Tag: technology

Governor DeSantis Revokes Permits For Flock Cameras On Florida State Highways

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has ordered the removal of all Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras from state highway right-of-ways, citing privacy, data, and systematic surveillance concerns.

The Daily Caller reports that DeSantis ordered all Flock cameras to be removed from the “state highway system,” including interstates such as I-10 and I-75, within 30 days, in a Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) memo on Monday.

According to WCTV, the order specifically targets cameras on state-owned roads, including major interstates like I-10 and I-75 but does not automatically ban cameras operating on local city or county roads, nor does it impact devices installed on private or commercial properties.

Local law enforcement agencies will have 30 days to remove the hardware and if they fail to comply, FDOT will remove the cameras independently.

DeSantis remains supportive of law enforcement but acknowledged that growing evidence of camera misuse has raised legitimate concerns about government surveillance.

During a press conference last Wednesday, DeSantis warned against allowing Florida to become a “surveillance state” and said, “I think people are right to be concerned.”

The Republican Governor stated:

But, you also have to say, okay, how could this be misused? And how could a private company misuse the data, but also law enforcement? We know there was an officer in Florida who was using the LPR data to track like an ex-girlfriend or something like that.

DeSantis called on the Florida Legislature to cement permanent regulations into law during the next legislative session and advocated for a comprehensive AI Bill of Rights to institute strict criminal penalties for data misuse and protect citizens from emerging digital monitoring methods.

Following the announcement, several sheriff’s departments, including those in Putnam, Liberty and Franklin counties, announced they would end their own license plate reader programs.

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Taiwanese Man Jailed After Using Robot Vacuum to Record Wife’s Affair

A Taiwanese man was sentenced to five months in jail and ordered to pay more than $4,700 for using a robot vacuum to secretly record his wife’s affair.

While the court ruled that the husband had violated his cheating wife’s privacy, the Taiwanese man also won a civil lawsuit, resulting in his wife and her lover being ordered to pay him thousands in compensation, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.

The Taiwanese man, whose name has not been made public, married his wife in 2021. In September 2023, he found a used toothbrush at their holiday home, prompting him to review security footage from a parking garage, which reportedly revealed an man driving his wife home.

Three months later, the husband remotely activated the robot vacuum cleaner inside the home, and discovered his wife engaged in an intimate encounter with another man via the robot’s live feed.

From there, he began recording footage of his wife’s affair in order to collect evidence he had planned to use later for a legal claim.

Video footage reportedly showed his wife changing her clothing, embracing the other man, and moving about the house naked while her lover lay on the sofa.

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Iran Targets Marine Barracks In Jordan, Sends Drones On Bahrain & Kuwait, After Trump’s New Strikes

Iran Targets Marine Barracks in Jordan, Drones Sent on Bahrain, Kuwait

Iranian state media is saying that the military retaliation is ongoing, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force announcing that it launched a heavy ballistic missile attack targeting the US Marine barracks at Camp Titin, located near the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan – which is at a significant distance, in the country’s far southwest corner. State media sources further detail:

According to the IRGC, the strike destroyed multiple military installations and attack helicopters, inflicting heavy casualties on U.S. forces. The operation was executed as the second wave of retaliatory actions under the code name “Ya Rasul Allah.”

And more via state WANA News Agency: “The IRGC stated that the action was carried out in retaliation for a U.S. strike on a residential home during a wedding ceremony in Sirik, which resulted in nearly 50 civilians killed or injured, including children.” Iranian claims of US casualties will as usual be hard to verify, but CENTCOM has said no casualties have resulted, per news wires:

US officials says no US casualties from Iranian attack on facilities in Jordan so far

In the wake of the US CENTCOM campaign, which may still be ongoing, Iran’s Hormozgan grid is under blackout. Further damage is likely to be assessed and publicized in the coming hours. Bahrain, Kuwait also targeted:

  • Iran’s army launched drone attacks on the US base in Bahrain, according to Fars News Agency
  • Kuwait Army says air defenses are confronting attacks by hostile drones
  • Jordan intercepts 10 ballistic missiles from Iran, three fell in remote areas: army

Initial unconfirmed footage now widely circulating of alleged IRGC attack on Jordan base…

Iranian Retaliation on regional Bases Begins

Iran is already hitting back, according to some early reports of what looks to be their latest retaliation, despite President Trump having earlier warned the Islamic Republic will be hit harder if it responds.

