Trumpian dream?

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/12/privacy_activists_warn_uk_digital_id_risks/

Privacy activists warn digital ID won’t stop small boats – but will enable mass surveillance

A national digital ID could hand the government the tools for population-wide surveillance – and if history is anything to go by, ministers probably couldn't run it without cocking it up.

That's the warning from Big Brother Watch in its new "Checkpoint Britain” report, published just days after Keir Starmer confirmed the government is considering a national digital identity scheme to tackle illegal immigration. 

The civil liberties group says the government's argument that digital ID will meaningfully reduce illegal immigration or employment fraud is poorly substantiated and warns that touting digital ID as a political fix for migration problems is misleading. It argues that ministers have also been far too vague about the plan's scope, which it says could easily extend beyond right-to-work and right-to-rent checks to cover "online banking, booking a train ticket, shopping on Amazon, or scheduling a GP appointment."

(Related)

https://therecord.media/switzerland-digital-privacy-law-proton-privacy-surveillance

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance

The Swiss government could soon require service providers with more than 5,000 users to collect government-issued identification, retain subscriber data for six months and, in many cases, disable encryption.

The proposal, which is not subject to parliamentary approval, has alarmed privacy and digital-freedoms advocates worldwide because of how it will destroy anonymity online, including for people located outside of Switzerland.

Perhaps I should have my AI create a business that I could take public for a few billion dollars…

https://www.zdnet.com/article/4-ways-machines-will-automate-your-business-and-its-no-hype-says-gartner/

4 ways machines will automate your business - and it's no hype, says Gartner

AI will increasingly automate day-to-day decision-making for businesses in the coming years, thanks to AI and other emerging technologies, Gartner claims in a new report.

The consulting firm's annual Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report aims to provide a sober and practical picture of how buzzy new technologies will be leveraged by businesses in the near future. The latest report, published Wednesday, highlights -- as you won't be surprised to learn -- AI agents as one of the burgeoning technologies that's expected to reshape the business landscape over the next two to ten years. Gartner has previously predicted that half of all business decisions will be handled by agents by the end of 2027. 

Agents aren't perfect out of the box, however; Just last month, Gartner also reported that AI agents are among the most overhyped technologies in the space and offered suggestions for how to make the most of them. 

There are a few other technologies that you might not expect to see on the list, or that you may not have even heard of. All of these are ushering in what Gartner describes in a press release as "the new autonomous business era." Here are the technologies that made this year's report. 

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/national-guard-documents-show-public-fear-troops-shame-over-dc-presence/

National Guard documents show public ‘fear,’ troops’ ‘shame’ over DC presence

Washington Post – no paywall: “The National Guard, in measuring public sentiment about President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C., has assessed that its mission is perceived as ‘leveraging fear,’ driving a ‘wedge between citizens and the military,’ and promoting a sense of ‘shame’ among some troops and veterans.” (How do we have access to internal National Guard documents? Someone accidentally sent them to the Post.) The assessments, which have not been previously reported, underscore how domestic mobilizations that are rooted in politics risk damaging Americans’ confidence in the men and women who serve their communities in times of crisis. The documents reveal, too, with a rare candor in some cases, that military officials have been kept apprised that their mission is viewed by a segment of society as wasteful, counterproductive and a threat to long-standing precedent stipulating that U.S. soldiers — with rare exception — are to be kept out of domestic law enforcement matters. Trump has said the activation of more than 2,300 National Guard troops was necessary to reduce crime in the nation’s capital, though data maintained by the D.C. police indicates an appreciable decline was underway long before his August declaration of an “emergency.” In the weeks since, the Guard has spotlighted troops’ work assisting the police and “beautifying” the city by laying mulch and picking up trash, part of a daily disclosure to the news media generated by Joint Task Force D.C., the military command overseeing the deployment.

Not for public consumption, however, is an internal “media roll up” that analyzes the tone of news stories and social media posts about the National Guard’s presence and activities in Washington. Government media relations personnel routinely produce such assessments and provide summaries to senior leaders for their awareness. They stop short of drawing conclusions about the sentiments being raised. Trending videos show residents reacting with alarm and indignation,” a summary from Friday said. “One segment features a local [resident] describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security — highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force.”

