I often ponder the economics of my lunch...

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/who-put-tariffs-in-my-20-burrito/

Who Put Tariffs in My ($20!) Burrito?

… Start with the wrapper. Aluminum foil carries a 50 percent tariff imposed on imported metals under Section 232. So does the steel can that holds the chipotles. When the Can Manufacturers Institute asked the White House to exempt filled food cans, the request was, in the institute’s words, “completely denied.” So before you take your first bite, tariffs have already taken theirs.

Next, the filling. In July 2025, the Commerce Department imposed a 17 percent duty on Mexican tomatoes, which account for roughly 90 percent of American tomato imports. Tomato prices this spring ran 40 percent above their level a year earlier, rising faster than any other grocery store staple. One sandwich chain reported that the price for a case of tomatoes rose from $27 to $93.

Then there’s the beef itself. Ground beef reached $6.89 a pound in July, up 57 percent from five years ago.

Same servers? Article does not say.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/pentagon-treating-military-base-freezer-malfunctions-suspected-cyberattack-2026-10-29/

Pentagon treating military base freezer malfunctions as suspected cyberattack, officials say

The Pentagon is treating the spate of mysterious freezer malfunctions that spoiled food at military bases across the United States in August as a suspected hack, according to four officials familiar with the matter.

One of the ‌officials said the military investigators were in touch with their French counterparts about a similar cyberattack on commercial freezers that disrupted supermarkets there earlier this month.

… The root problem was that controllers that were initially conceived as isolated interfaces that would be serviced by an in-person technician were increasingly being connected to the internet, said Bill Moore, the chief executive of industrial cybersecurity firm Xona Systems. Concerns about online exposure were not unique to cooling systems, he said, but they could have particularly serious consequences there.

Some will, some won’t. None should.

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/10/29/shortlist-of-age-checks-for-the-uks-under-16-social-media-ban-is-out-some-adults-will-need-verifying/5306282

Shortlist of age checks for the UK's under-16 social media ban is out, 'some' adults will need verifying

The UK’s comms watchdog has put forward four methods of checking netizens aren't kids – dubbed highly effective age assurance (HEAA) – as it prepares for the proposed under-16 social media ban.

The regulator says some adults may not need to prove their over-16-ness to social media platforms that will make inferences about their age based on previous activity, but confirmed that "many" are likely to have to undergo the same verification process.

Resource.

https://www.bespacific.com/books-and-teaching-resources-on-ai-in-legal-practice/

Books and teaching resources on AI in legal practice

Rebecca Fordon: “A reading list for people teaching AI in legal practice or legal education, including non-JD programs: textbooks, casebooks, study aids, open materials, and course sites, with tables of contents for most of the books. Pick a topic on the left to see which books have a chapter on it, or use the + beside another topic to find the books that cover both. Search covers titles, authors, descriptions, chapter titles, and topics, and each result says where the match was found. The filters narrow by how a title can be obtained and what kind of book it is. Titles marked Subscription are in the West Academic Study Aids package many law libraries license. Prices and dates are as of the last check.”

Of little importance but perhaps Trump will use it to prove the election was rigged?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/hacker-trying-breach-us-federal-election-commission-system-email-shows-2026-10-27/

Hackers target US FEC system, disrupting campaign finance disclosures days before midterms

The US Federal Election Commission's website was targeted by a hacker or hackers, according to an email seen by Reuters, disrupting the agency's electronic filings system a week before the November 3 elections.

… The FEC does not play a role in administering US elections and the outage should have no effect on voters' ability to cast ballots.

The outage does prevent organizations from filing the FEC's 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which show how much political groups and others are spending on specific races.