“If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!” he stated earlier.

The White House indicated it is focused on taking out IRGC targets. But this has triggered the expected reaction:

  • Fars: Some Arab sources report that an explosion was heard in Jordan; several explosions were heard from American bases in Jordan
  • IRGC says US attacks will tighten the lock on the Strait of Hormuz
  • Explosion heard in Erbil, Iraq, reports Fars

The last tit-for-tat instances also saw US bases in Jordan targeted.

One Atlantic Council analyst points out the obvious – today’s action is yet another indication that the administration still does not understand how the Iranian government and leadership thinks (unless the intent is actual runaway escalation). Danny Citrinowicz writes:

Threatening Tehran with even more devastating strikes if it retaliates is unlikely to prevent an Iranian response. In fact, it may do the opposite. From Tehran’s perspective, failing to respond to a direct U.S. attack would undermine the very deterrence equation Iran has spent months trying to establish. The Iranian leadership believes it must demonstrate that American military action carries a price. That means Iran is likely to retaliate and it may even conclude that a broader or more painful response is necessary precisely to rebuild deterrence against future U.S. attacks.

This is the fundamental problem with Washington’s approach: it assumes that sufficiently strong threats will convince Iran to back down. But Tehran may draw exactly the opposite conclusion, meaning that backing down under threat would invite additional American strikes. Threats will not solve this problem. If Washington wants to prevent another cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, it needs a political strategy for ending the confrontation. Otherwise, each side will continue using force to restore deterrence after the previous round — creating an escalation cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to control.

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Trump says communities that reject data centers ‘want to end up being backwards and poor’ — President claims China ‘could not be happier’ with AI data center backlash in the US

Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be a fan of the data center backlash that has swept the nation. Posting on his Truth Social platform, the President said that communities that reject data centers only do so because “they want to end up being backwards and poor,” and posited that China “could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement.” The comment comes amid a wide, albeit unorganized, pushback to data center buildouts in the United States that’s left local communities and municipalities reckoning with an unanticipated and rapid infrastructure buildout.

Local pushback has been widespread and consistent across the country. Earlier this month, an Amazon data center came under fire for circumventing public feedback based on old laws. Since April, leaders across the nation have received an elevated number of credible death threats related to data centers since April. And last month, the number of local bans on data center developments crossed over 500 within the United States.

The President says to “let Data Reign” if communities “want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place.” Presumably, the President missed a comma after “taxes” and does not mean that data centers will lower the number of jobs available. The economic argument surrounding data centers is a tough issue to quantify, though it’s not completely detached from reality.

A July study from Georgia Tech found that data center developments increase local employment by 3.5%, total wages by 5%, business establishments by 4.7%, and median household income by 1.9%. Further, the developments reduce unemployment rates. Critically, however, the study found that these benefits mainly show up in metropolitan areas, calling the benefits in rural areas “negligible.” The study also highlights that data centers often employ fewer than 100 permanent workers, with specialized services “imported from outside the country.”

The research also looked into trade-offs with electricity prices, finding that prices rise an average of 5% after a data center is built in a community.

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Court Gives FCC 30 Days to Respond to CHD Petition on Wireless Harms

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has 30 days to explain why it hasn’t complied with a 2021 court order requiring the agency to reveal how it determined that current wireless radiation exposure limits — which haven’t been updated in 30 years — adequately protect people and the environment, a federal appeals court ruled today.

Within a month, the FCC must respond to a petition filed earlier this year by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) requesting the information.

“This is a huge deal, and we are very pleased with the court’s order,” said Miriam Eckenfels, director of CHD’s Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program.

Today’s order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit represents a big step toward holding the FCC accountable for its ongoing refusal to protect people and the environment from wireless radiation, Eckenfels said.

“The FCC’s inaction to address the mountain of science on the health impacts of wireless radiation is nothing short of reckless,” she said.

