Ethical Tech News You Might Have Missed!
Here’s some of the headlines from the past month we enjoyed. Take this Friday to catch up on some of the news you might have not seen when it first broke.
Inside Biden’s secret surveillance court (Politico) - Federal clandestine court shenanigans are unveiled; less transparency, more mystery.
Amazon reverses course, revokes police access to Ring footage via Neighbors app (TechCrunch) - A win for privacy advocates, making it harder for people to use their porch nanny-cam as a neighborhood surveillance tool.
TSA uses ‘minimum’ data to fine-tune its facial recognition, but some experts still worry (NextGov) - Is it possible to maintain any semblance of privacy at security screening points when facial recognition is involved?
N.S.A. Buys Americans’ Internet Data Without Warrants, Letter Says (The New York Times) - No warrant, no problem! NSA has a not-so-secret love affair with big data brokers as they continue widespread surveillance.
Facial recognition cameras in supermarkets ‘targeted at poor areas’ in England (The Guardian) - Make sure to smile in the checkout line!
The FTC wants to know more about Big Tech’s AI partnerships (Morning Brew) - The FTC started the new year firing, with no bigger move than their ongoing evaluation of AI partnerships with big tech companies.
Is A.I. the Death of I.P.? (The New Yorker) - Our laws weren’t built for a world with powerful AI, and IP might be the first set of laws to break.
It’s Time for the Government to Regulate AI. Here’s How (Politico) - A proposal on how the federal government might curb the risks of AI.
The Sad Truth of the FTC’s ‘Historic’ Privacy Win (Wired) - Is the FTC’s action a win for privacy or a reflection on the lack of systematic privacy protections in the U.S.?
UK privacy watchdog to examine practice of web scraping to get training data for AI (The Record) - Even if U.S. regulators balk, AI companies’ data scraping policies are under scrutiny abroad.
Mark Zuckerberg’s new goal is creating artificial general intelligence (The Verge) - As if conquering social media wasn’t enough …
The 2023 Good Tech Awards (New York Times) - A rare and refreshing reminder of companies working hard to improve tech
The New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft over use of its stories used to train chatbots (Politico) - Perhaps the AI lawsuit of the year, we’ll be following closely!
Congress warns science agency over AI grant to tech-linked think tank (Politico) - Some of the first Congressional scrutiny of agency’s AI decisions, more are sure to come.
China is shoring up the great firewall for the AI age (The Economist) - Western laws aren’t the only systems being tested by the capabilities of AI.
Uber Fined Almost $11 Million by Dutch Privacy Watchdog (WSJ) - While big EU fines grab headlines, we don’t want to forget our friends in the Netherlands.