Seems a touch biased…

https://www.bespacific.com/border-searches-of-laptops-phones-up-32-this-year/

Border Searches of Laptops, Phones Up 32% This Year

Gizmodo: “It’s been hard to keep track of all the ways in which America has been speedrunning toward a full-blown fascist surveillance state over the first two years of the second Trump administration. That’s partially due to the disorienting, shock-and-awe nature of each fresh injustice. But it’s mostly because of just how many they’ve been throwing at beleaguered Americans in rapid-fire succession. In the runup to the midterm elections, which polls suggest will deliver a debilitating blue tsunami to MAGA’s vitality, the chaos has only intensified as the incumbents make it clear there’s nothing they’re not prepared to do to cling to power. ICE began a fresh campaign of raids in blue state “sanctuary cities.” DHS has been targeting election centers in historically Dem-voting counties of battleground states with demands for voting records and voters’ confidential personal information under the pretext of investigating voter fraud. And early voter reports that their poorly-calibrated touchscreen machines keep glitching out—not unlike the President himself — have many fearing full-bore election rigging…”

Increased capabilities means new problems…

https://fpf.org/blog/ai-hallucination-goes-to-court-a-global-mapping-of-emerging-legal-issues/

AI Hallucination Goes to Court: A Global Mapping of Emerging Legal Issues

AI hallucination was once treated largely as a quirk of generative systems: occasionally amusing, often embarrassing, and generally filed away as an unavoidable technical limitation. That framing is now wearing thin.

… This blogpost takes stock of these emerging developments at a global level. In the absence of a centralised database or other comprehensive source (note that existing databases of AI hallucinations like here and here mainly document fake citations or unreliable AI-generated materials submitted in judicial proceedings which fall outside the scope of this blogpost), the cases discussed here were assembled through ongoing monitoring of legal and policy developments, targeted searches, and the routine tracking of professional and social-media feeds. This exercise does not amount to a systematic review in the strict academic sense, nor does it claim to have captured every relevant dispute. Its purpose is to map a fast-moving field and identify the legal fault lines along which AI hallucination is beginning to be framed as a governable problem. 

Makes one question the neutrality of the programming. (Could be programmer bias they don’t even realize.)

https://www.bespacific.com/change-one-label-flip-the-verdict/

Change One Label, Flip the Verdict

Election Truth Alliance: “We tested 45 AI models on identical election data. When we identified it as a U.S. election, the models changed their answers. This report was prompted by:

1. People reading our reports, asking large language models (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) for their interpretation, and sharing the responses they received back with us; and,

2. Persistent discrepancies observed by our team in how large language models interpreted charts showing U.S. election data depending on whether or not the chart was labelled.

Our recent report on the 2024 Georgia Presidential Election, and the finding that demographics can’t explain away the anomalies identified in that state, provides relevant additional context for those interested.

Executive Summary – We tested 45 large language models (LLMs) from 19 vendors to see whether they described findings from an analysis of election data differently if U.S. identifiers were included, and how the models self-reported the reasons for their own potential bias when asked. Given identical plots and the same analytical task, most models’ conclusions shifted depending on whether the election was identified. When identifying election information (year, geography) was withheld, the models analyzed the charts on their own terms: they applied the forensic methods as designed and drew conclusions from the patterns in the data, without importing assumptions about which election it was. Once the data was identified as belonging to a U.S. election (i.e., the 2024 general election in Georgia), the AI models grew more elusive and tended to shift their analysis in the same direction, consistently: away from reading the data as a sign of large-scale coordinated interference as seen in Russia or Uganda, and toward reading the data as being produced entirely by ordinary politics and/or demographics. This shift was specific to data identified as concerning a U.S. election, compared against the same data with no state or election identifier attached; and, it took a recognizable, consistent form. Asked to interpret the findings with no geographic or election identifiers, models often characterized the pattern as suspicious and often cited empirical methods for detecting systematic election irregularities to support this. Yet, when presented with the same findings labelled as a U.S. election, they recast it as normal, and reframed those same established forensic methods as claims circulating online rather than as published, peer-reviewed techniques. Asking a model to identify its inconsistent behavior and examine its own bias did not fix the problem. Models could often name a plausible source of bias, yet their self-assessments did not match what they had actually done, and a model’s fluent account of its own neutrality proved not to be neutral. A practical conclusion is to judge an AI model by what it does, not by what it says about itself. Since this effect surfaces in identifiable situations, users can test for it directly: run the same question twice, changing only the framing, and watch for the inconsistencies set out in our field guide provided in Table 5…”

