How the FBI can conduct mass surveillance – even without AI

The FBI declares it can conduct mass surveillance without AI, despite Anthropic’s protest.A central part of the standoff between Anthropic and the Department of Defense has revolved around the artificial intelligence firm’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance. Yet even without the cooperation of AI firms, remarks this week from Kash Patel, FBI director, show how authorities are by any reasonable measure already operating a system that can surveil citizens at scale.On Wednesday, Patel confirmed to a Senate intelligence committee hearing that the FBI is actively buying commercially available data on Americans. Patel’s answer, which was under oath, was in response to a question from senator Ron Wyden on whether the agency was purchasing location data on citizens, as it had previously admitted to doing in 2023

Musk responsible for Twitter investors’ stock dropping when he bought company, jury rules

A California jury has ruled that Elon Musk is responsible for Twitter investors’ stock plummeting when he sought to buy the social media platform for $44bn in 2022. Jurors handed the win to a group of investors who sued the billionaire saying he publicly disparaged the company with the aim of bringing down Twitter’s stock price to get a better bargain.The trial, which began earlier this month in federal court in San Francisco, focused on whether Musk intended to move the market with his comments. During a six-month period in 2022, after his offer to buy Twitter, he posted constantly to his millions of followers that the social network was rife with bots that produced spam and created fake accounts.Musk did eventually buy Twitter for $54

Senior European journalist suspended over AI-generated quotes

The publisher of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.Peter Vandermeersch, the former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.Vandermeersch, a fellow of “journalism and society” at the European publishing group, has been suspended from his role.The experienced journalist said he had summarised reports using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s NotebookLM, and not checked whether the quotes from those summaries were accurate. He subsequently published them in his Substack newsletter

First came the AI ‘teammates’, then the layoffs: the new reality for Atlassian staff now looking for work

Sacked from his “dream job” at software giant Atlassian, Rubio* wants just one thing – closure.“We were probably exceeding expectations and there’s no explanation from the company as a whole as to why any of this happened,” he says.“The only desire that I have, outside of receiving my severance package, is closure as to why I was selected.”On Thursday morning last week, Atlassian laid off 1,600 workers – about 10% of its total workforce. Nearly 500 Australian staff were among them

Fire experts ‘kept awake’ over growing hazard of lithium-ion batteries

Lithium-ion batteries represent a new technological hazard that one fire science expert has said keeps him awake at night, as fire service chiefs warn the ubiquity of the batteries in everyday products is outpacing public understanding and safety regulations.The blaze that devastated a historic building in Glasgow and resulted in the closure of Central Station, Scotland’s largest rail interchange, is believed to have started in a shop selling vapes, which are powered by lithium-ion batteries. Glasgow’s Central Station has since reopened.The latest data reveals a sharp increase in battery-related fires across Scotland, while firefighters in London attend an e-bike or e-scooter fire every other day.Paul Christensen, a professor of pure and applied electrochemistry at the University of Newcastle, underlined that, while the probability of a fire from a lithium-ion battery is very low, the hazard is “very, very high, as we’ve seen with this fire in Glasgow”

Essex police pause facial recognition camera use after study finds racial bias

Essex police have paused the use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology after a study found cameras were significantly more likely to target black people than people of other ethnicities.The move to suspend use of the AI-enabled systems was revealed by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which regulates the use of the technology deployed so far by at least 13 police forces in London, south and north Wales, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, Suffolk, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Surrey and Sussex.The ICO said Essex police had paused LFR deployments “after identifying potential accuracy and bias risks” and warned other forces to have mitigations in place. LFR systems are either mounted to fixed locations or deployed in vans. In January, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced the number of LFR vans would increase five-fold, with 50 available to every police force in England and Wales