September 19, 2025

What's News? Back to Work!

This week we're back to discussing stories that have been in the news over the past few months - in particular the stories that have stayed with us and kept us thinking about them.

Links

Expansion of ICE biometrics: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202506/trumps-megabill-expands-biometric-surveillance

Dean Cain joins ICE: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yp8l3z0g5o

ICE access to medicaid data: https://www.wired.com/story/ice-access-medicaid-data

Industry Day at the US Customs and Border Protection: ⁠https://theintercept.com/2025/07/23/cbp-border-patrol-ai-surveillance/

UK Subcutaneous trackers: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/01/tech-firms-suggested-placing-trackers-under-offenders-skin-at-meeting-with-justice-secretary

Azure use by Israeli Government⁠: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-israeli-military-palestinian-phone-calls-cloud

Inquiry by Microsoft⁠: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/microsoft-launches-inquiry-claims-israel-used-tech-mass-surveillance-palestinians

Investor concerns about Microsoft use by Israeli government⁠: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-11/microsoft-investors-prod-company-over-work-with-israeli-military

Israeli government use of Google services⁠: https://theintercept.com/2025/05/12/google-nimbus-israel-military-ai-human-rights/

⁠Data sovereignty and Data Localisation in Africa and Asia⁠: https://restofworld.org/2025/big-tech-data-sovereignty/

Meta violates California's wiretap law⁠: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/05/meta_flo_data/

PI's original app data investigation⁠: https://privacyinternational.org/appdata

PI's most recent look at period apps⁠: https://privacyinternational.org/learning-resources/no-bodys-business-mine-vol-2

Amazon Alexa ads?⁠: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/31/amazon-ceo-wants-to-put-ads-in-your-alexa-conversations/

Grok advertisers⁠: https://www.ft.com/content/3bc3a76a-8639-4dbe-8754-3053270e4605

⁠Pew researchers study Google AI summaries⁠: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/

404 media's experience with Google AI⁠: https://www.404media.co/googles-ai-is-destroying-search-the-internet-and-your-brain/

Cloudflare experimenting with pay per crawl feature for AI companies⁠: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/pay-up-or-stop-scraping-cloudflare-program-charges-bots-for-each-crawl/

You can donate to PI!: pvcy.org/donatepill

Pilot programme - drones in Florida schools⁠: https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/demonstrated-at-south-florida-school-texas-company-touts-drone-response-system-for-school-shootings/

Axon's ethics board resignations over taser drones⁠: https://www.wired.com/story/axon-taser-drones-ethics-board/

UK facial recognition database searches⁠: https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/5635/revealed-skyrocketing-scale-uk-polices-secret-facial-recognition-searches

100 page ICO complaint: privacyinternational.org/legal-action/ico-complaint-against-uks-automated-recommendation-tools-immigration-operations

...more

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