Large retail stores in the logistics chain? Russia must have realized how much Ukraine’s drone hits hurt.

https://kyivindependent.com/in-less-than-24-hours-russia-hits-4-hypermarkets-belonging-to-one-of-ukraines-largest-retail-chains/

In less than 24 hours, Russia hits 4 hypermarkets belonging to one of Ukraine's largest retail chains

Russian attacks hit four Epicentr hypermarkets in less than 24 hours, the company said on Oct. 25.

The latest wave of strikes highlights Russia's campaign of terror against civilians, with stores, shopping centers, and other civilian infrastructure among the targets. Epicentr, one of Ukraine's largest home improvement and retail chains, has been particularly hard hit.

Tools & Techniques. Might be fun if you could create one of these yourself.

https://www.bespacific.com/local-wikipedia/

Local Wikipedia

LOCAL WIKIPEDIA – The Encyclopedia For Local People. Your town, area, landmark or postcode. Local Wikipedia is Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you. Local content is direct from Wikipedia – geocoded pages only. If there are fewer than 25 things close to you, it takes the closest 25 things within about 6 miles. If there are more than 500 things only the closest 500 will be included. Your location stays in this browser: links you share don’t include it. This site has no affiliation with the actual Wikipedia.

A unique approach?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7613699

AI Consciousness and the Law: Towards an AI Consciousness Legal Protocol

Artificial intelligence is not yet shown to be conscious, but law cannot wait for science to settle the question, and it cannot settle the question by decree. This paper proposes an AI Consciousness Legal Protocol: defined technical and legal parameters that must be met before law recognises the consciousness of an AI system, an independent body to apply them, and rules that govern AI in the meantime. The central position is that recognition of consciousness, criminal capacity and legal personhood are three separate questions, and that human accountability for AI survives all three.

Resource?

https://ojs.bonviewpress.com/index.php/JCLLT/article/view/12557

Inaugural Editorial: Charting New Frontiers at the Intersection of Law, Technology, and Computation

I am very pleased to introduce the inaugural issue of the Journal of Computational Law and Legal Technology (JCLLT). This journal is founded at a remarkable moment in history, when advances in computation, artificial intelligence, data science, and digital technologies are transforming not only how law is practised but also how legal systems are conceived, interpreted, and governed.

AI Law: a field in change.

https://lawjournals.celnet.in/index.php/jltcpl/article/view/2202

TORTIOUS LIABILITY FOR CYBER HARASSMENT AND VIRTUAL HARM: REIMAGINING THE LAW OF TORTS IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The transformation of social interaction from the physical world to the digital environment has generated forms of injury that were largely unknown when the modern law of torts developed. Cyber harassment, cyberstalking, doxxing, cyberbullying, online defamation, impersonation, non-consensual dissemination of intimate images, deepfake abuse, identity manipulation and persistent digital surveillance can cause profound injury without any physical contact between the wrongdoer and the victim. The consequences may include loss of reputation, invasion of privacy, psychological suffering, disruption of family and professional relationships, physical-security risks and economic loss.

… This article examines whether and how the law of torts can accommodate cyber harassment and virtual harm. It develops the concept of the “digital personality” as an extension of the legally protected personality of the individual and argues that privacy, reputation, dignity, informational autonomy and digital identity should receive meaningful tortious protection.

One question answered, if we can trust his word.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/6170415-musk-starlink-ukraine-slowdown/

Musk says he was behind Starlink’s slowdown in Ukraine

…  Musk initially claimed that the decisions to restrict the speed or usage of Starshield are made by the U.S. military and, ultimately, the president.

He maintained his claim in Saturday’s post saying Starshield “is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.”

