The pendulum swings again…

https://pogowasright.org/geofence-warrant-decision-exposes-hole-in-fourth-amendment-law/

Geofence Warrant Decision Exposes Hole in Fourth Amendment Law

Cassandre Coyer and Tonya Riley report:

A split appeals court opinion clearing the government’s acquisition of users’ mobile-device location data from Google of constitutional scrutiny will likely spark more friction between emerging technologies and the scope of law enforcement searches, attorneys warned.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in US v. Chatrie concluded, over a dissent, that the use of such geofencing doesn’t constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment.

It comes six years after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Carpenter v. United States, which held the government has to obtain a search warrant to access historical cell site location records covering a period of more than seven days. In that time, courts have continued to struggle with questions of digital surveillance and the scope of Fourth Amendment protections in the age of mobile devices.

Read more at Bloomberg Law.

Must we “dumb down” everything for the next generation because learning is hard?

https://nypost.com/2024/07/13/us-news/reading-for-idiots-app-simplifies-vocab-of-classic-books/

New app uses AI to dumb down, whitewash classic books

It’s McLiterature.

A newly-launched iPhone and iPad artificial intelligence app is abbreviating iconic literary works like “Moby Dick” and “A Tale of Two Cities” — while whitewashing classics like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Magibook‘s website claims it utilizes artificial intelligence to simplify the language of books like “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Crime and Punishment,” making them more accessible to all readers, “no matter your English level.”

… Seminal lines such as “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” are reduced to “It was a time when things were very good and very bad.”

The 219 now-controversial occurrences of the N-word in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” are replaced on Magibook with the noun “Helper.”

At this point, users of the free app, which launched July 1, can access five different versions of 10 classic books, including “Dracula,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Three Musketeers,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and “The Great Gatsby” — from their original versions down to an “elementary version.”