The Intercept: New Orleans surveillance program gives powerful tools to a police department with a history of racism and abuse
Bloomberg: Pentagon drone program is using Google AI
More in-depth from Daily Mail: Google is working with Pentagon to equip military drones with people-tracking AI in secret “Project Maven” deal, report claims
CNN Money: Facebook robots may one day follow you around at home
ACLU: Facial recognition: A powerful tool for authoritarian surveillance
Techdirt: CIA still arguing its official leaks to journalists shouldn’t be subject to FOIA requests
The American Conservative: The new Surveillance State and the old perjury trap: “Incidental collection” is the claimed inadvertent or accidental monitoring of Americans’ communications under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. Incidental collection exists alongside court-approved warranted surveillance authorized on a specific individual. But for incidental collection, no probable causeis needed, no warrant is needed, and no court or judge is involved. It just gets vacuumed up.
While exactly how many Americans have their communications monitored this way is unknown, we know these Republican Trump supporters and staffers were caught up in surveillance authorized by a Democratic administration (no evidence of incidental surveillance of the Clinton campaign exists). Election-time claims that the Obama administration wasn’t “wiretapping” Trump were disingenuous. They in fact gathered an unprecedented level of inside information. How was it used?
BoingBoing: Six immortal superweapons the Democrats made for the President, which Trump now gets to wield: Through the Obama years and even into the Trump administration, Democrats have voted a range of powers for the president that gives him almost unlimited authority, out of a combination of the foolish conviction that no one untrustworthy would inherit Obama’s tools, and cowardice about voting against mass surveillance and being criticized by war on terror hawks.
Six of these superweapons are frankly terrifying: the power to start a war without Congressional authorization (Authorization for Use of Military Force); the power to enter into trade deals without Congressional authorization (fast-tracking); the power to lock anyone up without charge (National Defense Authorization Act); the power to assassinate Americans (AUMF — again); total control over the US election infrastructure (Obama DHS directive).
Raw Story: High-ranking GOP congressmen call for special prosecutor to look into surveillance of Carter Page Ed: This story is getting old.
Sonoma State Star: ‘Google Clips’ could be new form of surveillance
TIME: Britain says it will hit back if Russia was behind ex-spy’s sudden illness
CNET: Brace for ‘quantum supremacy’ with Google’s Bristlecone chip
Reason: The 2010’s have been a banner decade for unintended consequences of the Drug War
High Times: The UK bans medical cannabis domestically, yet remains the biggest exporter of it in the world