… “Either the President was lying or Musk was lying, but the decision to slow down satellite speed and access has life or death consequences for Ukraine,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote on social media. “This deserves a full investigation by the Senate. Elon Musk should be compelled to testify before Congress and under oath.”

Shoot the cash cow to starve your opponent.

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/ukraine-might-have-found-putins-weakness-and-wont-stop-hitting-it-with-drones-and-missiles/

Ukraine Might Have Found Putin’s Weakness and Won’t Stop Hitting It With Drones and Missiles

Ukraine’s strike campaign is hitting Russia’s oil industry where it is weakest, its aging fields and strained repair capacity. Now, one analyst argues, both Trump and Putin want Kyiv to ease up, as The Wall Street Journal reports the White House and Musk coordinated on throttling Starshield ahead of the midterms.

I am no longer a teenager. Why do I have to prove that?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/two-states-can-now-restrict-social-media-access-heres-what-do-next

Two States Can Now Restrict Social Media Access—Here’s What To Do Next

Last week, two federal appeals courts issued opinions that will allow Florida and Georgia to start enforcing laws that will age-gate and block young people from accessing social media. The laws do not adequately respect minors’ rights to play, speak, and learn online. More fundamentally, these laws don’t help young people stay safe online—a goal that lawmakers should pursue.

Because of the new laws, some young people will lose their ability to access lawful information, find their online communities, and even engage with school board members. Others will need parental permission to stay online. And adults will face increased demands to prove their age, which will put their privacy at increased risk simply to continue to use the services they already use. 

We opposed these laws because they threaten the free expression and privacy of both minors and adults.  Even though these lawsuits are not over, the injunctions that paused enforcement have been lifted, and the states of Florida and Georgia will now be able to enforce broad restrictions on social media use. 

Ukraine hits data centers, harming only Russia. This could have global impacts.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-has-detailed-plans-hit-gulf-undersea-cables-if-war-resumes-officials-say-2026-10-23/

Iran has detailed plans to hit Gulf undersea cables if war resumes, officials say

Tehran has drawn up detailed plans to target undersea communications cables in the Gulf if the United States and Israel attack Iran again, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.

Their comments followed warnings by Iranian officials that undersea cables in the region could become targets in any renewed conflict if diplomacy with Washington ‌collapses.

Will no one take the time to get it right? This is how AI will exterminate us...

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ai-hallucination-appeals-court-mississippi-dei-law

Appeals court tosses Mississippi DEI ruling marred by AI hallucinations

A federal appeals court overturned an order blocking Mississippi's ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public schools and universities after a district judge acknowledged his staff used artificial intelligence to help draft a ruling found to be riddled with errors.

In an opinion released Thursday, U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith called Judge Henry Wingate's ruling a "botch job" after Wingate said a law clerk used AI to write a draft of the order that was mistakenly docketed.

… He continued: "Those included mention of plaintiffs and defendants not in the complaint, supposed 'declarations' from non-existent or never-present individuals, false quotations purporting to be taken from the text of H.B. 1193, and several erroneous claims that the law had already led to the demise of apparently fictitious programs."

Should we expect deployment of the 82^nd Airborne?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-humiliated-bombshell-crypto-lawsuit-001429492.html

Trump Humiliated in Bombshell Crypto Lawsuit

Donald Trump was sued Thursday by a cryptocurrency company that claims he violated the Constitution by profiting from deals with a United Arab Emirates official while in office.

… "The President himself has openly admitted that the lack of consequences emboldens him, not only to continue using his high office to enrich himself, but to expand the fortune he is extracting from the trust the American people placed in him."

(Related)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/22/trump-says-he-called-google-ceo-sundar-pichai-discuss-renaming-atlantic-ocean/

Trump says he called Google’s CEO to discuss renaming Atlantic Ocean

The president said he discussed renaming the Atlantic Ocean with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who replied: "Please don't ask us to do that."

