04/20/18 Overnight Links

Reason: How we lost privacy: “Where people once feared surveillance in their residences, their children now provide the cameras and microphones themselves. Home security systems offer live video streams accessible anywhere. People share their private conversations with devices such as Google Home and Amazon’s Echo. The recent subpoena of an Alexa—the artificial intelligence inside an Echo—that may have “witnessed” a homicide should give all of us pause about what our devices may be recording even when we think they’re not.

That’s the crux of the matter: Even people who resist the idea of the government having our information will willingly open the curtains to private companies—some of whom then turn what they learn over to the government, or leave it vulnerable to hackers. They have our names, our addresses, our bank details, our pictures, our email correspondence, even our current heart rate. Their geotracking knows where we are at any time.”

USA Today: Facebook fights to keep using your face

Activist Post: Police testing controversial portable DNA machine

Techdirt: The war on whistleblowers claims another casualty

BoingBoing: Government accidentally sends file on “remote mind control” methods to journalist

The American Conservative: John Bolton: In search of Carthage

DefenseOne: Pentagon is building an AI factory

Daily Beast: Fake pain pills killed Prince, along with thousands more Americans

Herb: Will psychedelics go corporate like cannabis?

National Geographic: ‘Exploding ant’ rips itself apart to protect its own

Author: S. Smith