Great to be back @uottawa.ca last week to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Centre for Law Technology and Society; reunite with brilliant, talented and committed colleagues; and talk about the future of digital rights.

Journalistes de la flottille Madleen : RSF dénonce l'arrestation arbitraire d'Omar Faiad, libéré sous condition par Israël, et appelle à la libération immédiate et inconditionnelle de Yanis Mhamdi Le journaliste de la chaîne Al Jazeera Mubasher Omar Faiad a atterri en France ce 10 juin à 16 h, après avoir été retenu arbitrairement plus de 24 heures par les autorités israéliennes. Son confrère d...

Flottille #Madleen : le reporter d'@aljazeera.com Omar Faiad a atterri en #France à 16h, après avoir été retenu arbitrairement plus de 24h par les autorités en #Israël. Yanis Mhamdi de @blast-info.fr est toujours détenu. RSF dénonce ces détentions arbitraires et exige la libération de Yanis Mhamdi.

Israel: No journalist should be forced to sign documents to secure their release / IFJ French journalists Omar Faiad and Yanis Mhamdi, who were on board the Madleen vessel, were arbitrarily arrested by Israeli authorities when the ship was intercepted on 8 June in international waters a...

#Israel: Together with @efjeurope.bsky.social, we urge the Israeli authorities to immediately release French journalist Yanis Mhamdi, who was arbitrarily arrested on board the Madleen vessel. No journalist should be forced to sign documents to secure their release. @blast-info.fr

Immediate Diplomatic Action: MADLEEN Email Addresses: , , , , , Subject: [!] Immediate Diplomatic Action Required to Protect Citizens Aboard the Madleen  Dear Representatives of France, Sweden, Germany, Brazil, and Spain, I wri...

@freedomflotilla.bsky.social is carrying aid to Gaza, but today Israel has already jammed their communications and threatened to stop the ship.

🚨 Help protect the international volunteers on board, by sending the letter linked below to their governments 🚨

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Take one minute: go to bit.ly/IsraelOnNotice and send a letter to the Israeli government, UN officials, and diplomatic missions demanding that Israel abide by international law and refrain from attacking, sabotaging or otherwise interfering with the #Madleen and her mission.

A geopolitical conflict over minerals may finally be a real threat The latest set of Chinese restrictions on rare earths exports are the most worrying to date

China’s restrictions on 7 rare earth elements (retaliation for Trump-tariffs) raise supply concerns re critical minerals — esp for ICTs and “green” technologies

www.ft.com/content/24187c18-9cfe-4b8c-8863-6f3bf09e2cd4

Anthropic's new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline | TechCrunch Anthropic says its Claude Opus 4 model frequently tries to blackmail software engineers when they try to take it offline.

AI was built by humans and fed human inputs- of course it will reflect human values like survival and self-preservation.

“Anthropic says its Claude Opus 4 model frequently tries to blackmail software engineers when they try to take it offline.”

techcrunch.com/2025/05/22/a...

Perhaps it would have helped if over the last 30 years Germany had developed a comprehensive system of free access to legal information, so that it was more likely that non-proprietary alternatives to a German legal LLM could emerge.

omg

The environmental cost of Al is real, but blaming users? There's an irony about the same corporations that create endless advertising, surveillance capitalism, and militarized tech now trying to guilt individuals for tiny acts of politeness

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Sam Altman Admits That Saying "Please" and "Thank You" to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power Sam Altman says OpenAI is spending "tens of millions of dollars" processing chatbot queries made with proper etiquette.

Al is built on the promise of "humanizing" it, yet human gestures (respect, relationality) are being framed as a barrier to industrial efficiency

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futurism.com/altman-pleas...

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Amazon reportedly submits last-minute bid to acquire TikTok Amazon has submitted a bid to acquire all of TikTok, according to a new report from The New York Times. The last-minute bid comes as TikTok faces an April 5 deadline to shed its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the U.S. However, the parties involved in the deal talks do not appear to […]

Amazon reportedly submits last-minute bid to acquire TikTok

We are witnessing live how the extreme right is gentrifying Nazism.

👏🏽 @francescabria.bsky.social

CDT joined @pressfreedom.bsky.social & others urging the U.S. to stand up for press freedom after a March 14 EO called for dismantling the U.S. Agency for Global Media. USAGM-funded media provide news to those under authoritarian regimes—abandoning them undermines democracy. cdt.org/insights/cdt...

AI isn’t omniscient, it’s a reflection of its imperfect inputs & instructions— themselves reflections of our imperfect selves

Poland opted for an integrated supervisory approach to AI governance, setting up a new AI Commission composed of existing regulators. However, this new body raised questions about the involvement of independent authorities, most notably the DPA.
www.mlex.com/mlex/article...

Marine Le Pen condamnée dans l’affaire des assistants parlementaires du FN : ce que la justice lui reproche Reconnue coupable de détournement de fonds publics, elle a été condamnée à quatre ans de prison - dont deux ferme - et cinq ans d’inéligibilité. Le tribunal a mis en avant le « rôle central » de l’ex-présidente du RN dans le système mis en place pour détourner l’argent du Parlement européen.

Marine Le Pen condamnée dans l’affaire des assistants parlementaires du FN : ce que la justice lui reproche

UK Police broke into a Quaker Meeting on 27 March and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.

Digital imperialism: How US social media firms are using American law to challenge global tech regulation

Parabéns 👏🏽 @yasmincurzi.com @camillegrenier.bsky.social

@mmasnick.bsky.social 👏🏽

One mother’s win over Meta will change social media for everyone Britons will be able to opt out of targeted advertising after Tanya O’Carroll’s David-and-Goliath battle with Meta

The Times: “Britons will be able to opt out of targeted advertising after Tanya O’Carroll’s David-and-Goliath battle with Meta”. Incredibly proud of my colleague @ravinaikawo.bsky.social at @awo.agency for representing @tanyaocarroll.bsky.social in this landmark case www.thetimes.com/article/ae70...

Bravo à toutes celles et ceux (notamment chez LQDN, chez @signal.org, etc.) et qui se sont mobilisés pour rappeler à la raison tant les Sénateurs que les Députés.

On a réussi à ne pas trop passer pour des cons aux yeux du monde grâce à vos efforts 💪

Democratic Senators Team Up With MAGA To Hand Trump A Censorship Machine At the exact moment when Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are actively dismantling democratic institutions and working to silence critics, a group of Democratic Senators have decided to collaborate…

Democratic Senators Team Up With MAGA To Repeal S.230

“They appear to be doing this out of a deep misunderstanding of how the law works combined with an astounding naiveté about how this process will be used by the MAGA faithful.”

www.techdirt.com/2025/03/21/d...