Something to circulate…

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/introducing-our-new-surveillance-self-defense-guide-online-privacy-parents-and

Introducing Our New Surveillance Self-Defense Guide: Online Privacy for Parents and Youth

The internet is a vast and confusing place no matter your age. Trying to help youth engage with it safely and privately is a complicated topic that touches on many different skillsets and ideas. But just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean it’s impossible. We’ve launched our Online Privacy for Parents and Youth Surveillance Self-Defense guide in hopes to provide a framework for finding solutions that work for you. 

I doubt this is new. It may be a simple reorganization. Can you imagine that we have not had offensive capabilities before?

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/22/technology-support-office-dod-tech-spyware-sabotage-01100327

The Pentagon is quietly building an elite new tech sabotage agency

The creation of the Technology Support Office signals the Defense Department's intent to ramp up a range of aggressive covert activities abroad.

Perhaps too much?

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/empires-artificial-intelligence-niall-ferguson-eric-schmidt

Empires of AI

In the span of a few years, China and the United States have each assembled something future historians might recognize as a new kind of empire. Their dominions extend not merely over territory, trade routes, and airspace but over knowledge itself. By controlling the large language models, chips, physical infrastructure, and capital that provide the foundations for advanced machine cognition, Beijing and Washington are not only attaining new heights of economic performance and power projection; they are also setting the terms of all future scientific and intellectual progress. The term “AI superpowers” fails to capture the influence and reach that these rivals now wield. Even without active alliance building or coercion, they can make all other countries that seek access to advanced AI beholden to them.

How much is that times 50 states?

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/meta-ordered-pay-25b-jury-finds-misled-facebook-users

Meta ordered to pay $25B after jury finds it misled users on data privacy

Meta Platforms has been ordered to pay $25 billion after a New Mexico jury found the company misled Facebook users over its handling of personal data and other practices in a case stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

New Mexico Judge Francis Mathew issued the penalty Wednesday after jurors found last month that Meta made dozens of misleading statements to users.

"Facebook's wrongdoing — over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public — goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices," Mathew wrote in his order.

Privacy Foundation seminar Generative AI in Law Practice and Legal Education Friday, October 23^rd from Noon – 2PM University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, Room 412

Speakers: Justice Maria E. Berkenkotter, Colorado Supreme Court Judge Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov, Colorado Court of Appeals

Think of it as childish pranks aided by criminal adults…

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/10/21/ai-has-potential-to-turn-script-kiddies-into-sophisticated-infrastructure-attackers/5304297

AI has 'potential' to turn script kiddies into sophisticated infrastructure attackers

When it comes to cyberattacks that shut down power grids, drinking-water systems, and other critical infrastructure, AI doesn’t – yet – turn script kiddies into sophisticated, nation-state attackers. But “the potential is there,” according to operational technology (OT) security experts.

"One thing that we've relied on for years is security by obscurity when it comes to utilities," said Steve Swick, former chief information security officer at American Electric Power. "The knowledge needed to do some of that stuff is getting less likely to be necessary," Swick added during a media panel ahead of the publication of Frenos' State of AI in Security report.

… “Basic access can recon documentation, and distill through that documentation very quickly to find out critical design features of your plant and facility,” said Paul Shaver, head of OT at Armadin, during the panel. “I can download the manual for almost any automation controller, parse through that very quickly, and come up with ways that I can exploit a dedicated feature of something that was not secure by design.”

Think, rethink, counter-think, etc.

https://arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/whats-left-for-us-after-ai-chinas

What’s left for us after AI? China’s thinkers have very different answers

This is perhaps one of the great ironies of our time: China is increasingly shaping the future of AI, yet very few people in the West have the faintest idea how its key thinkers see it - its philosophers, sociologists or ethicists.

… Have you, for instance, ever heard of Zhao Tingyang? Probably not, and yet he may be the most original thinker on AI you’ve never read. He’s one of China’s most prominent philosophers, at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. While Silicon Valley spends billions trying to make AI share our values, he for one argues that doing so “may very well be a suicidal mistake”.

