August 6, 2020 By Brett Wilkins Seventy-five years ago, the United States waged the only nuclear war in history. Among the truths held self-evident by millions of Americans is the notion that the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives, both American and Japanese. The choice, Americans are told Read more…
August 1, 2020 By Brett Wilkins At Wednesday’s House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust hearing, tech CEOs Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) took a beating from lawmakers who grilled them on everything from monopolistic business practices Read more…
By Brett Wilkins July 28, 2020 The San Francisco Police Department used a network of downtown business cameras to conduct mass surveillance of Black Lives Matter and other protesters in late May and early June, a leading digital advocacy group said on Monday. Electronic Frontier Foundation* reports SFPD received live Read more…
By Brett Wilkins The chief executive officer of a Nigerian tech startup has been found dismembered in a luxury condominium in New York City. The New York Police Department confirmed on Wednesday that the remains of 33-year-old Fahim Saleh were found the previous day in the Lower East Side condo. Read more…
By Brett Wilkins Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is calling on the United States military to acknowledge civilian casualties caused by unmanned aerial drone strikes in Somalia, and to compensate those harmed by such attacks. Speaking to the BBC, Omar, who is originally from Somalia, said that the US was obligated Read more…
By Brett Wilkins The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint on behalf of a Michigan man who was wrongfully arrested and detained by police earlier this year after an incorrect facial recognition match. Detroit police were investigating the theft of five watches with an estimated value of Read more…
By Brett Wilkins An ethics committee appointed by the Norwegian government is recommending that companies that manufacture lethal autonomous weapons — killer robots — be excluded from investment by the country’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund. Bloomberg reports the committee also urged the government to prohibit investment by the Government Pension Fund Read more…
By Brett Wilkins The United States plans to reinterpret a decades-old arms control agreement so that US weapons companies can sell more unmanned aerial drones to nations including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose air strikes in Yemen have killed thousands of civilians. An unnamed US government official Read more…
By Brett Wilkins One would be remiss to say it all started with the tweets suggesting that MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough murdered his young aide nearly 20 years ago. To do so would ignore a years-long relationship between Donald Trump and Twitter in which the social Read more…
British police are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition and predictive policing technologies, often without promised public consultation, according to a new report from the London-based Royal Society of Arts (RSA). (RSA), a 266-year-old London-based organization dedicated to solving social problems — past members include Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, Charles Read more…