‘This signals that the court is interested in the issue’

In 2019, the FCC chose not to update its 1996 radiofrequency (RF) radiation exposure safety limits and to terminate a legal inquiry into scientific evidence of adverse biological effects of RF radiation.

In response, CHD and other petitioners, including the Environmental Health Trust, sued the FCC. The groups filed 11,000 pages of evidence of harm from 5G and wireless technology — evidence that they alleged the FCC ignored in 2019, when it decided not to update its safety limits.

In 2021, after CHD and the other petitioners’ cases were consolidated into EHT et al. v. FCC, the District of Columbia Circuit sided with CHD.

The 2021 ruling called the FCC’s 2019 decision “arbitrary and capricious” because it failed to consider the non-cancer evidence of adverse health effects caused by wireless technology.

According to the 2021 ruling:

“In addition to the Commission’s inadequate response to the non-cancer-related effects of RF radiation on human health, the Commission also completely failed even to acknowledge, let alone respond to, comments concerning the impact of RF radiation on the environment.

“That utter lack of a response does not meet the Commission’s obligation to provide a reasoned explanation for terminating the notice of inquiry.”

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Federal Appellate Court Rules In Favor Of AI Child Porn

While proponents of artificial intelligence (”AI”) paint an idyllic picture of how the groundbreaking technology is poised to eliminate the ills plaguing society, their unbridled optimism continues to be met with skepticism by their opponents. From fears over the economic repercussions of the rapid loss of jobs that advancements in AI may not be able to outpace to the technology’s applications as the framework for the apparatus of a panopticon surveillance state, concerns over the impact of AI mar the utopian vision its advocates have with an even more dystopian outlook of the future it will usher in. A look inside of the Pandora’s Box being opened by AI was glimpsed following a decision by a federal appeals court ruling in favor of protecting AI-generated child pornography.

On August 25th, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled thatthe First Amendment protects an individual’s right to privately possess images and videos of child sexual abuse created using AI, so long as the child sex abuse material (”CSAM”) does not depict a real child and remains in the privacy of the possessor’s home. The federal appellate court issued the unanimous ruling from a panel of three U.S. circuit judges: Judge John Z. Lee, Judge Doris L. Pryor, and Judge Joshua P. Kolar. The case came to the court in the matter of U.S. v. Anderegg, a title that now stands poised to challenge longstanding Supreme Court precedent governing how the law addresses CSAM.

The pivotal case centers on Steven Anderegg, 42, of Holmen, Wisconsin. Anderegg was arrested in May 2024 on suspicion of mass production of AI-generated CSAM. Prosecutors alleged that he used an AI image generator called Stable Diffusion to create over 13,000 images depicting child sex abuse by entering prompts into the platform, including thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors. In a press release announcing his arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed Anderegg described how he created the AI CSAM through the text-to-image generative AI model in a chat with a 15-year-old boy on the social media platform Instagram. The DOJ press release chronicled how Anderegg not only described how he generated the images to the minor, but that he sent the boy several AI-generated images of minors displaying their genitals. Following their exchange, Instagram reported Anderegg’s account to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (”NCMEC”) through its CyberTipline. The NCMEC followed suit by alerting federal authorities.

On May 15th, 2024, a federal grand jury in the Western District of Wisconsin returned an indictment against Anderegg, charging him with producing, distributing, and possessing obscene visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and transferring obscene materials to a minor under the age of 16. Under those charges, Anderegg faces a maximum penalty of 70 years in prison and a mandatory minimum of five years.

Ahead of his trial originally scheduled to begin on February 18th, 2025, Anderegg’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the four counts brought against him on September 23rd, 2024. His defense counsel cited a myriad of federal cases in support of their argument that the statutes Anderegg was charged under were unconstitutional because the AI CSAM he created, possessed, and shared did not depict any actual children, thus the charges violated his rights under the First Amendment.

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Trump Says Iran’s Oil Hub Kharg Island Is Being Blown “TO SMITHEREENS”

President Trump issued a stunning message Sunday night indicating that Iran’s most important oil-export hub was under devastating attack.

“Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT,” Trump announced on Truth Social.

Trump’s post included a dramatic AI-generated video depicting explosions across the island.