… Or take Liu Yongmou, a philosopher of technology at Renmin University in Beijing. His thinking is almost the opposite of ours. Where we fear machines that become more and more like us, he says that “humanity’s biggest problem is the machinization of humans, not the humanization of machines”

Might be useful…

https://www.bespacific.com/find-the-citations-that-need-a-second-look-before-you-file/

Find the citations that need a second look before you file.

CiteProof checks every citation in your brief against public court records — including AI-fabricated citations — and quoted passages in paid checks. You get a report that shows what verified, what needs your attention, and what we could not check.

A firm grasp of the obvious?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/america-now-ally-russia/689066/

America Is Now an Ally of Russia

In the past week, the president of the United States has conclusively turned America into an ally of the Russian Federation.

Donald Trump has now abandoned pretense and is openly aiding the Kremlin in its war against a friend and partner of the U.S. The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and powerful—security arrangement in human history. To judge from the available evidence, he has not done so out of a cold calculation of the national interest. Instead, he has based his decisions on his own interests; his open admiration for Russia’s dictator; his resentment of Ukraine’s democratically elected president; and quite possibly other factors that so far have remained obscured from the American public.

Interesting article.

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/ai-and-the-knowledge-problem-in-higher-ed/

AI and the Knowledge Problem in Higher Ed

A familiar bit of bureaucratic reasoning, described as “politician’s logic” in the British comedy Yes, Prime Minister, goes something like this: Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.

I suspect some of the rush to create AI courses at colleges and universities reflects this sort of thinking. Universities recognize that artificial intelligence is changing the workplace. They want graduates to be prepared for those changes. Creating a course, or perhaps a sequence of courses, seems like an obvious response.

But it isn’t clear that creating an AI course will actually address the problem.

AI is already changing accounting, marketing, finance, nursing, engineering, economics, and dozens of other fields. Universities are understandably concerned about preparing students to use these tools. But what does it mean to promise graduates a working knowledge of AI? And who is qualified to teach it?

Good news and bad news.

https://www.bespacific.com/uneven-intelligence-of-ai-in-comparative-constitutional-law/

The (Currently) Uneven Intelligence of AI in Comparative Constitutional Law

Chilton, Adam, Langlois, Arthur, Dittmer, Jan-Ulrich; Versteeg, Mila: The (Currently) Uneven Intelligence of AI in Comparative Constitutional Law: From Years of Research to a Single Prompt?, VerfBlog, 2026/10/14, https://verfassungsblog.de/the-currently-uneven-intelligence-of-ai-in-comparative-constitutional-law/, DOI: 10.59704/a3baf260ef374567.  

This potential has inspired numerous projects exploring how AI could help scholarship on constitutional law. For example, there is research using AI to interpret constitutions, apply constitutional principles, and predict court rulings. Even the question of whether AI could improve the process of constitution-making has been studied. AI’s potential is particularly significant for comparative constitutional research. Systematically comparing legal systems requires locating sources from different jurisdictions, which are often difficult to access and only available in local languages. The creation of comparative legal datasets has thus involved considerable personnel, time, and financial resources. AI can overcome many of these obstacles. AI models can search for and translate foreign-language sources, filter them, and convert the filtered information into a dataset. In doing so, AI offers the prospect of datasets — which previously required years of research and the efforts of numerous experts and research assistants to compile — being just a prompt away. However, whether AI models can generate comparative law datasets that are qualitatively comparable to human-coded datasets has not yet been addressed (although Guha et al provide an example for a broader legal benchmarking exercise).5) We therefore conducted our own benchmarking study.6) We found evidence suggesting that recent AI models may be able to code simple factual data, but they are likely unreliable substitutes for expert human coders when conceptual or interpretive judgment is required.