Another protocol to ignore?

https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/ais-free-web-scraping-days-may-be-over-thanks-to-this-new-licensing-protocol/

AI's free web scraping days may be over, thanks to this new licensing protocol

AI companies are capturing as much content as possible from websites while also extracting information. Now, several heavyweight publishers and tech companies -- Reddit, Yahoo, People, O'Reilly Media, Medium, and Ziff Davis (ZDNET's parent company) -- have developed a response: the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard. 

You can think of RSL as Really Simple Syndication's (RSS) younger, tougher brother. While RSS is about syndication, getting your words, stories, and videos out onto the wider web, RSL says: "If you're an AI crawler gobbling up my content, you don't just get to eat for free anymore."

The idea behind RSL is brutally simple. Instead of the old robots.txt file -- which only said, "yes, you can crawl me," or "no, you can't," and which AI companies often ignore -- publishers can now add something new: machine-readable licensing terms. 

Want an attribution? You can demand it. Want payment every time an AI crawler ingests your work, or even every time it spits out an answer powered by your article? Yep, there's a tag for that too. 

Not sure I understand. Data leaks but no one benefits?

https://databreaches.net/2025/09/09/english-court-of-appeal-rules-on-compensation-for-data-breaches/?pk_campaign=feed&pk_kwd=english-court-of-appeal-rules-on-compensation-for-data-breaches

English Court of Appeal Rules on Compensation for Data Breaches

There’s an update to Farley v Equiniti. Ann Bevitt and Morgan McCormack of Cooley write:

The English Court of Appeal has handed down an important judgment in Farley v. Paymaster (Equiniti) [1] on when compensation may be claimed for nonmaterial damage (such as distress or anxiety) arising out of breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).

The case arose from misaddressed annual pension benefit statements sent to current and former Sussex police officers. The High Court had previously struck out the claims on the basis that there was no evidence that the statements were ever opened or read by third parties. The Court of Appeal confirmed both that disclosure was not essential for a GDPR infringement, and that claimants could recover compensation for fear of the consequences of an infringement if that fear was objectively well-founded, rather than hypothetical or speculative.

Read more at Cooley.

The resolution unresolved.

https://www.engadget.com/ai/judge-rejects-anthropics-record-breaking-15-billion-settlement-for-ai-copyright-lawsuit-033512498.html

Judge rejects Anthropic's record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement for AI copyright lawsuit

Judge William Alsup has rejected the record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to for a piracy lawsuit filed by writers. According to Bloomberg Law, the federal judge is concerned that the class lawyers struck a deal that will be forced "down the throat of authors." Alsup reportedly felt misled by the deal and said it was "nowhere close to complete." In his order, he said he was "disappointed that counsel have left important questions to be answered in the future," including the list of works involved in the case, the list of authors, the process of notifying members of the class and the claim form class members can use to get their part of the settlement.

Deep dive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/learning/over-100-free-new-york-times-articles-about-how-ai-is-changing-our-world.html

Over 100 Free New York Times Articles About How A.I. Is Changing Our World

If you search “artificial intelligence” in The New York Times, you’ll be directed to a Times Topics page on the subject, and if you scroll through what’s there, you will see that barely a day has gone by recently when the paper has not published at least one, if not five or six, articles exploring this technology. As A.I. touches every aspect of our lives, you’ll find related reporting and commentary not just in the Tech and Business sections, but also in Arts, Travel, Education, Health, Sports and even Modern Love.

To go along with our fall contest, in which we’re asking teenagers and educators to tell us about your relationship with A.I., we’ve curated some of the most useful pieces under the headings you’ll find below.

Because both everything on The Learning Network and everything we link to on nytimes.com is free, bookmarking this page can help you easily explore a range of ideas and opinions about A.I., and think about what aspects of it interest you most.

