."

American Bar Association files suit to halt government intimidation of lawyers and law firms; American Bar Association (ABA), June 16, 2025

American Bar Association (ABA); American Bar Association files suit to halt government intimidation of lawyers and law firms

"The American Bar Association today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, more than two dozen federal departments and agencies, and the heads of those departments and agencies, asking a federal court to declare unconstitutional the Trump administration’s ongoing unlawful policy of intimidation against lawyers and law firms and to enjoin the government from enforcing the policy. 

Since taking office earlier this year, President Donald Trump and his administration have used the vast powers of the executive branch to coerce lawyers and law firms to abandon clients, causes and policy positions the president does not like, the lawsuit asserts. The Trump administration has carried out this policy through a series of executive orders, letters, memos and public statements designed to damage certain law firms and intimidate others. These relentless attacks have produced a chilling effect across the legal profession — including on many members of the American Bar Association — causing harm to the justice system at large and limiting access to representation for individuals and organizations whose positions the administration disfavors. 

The ABA stands for the rule of law and access to justice for all. Today, the American legal profession and the members of the American Bar Association face an unprecedented challenge. As the nation’s largest voluntary association of lawyers, the ABA is compelled to take action and seek meaningful relief through the courts on behalf of its members and in support of the American bar. 

Attacks on the legal profession are uniquely destructive because of the critical role that lawyers fulfill in the constitutional system of our country, the lawsuit notes. Without skilled lawyers to bring and argue cases, the judiciary cannot function as a meaningful check on the executive branch.  

The ABA’s lawsuit details how President Trump and his administration have adopted and implemented this Law Firm Intimidation Policy on an ongoing basis. The administration has targeted firms who have engaged in disfavored conduct. It has issued sanctions designed to cripple their businesses and limit their ability to freely represent clients. Tactics include terminating security clearances, severing government contracts of law firms and their clients, limiting access to federal buildings and refraining from hiring employees of certain firms for jobs in the federal government. 

As detailed in the filing, some firms have contested the orders in court while many others have entered into deals with the administration to avoid becoming the target of future executive orders. The result of the Law Firm Intimidation Policy has been a pervasive fear within the legal community and the justice system at large. Many attorneys are no longer willing to take on representations that would require suing the federal government because doing so poses a serious risk of becoming the next target of the administration’s devastating sanctions. This blizzard-like chill on the profession has continued even after firms challenging their own executive orders have won repeated court victories. Those victories only protect those firms. The ABA has filed this action to protect all its members, representing a far broader section of the legal profession.

The administration has demonstrated that it intends to continue the Law Firm Intimidation Policy in order to intimidate lawyers and law firms from taking on cases adverse to the president’s interests. These attacks are clear violations of First Amendment rights, including prohibitions on government coercion to suppress free speech, discrimination based on viewpoints held by lawyers and law firms, and the right of citizens to assemble freely and to petition the government. 

“This is the time to stand up, speak out and seek relief from our courts” said William R. Bay, president of the American Bar Association. “There has never been a more urgent time for the ABA to defend its members, our profession and the rule of law itself.” 

The case, American Bar Association v. Executive Office of the President, et al.,  has been filed in the United States District Court in the District of Columbia. 

Read the filing here.

The ABA is one of the largest voluntary associations of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law. View our privacy statement online. Follow the latest ABA news at www.americanbar.org/news and on X (formerly Twitter) @ABANews."

Can We See Our Future in China’s Cameras?; The New York Times, June 23, 2025

Megan K. Stack , The New York Times; Can We See Our Future in China’s Cameras?

"The Chinese Communist Party famously uses surveillance to crush dissent and, increasingly, is applying predictive algorithms to get ahead of both crimes and protest. People who screen as potential political agitators, for example, can be prevented from stepping onto trains bound for Beijing. During the Covid pandemic, Chinese health authorities used algorithmic contact tracing and QR codes to block people suspected of viral exposure from entering public spaces. Those draconian health initiatives helped to mainstream invasive surveillance and increase biometric data collection.

It would be comforting to think that China has created a singular dystopia, utterly removed from our American reality. But we are not as different as we might like to think.

Thankfully, our political architecture lacks a unified power structure akin to the C.C.P. Americans — who tend to value individual liberties over collective well-being — have deeply embedded rights which, at least theoretically, protect us from such abuses."

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."

The Pope has a message for AI executives; Quartz, June 20, 2025

Michael Barclay, Quartz; The Pope has a message for AI executives

Pope Leo wants AI to be regulated ethically, while the U.S. is poised to bar any state-level regulations for a decade

"At the Second Annual Rome Conference on Artificial Intelligence on Friday, Pope Leo talked about where AI is headed.

The event was attended by Vatican officials, American academics, and Silicon Valley executives from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and more. The new pope urged serious reflection on “the inherently ethical dimension of AI, as well as its responsible governance...

Pope Leo said AI’s benefits and risks must be evaluated using a “superior ethical criterion,” adding that it “challenges all of us to reflect more deeply on the true nature and uniqueness of our shared human dignity.” He added that “access to data — however extensive — must not be confused with intelligence.”"