Neither the White House nor the Department of War had publicly confirmed a new attack on Kharg Island’s oil facilities. Reuters reported that Iranian state media had also issued no immediate response.

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Lawsuit: Elon Musk’s xAI Trained Grok AI Using Child Pornography

A woman identified as “Jane Doe” sued Elon Musk’s xAI this week, alleging the company trained its Grok AI chatbot on child pornography depicting her, in what appears to be the first case accusing xAI of training its AI on child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Ars Technica reports that the proposed class-action lawsuit filed against Musk’s xAI, now part of SpaceX, centers on abuse Doe suffered as a preschooler in the early 2000s, when adult men raped her to produce images later sold to pedophiles online. Those images were hashed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, groups that track known child pornography so it can be identified and removed wherever it resurfaces.

Doe gets alerts through the U.S. Department of Justice Victim Notification System whenever her abuse material turns up somewhere new. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection told her that AI-generated CSAM depicting her had shown up on xAI. According to the complaint, offenders on online forums discussed “creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.”

The lawsuit claims xAI stores images Grok generates and reuses them to further train the model. A press release from Doe’s lawyers described the material as “that same material,” referring to the CSAM depicting her that investigators say fed into Grok’s outputs. The complaint itself alleges that “CSAM depicting Plaintiff with its longstanding well-known hash values has been used as a part of the dataset used by xAI.”

Breitbart News previously reported on AI training datasets that were found to contain child pornography:

The Stanford Internet Observatory, in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and other anti-abuse charities, conducted a study that found more than 3,200 images of suspected child sexual abuse in the AI database LAION. LAION, an index of online images and captions, has been instrumental in training leading AI image-makers such as Stable Diffusion.

This discovery has raised alarms across various sectors, including schools and law enforcement. The child pornography has enabled AI systems to produce explicit and realistic imagery of fake children and transform social media photos of real teens into deepfake nudes. Previously, it was believed that AI tools produced abusive imagery by combining adult pornography with benign photos of kids. However, the direct inclusion of explicit child images in training datasets presents a more direct and disturbing reality.

Much of Doe’s legal argument turns on how Grok’s terms of service handle user content. The complaint says Grok treats public posts on X, along with the outputs Grok itself generates, as training data by default. As the filing puts it, “Because Grok’s terms treat public X posts and Grok’s own outputs as training data by default, publicly posting an image does not just expose it to viewers, but also feeds [it] directly into the pipeline xAI uses to train and improve its model and thereby generate further images.” xAI filters violent content out of its training data, but its terms do not specifically exclude CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery, or other sexual or inappropriate material.

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AI Skepticism Outweighs Excitement In The US

Despite the tech industry’s conviction that the rise of AI is an inflection point that will change the course of humanity, many humans remain skeptical whether the new direction we’re headed in is the right one.

As Statista’s Felix Richter reports below, the pace at which AI seems to be taking over parts of our lives, whether we like it or not, is especially worrisome to many.

In a recent Statista Consumer Insights survey, 31 percent of U.S. respondents said that they were worried about the speed at which AI is developing and 25 percent of respondents claimed to be avoiding AI wherever they can.

18 percent said they used AI but felt bad about it and another 28 percent simply don’t believe in the hype, saying they weren’t convinced that AI is as good as people say.

You will find more infographics at Statista

At the other end of the spectrum, 28 percent of respondents said they were excited about AI, 19 percent said they liked to use AI for shopping and 15 percent described themselves as early adopters – always keen to try the latest AI features first.

The bottom line is that Americans are neither all in on AI nor are they fully against it.

Many people are mixing their excitement with a dose of skepticism, which is probably a good way of looking at a potentially life-altering technological shift.

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Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code

Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned.

Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver’s “associates” from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description.

The software, originally called Nightshift and more recently renamed OS Investigate, ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit, and then submit to the AI. Officers can also input prompts of their own.

The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock’s own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates.

Flock says it is testing the product with a small group of law enforcement partners and describes it as still in development, with capabilities that may not reflect what it eventually sells. It arrives as the company faces bipartisan political pressure, a growing record of officers caught misusing its platform, and a wave of vandalism that has left cameras sawed off and lenses painted over in cities across the country.

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