How to Paint a target on your chest.

https://pogowasright.org/north-carolina-city-declares-itself-a-fourth-amendment-workplace-to-protect-illegal-immigrants-from-ice/

North Carolina city declares itself a ‘Fourth Amendment Workplace’ to protect illegal immigrants from ICE

Landon Mion reports:

A North Carolina city has approved a measure declaring itself a “Fourth Amendment Workplace” and boosting protections for illegal immigrant workers targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Durham City Council passed the resolution on Tuesday with a unanimous vote to shield city workers against raids and arrests carried out by federal officials, according to The Duke Chronicle.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens against unreasonable searches and arrests, and requires warrants with probable cause of a crime before seizing a person or property.

The resolution instructs city staff to “uphold the 4th amendment at their workplace and city agencies and report back to Council any barriers to effective training on the 4th Amendment for any departments,” The Chronicle reported.

Read more at Fox News.

Perspective.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/09/ai-in-government.html

AI in Government

Just a few months after Elon Musk’s retreat from his unofficial role leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), we have a clearer picture of his vision of government powered by artificial intelligence, and it has a lot more to do with consolidating power than benefitting the public. Even so, we must not lose sight of the fact that a different administration could wield the same technology to advance a more positive future for AI in government.

To most on the American left, the DOGE end game is a dystopic vision of a government run by machines that benefits an elite few at the expense of the people. It includes AI rewriting government rules on a massive scale, salary-free bots replacing human functions and nonpartisan civil service forced to adopt an alarmingly racist and antisemitic Grok AI chatbot built by Musk in his own image. And yet despite Musk’s proclamations about driving efficiency, little cost savings have materialized and few successful examples of automation have been realized.

How would I know?

https://openai.com/index/why-language-models-hallucinate/

Why language models hallucinate

At OpenAI, we’re working hard to make AI systems more useful and reliable. Even as language models become more capable, one challenge remains stubbornly hard to fully solve: hallucinations. By this we mean instances where a model confidently generates an answer that isn’t true. Our new research paper (opens in a new window) argues that language models hallucinate because standard training and evaluation procedures reward guessing over acknowledging uncertainty.

ChatGPT also hallucinates. GPT‑5 has significantly fewer hallucinations especially when reasoning, but they still occur. Hallucinations remain a fundamental challenge for all large language models, but we are working hard to further reduce them.

Nothing new in the new ways of war.

https://jurnal.idu.ac.id/index.php/JPBH/article/view/19912

CLAUSEWITZ IN THE ERA OF AUTONOMOUS WAR: THE RELEVANCE OF CLASSICAL STRATEGIES IN THE DYNAMICS OF TECHNOLOGICAL CONFLICT

Carl von Clausewitz's strategic thought, as formulated in On War, remains a foundational reference in the study of war and military strategy. However, the emergence of advanced technologies such as drones, artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous weapons, and cyber warfare has introduced significant challenges to the classical application of his principles. This article revisits the relevance of four core Clausewitzian concepts: the trinity of war, the fog of war, political dominance, and the center of gravity, by reinterpreting them within the context of technologically driven conflict. Through a qualitative, literature-based, and theoretical-critical approach, the study also evaluates the limits of Clausewitzian theory using the Russia–Ukraine war as a case study, which illustrates tensions between classical strategy and autonomous warfare. While the tools and methods of warfare have transformed, the fundamental nature of war as a violent and uncertain political phenomenon persists. The findings affirm that Clausewitz’s principles retain strategic value when applied contextually and adaptively. This article offers an original, cross-domain conceptual framework that integrates classical theory with AI-driven conflict, ethics, and technological transformation, providing a unified analytical lens for understanding future warfare.

Perspective.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ais-not-reasoning-at-all-how-this-team-debunked-the-industry-hype/

AI's not 'reasoning' at all - how this team debunked the industry hype

• We don't entirely know how AI works, so we ascribe magical powers to it.

• Claims that Gen AI can reason are a "brittle mirage."

• We should always be specific about what AI is doing and avoid hyperbole.

… In a paper published last month on the arXiv pre-print server and not yet reviewed by peers, the authors -- Chengshuai Zhao and colleagues at Arizona State University -- took apart the reasoning claims through a simple experiment. What they concluded is that "chain-of-thought reasoning is a brittle mirage," and it is "not a mechanism for genuine logical inference but rather a sophisticated form of structured pattern matching."