Big Tech’s bind with military and intelligence agencies In their gold rush to build cloud and AI tools, Big Tech is also enabling unprecedented government surveillance. Thanks to reporting from The Guardian, +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Intercept,…

Big Tech is now in the business of enabling government surveillance.

It was just a matter of time they’d be tools of war and abuse...

privacyinternational.org/long-read/56...

On his first Father’s Day, Mahmoud Khalil will sit in a detention center 1,500 miles away from his wife and newborn son, as punishment for speaking out in support of Palestinian rights.

Today our Legal Director testified before the US Congress about a serious threat to global digital privacy.

A UK surveillance power called a Technical Capability Notice (TCN) could force companies to weaken encryption, in secret. 🧵

Your future AI Assistant still needs to earn your trust “Hey [enter AI assistant name here], can you book me a table at the nearest good tapas restaurant next week, and invite everyone from the book club?” Billions of dollars are invested in companies to d...

Interesting to watch Google I/O promote their upcoming assistant but in the example the only personal data was the name of a dog. We all need to know how these assistants will protect our data. privacyinternational.org/long-read/55...

Google Worried It Couldn’t Control How Israel Uses Project Nimbus, Files Reveal Internal Google documents show that the tech giant feared it wouldn’t be able to monitor how Israel might use its technology to harm Palestinians.

Intriguing coverage of Israel-Google contract. Apparently a nation state can have a cloud contract that says the provider must “Reject, Appeal, and Resist foreign government access”. theintercept.com/2025/05/12/g...

Interestingly the piece also states Apple struggled to get ‘LLM Siri’ learning data, unlike others like Grok, but resolved it recently through a software update with iPhone-level learning against synthetic data.

Why Apple Still Hasn’t Cracked AI Insiders say continued failure to get artificial intelligence right threatens everything from the iPhone’s dominance to plans for robots and other futuristic products.

Curious. Bloomberg piece on Apple and AI says senior exec at the time of decision didn’t want to work with OpenAI because it wasn’t ‘trustworthy or protective of data’. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Reading recommendation favour: what’s the best thing you’ve read about state surveillance and AI?

UK minister asks Big Tech to help create ‘prison outside prison’ for criminals Shabana Mahmood calls on tech groups to develop AI surveillance of offenders in the community

True visionary. Ugh. According to the FT, the UK justice minister has asked Big Tech ‘to develop more extensive surveillance of offenders outside jail’. AI and tagging could be used to “effectively create a prison outside of prison”, she said. on.ft.com/4jSrwwe

Thanks for sharing this Sam. I’m particularly fascinated when he engaged with the struggle of comms reach for their own work, their website visits etc. Generating discourse is hard.

American War A special series from The Verge that confronts the legacy and mythmaking of the Vietnam War, 50 years after the fall of Saigon.

I’ve become an avid reader of the Verge. They can still surprise with strong non-tech policy coverage. This absorbing volume on the Vietnam war is an excellent example. www.theverge.com/cs/features/...

Mahmoud Khalil’s Son Arrives After ICE Refuses to Let Him Attend Birth Mr. Khalil, a permanent resident detained in Louisiana, had requested a monitored furlough for the birth. His request was denied in less than an hour.

Mahmoud Khalil was sitting in ICE detention as his wife gave birth to their first child yesterday.

ICE denied an emergency request for Mahmoud to be present for the delivery.

Opportunities | Privacy International At Privacy International (PI) we believe that for people to be treated with dignity and to preserve autonomy, we must defend the right for all people everywhere to have access to privacy protection…

We're hiring for a Legal Officer! Do you want to work with a London-based team that works across the world to hold governments to account and challenge companies who exploit our data? Please apply to join us!

The US border surveillance expansion has global implications We’ve been asked a lot lately about whether it is safe to travel, particularly to the US. And it’s not surprising why: the US Government is increasing their cruelty at borders.

The US government is expanding its border surveillance, and we've seen before that this expansion will tempt other governments around the world to follow suit.

👇

privacyinternational.org/news-analysi...

A very concerning development from Germany where the conservatives want to repeal the #foi law. To the best of my knowledge, no country in the last 70 years has ever repealed their FOI law, even when the country has lost democracy.

So the CDU wants to do something worse than the Taliban has done.🤮

With Aid programmes in crisis, we risk more global surveillance As the New York Times reports the health programmes are being cut by USAID cuts, the US Government declares them as “inconsistent with the national interest or agency policy prior

As the NYT reports health programmes are being cut by USAID cuts, the US Government declares them “inconsistent with the national interest”.

Sadly, we know the kind of aid that governments believe IS in the national interest: surveillance funding.

Militarisation’s effect on our brain: on London’s expansion of AI enabled surveillance,
 “There’s a tech race against crime, just like there is a tech race between countries militarily. And for us to tool-up on the tech race means making sure we have the best, most sophisticated AI equipment.”

Does anyone have recommendations for books on the militarisation of the tech industry? I had high hopes for Alex Karp’s The Technological Republic but surprisingly it didn’t really cover it.

I’m trying Mariarosario Taddeo’s ‘The Ethics of AI in Defence’ next.

Dems ask Trump admin to explain Khalil’s arrest, calling it ‘playbook of authoritarians’ More than 100 House Democrats sent the letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The recent detention of Mahmoud Khalil because of his political advocacy is a direct violation of the First Amendment.

We are joining members of Congress in demanding answers about this outrageous abuse of power.

🚨 Alongside Liberty and Leigh Day, we've filed a complaint against the UK Government's use of ‘Technical Capability Notices’ (TCN) - a power that gives the government the right to issue secret orders to companies, undermining our privacy and security.

pvcy.org/TCNchallenge

Donald Trump likens UK order against Apple to Chinese surveillance US president lashes out at demand for tech group to grant access to secure cloud data

This is an unexpected development in the UK secret order to Apple. “We told them: you can’t do this,” Trump said. “We actually told [Starmer] . . . that’s incredible. That’s something, you know, that you hear about with China.” on.ft.com/3DpCfOu

Darth Vader representing the long arm of the British state

🚨 Yesterday Apple responded to a massive secret government power, removing data security options for millions of people. We think. We don't know - because it’s a secret power in law that shouldn’t have ever existed.
https://pvcy.org/2qnMHy