🇬🇷Greece’s top administrative court has ordered the intelligence service EYP to hand over the file on the surveillance of @nasoskoukakis.bsky.social.
www.ekathimerini.com/news/1297105...
The Pentagon's rift with Anthropic signals a clear and alarming intent to use AI for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. @hrw.org is calling on states at the UN this week to ban and regulate autonomous weapons. @verityc.bsky.social is at negotiations. Our dispatch: www.hrw.org/news/2026/03...
I'm at the #UN meeting on autonomous weapons systems with partners from @stopkillerrobots.bsky.social - states have the opportunity to draw legal red lines around emerging weapons systems.
Will they?
New @hrw.org dispatch with @abacci.bsky.social
www.hrw.org/news/2026/03...
"This ruling is an important moment of accountability against the executives of companies that develop and sell dangerous surveillance technology.
Now the Greek judiciary needs to hold state officials accountable for ordering its use."
- @evacosse.bsky.social & @notzachcampbell.bsky.social
“Allowing masked, unidentified agents to roam communities & apprehend people w/out identifying themselves erodes trust in the rule of law & creates a dangerous vacuum where abuses can flourish, exacerbating the brutality of the arrests.” @belkiswille.bsky.social @hrw.org www.hrw.org/news/2025/12...
Curious what other dystopian tech European Union R&D money is funding?
There's a data platform for this: opensecuritydata.eu
It's got receipts on EU funding for phone hacking tools, attempts to break encryption with quantum computing (lol), swarming border drones and, unfortunately, lots more.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗔𝗻𝗸𝗮𝗿𝗮, 𝗕𝗲𝗶𝗷𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗹𝘀?
EU research money, a Chinese firm and Turkish surveillance tech.
A company part-owned by China’s ZTE still gets EU funding – while its servers help Turkey monitor protesters.
💶 How did EU money end up funding repression? Read more:
Researchers pointed a satellite dish at the sky for 3 years and monitored what unencrypted data it picked up. The results were shocking: They obtained thousands of T-Mobile users' phone calls and texts, military and law enforcement secrets, much more: www.wired.com/story/satell... 🧵👇
Microsoft should suspend business activities that are contributing to grave human rights abuses and international crimes by the Israeli military and other Israeli government bodies.
There is no time to delay.
A federal agent used a local cop's password for Flock to do an immigration-related search without his knowledge. Illegal in Illinois and at the very least a Flock terms of service violation. Of course they're all just joking about it though:
www.404media.co/feds-used-lo...
The UK gov plans to experiment with facial age estimation tech on vulnerable young people. But refugee children need care, not algorithms. This tech isn't the solution - instead, it creates new potentially life-changing risks, as @techchildrights.bsky.social and I write. www.hrw.org/news/2025/07...
What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.
Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...
NEW: Spyware maker Paragon says its $2M contract with ICE is still inactive, so the company hasn’t provided its surveillance tech to the agency.
If the U.S. govt approves it, Paragon will face the dilemma of whether to work with an agency that’s very different from 2024, when contract was signed.
Here is how #Frontex unlawfully shared thousands of people’s personal data with #Europol
Investigation conducted by Solomon, the French newspaper Le Monde, the Spanish newspaper El País, and the German outlet Netzpolitik.
wearesolomon.com/mag/format/i...
The CEO of Flock wrote a blog about our "recent clickbait-driven reporting and social media rumors that mischaracterize Flock’s LPR devices" then proceeded to explain how our reporting directly resulted in extensive changes to how police are allowed to use Flock
www.404media.co/flock-remove...
A must-read report form @dmehro.bsky.social that @wired.com made free to read because it is based on government documents (it's their policy to make FOIA-based reporting free as well). Thank you for making important journalism based on public records available to all.
New from 404 Media: ICE is tapping into a nationwide AI camera network, data we got shows. Flock's automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) in thousands of communities. Data shows "ICE", "immigration" as reasons for use. Local cops doing lookups for ICE, no warrant www.404media.co/ice-taps-int...
This week, news emerged that UK police have been issued guidance on investigating unexpected pregnancy loss that includes seizing digital devices, checking internet searches and health apps, such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers.
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
My latest on the clean OPSEC saga: TeleMessage customers include DC Police, Andreesen Horowitz, JP Morgan, and hundreds more micahflee.com/telemessage-...
SCOOP: In Feb, federal agencies "lost" many #FOIA requests but you probably had no idea. It turns out that the FOIAs disappeared due to an "insider threat attack" by 2 employees at a software company who were previously convicted of hacking into the State Dept
🧵
🎁 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
The Trump administration’s first 100 days in office have been a relentless barrage of actions that violate, threaten, or undermine human rights.
To illustrate the breadth and depth of damage, HRW has compiled 100 harmful actions during these 100 days ⤵️
My latest for @justsecurity.org on what Trump's call to eliminate “information silos” within government means for human rights. This dangerous and dystopian move underscores the desperate need for comprehensive privacy and data protection laws in the US @hrw.org
www.justsecurity.org/110133/what-...
The UK should drop its order to Apple demanding access to encrypted user data. Strong encryption should be the norm, and this order threatens the rights of users worldwide
www.hrw.org/news/2025/02...
Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; „… without #encryption tools, lives may be endangered. In the worst cases, a Government’s ability to break into its citizens’ phones may lead to the persecution of individuals who are simply exercising their fundamental human rights.” t.co/AWG89rXGkD
Last year my @hrw.org colleague @joeyshea.bsky.social & I attended the #UN Internet Governance Forum in Riyadh. We organized a session w/the Saudi human rights org ALQST. @linaalhathloul.bsky.social spoke remotely.
The UN censored the session & retaliated against us 👇
www.hrw.org/news/2025/02...
Google announced significant changes to its artificial intelligence policy this week.
This pivot from refusing to build AI for weapons to stating an intent to create AI that supports national security ventures is stark, and it sparks serious human rights concerns.
Read more: bit.ly/4gwYBeL
Paragon spyware used to target citizens across Europe, says Italian government
Italy’s security bill threatens fundamental rights
It criminalizes peaceful protest, with harsh penalties for activists, detainees, and migrants
Human rights bodies warn of serious risks - the Senate should listen
❌Repression is not security❌
hrw.org/news/2025/02...
Google has amended its responsible AI guidelines, including removing the red line in its AI Principles that the company won't design or deploy AI for "[w]eapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people."