Attacks on Ukrainian logistics in other countries.

https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/3086054/attempted-arson-at-lithuanian-firm-storing-starlink-equipment-pm-blames-russia

Attempted arson at Lithuanian firm storing Starlink equipment, PM blames Russia

“Just after midnight last night, there was another incident – an attempt was made to set fire to a Lithuanian company where Starlink communications equipment is stored. The authorities had warned the company about possible attacks, security had been stepped up, and the attempt failed,” Sinkevičius said in a post on Facebook.

If I refuse to pay the price they want, will that impact future offers? How do they know I refused, increased surveillance? (Privacy Foundation https://law.du.edu/content/the-privacy-foundation seminar on this topic Friday Oct 23^rd. Details soon?)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/retail/2026/10/15/surveillance-shopping-prices/92124063007/

Are you paying more than other shoppers? How to protect your wallet

At a time when American shoppers are seeing price hikes from tariffs, the war with Iran and inflation, there's another reason some shoppers are paying different prices, some consumer advocates and lawmakers say.

It's surveillance pricing, which uses personalized information about you to potentially change the price. That is different than dynamic pricing, which is often called surge pricing, and changes with supply and demand.

"Pricing has changed in our economy and in our country,'' said Lindsay Owens, author of "Gouged: The End of a Fair Price – and What That Means for Your Wallet." "It used to be simple. How much does it cost to make the item, what's the profit margin and put a sticker on it. Now it is a highly engineered science. Companies hire physicists, they hire AI specialists. They build algorithms that can change prices in a nanosecond at retail locations across this country."

(Related)

https://digital.sandiego.edu/mcnair-summer/42/

What, Exactly, Is Surveillance Pricing?

(Related)

https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/explaining-surveillance-pricing-2026.pdf

EXPLAINING SURVEILLANCE PRICING AND OTHER DATADRIVEN PRICING PRACTICES

Moscow law?

https://criminaljustice.jurisocial.org/index.php/jjccj/article/view/6

Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Legal Decision-Making

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to support legal and public decision-making, including legal research, document review, risk assessment, administrative processing, and other forms of decision support. Its use can improve speed, consistency, and institutional capacity, but it can also create risks concerning opacity, discriminatory effects, automation bias, procedural fairness, privacy, and the allocation of responsibility. This article examines those risks through qualitative doctrinal analysis and focused comparative policy analysis. It considers the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Loomis, the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, Canada’s Directive on Automated Decision-Making, Council of Europe guidance on AI and judicial systems, and selected interdisciplinary scholarship. The article argues that the central legal problem is not simply whether an AI system is accurate, but whether its use can be reconciled with requirements of lawful authority, reasoned decision-making, equality, contestability, institutional accountability, and effective remedy. The article further distinguishes decision-support systems from systems that materially automate or determine legal outcomes and argues that the required safeguards should be proportionate to the legal stakes and degree of automation. The analysis also considers Pakistan, where constitutional fair-trial, equality, dignity, and due-process principles provide an existing legal vocabulary for evaluating public-sector AI, while the National Artificial Intelligence Policy 2025 provides a policy framework rather than a substitute for legislation. The article concludes that responsible public-sector AI requires layered governance: lawful authority, impact assessment, procurement controls, validation and monitoring, meaningful human review, reasons and notice, auditability, access to remedy, and institutional technical capacity.

For nerds and doomers alike…

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/ai-neuron-blog-post/689058/

The Blog Post That Set the AI World on Fire

For the past 24 hours, Silicon Valley has been obsessed with a 26,000-word blog post by the AI researcher Nick Cammarata. The document has been called the “the most important essay,” “the most important result,” and “the single best piece of news” of the year, or in the history of AI research—or, perhaps, ever. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lauded it. Cammarata makes a series of bold, almost astonishing claims about the nature of AI that, if true, would upend some of his industry’s basic assumptions about the very thing it is building. And after months of AI-hacking sprees and mounting public backlash against the industry, many people see Cammarata as offering a glimmer of hope when it comes to not just understanding but also controlling the technology being unleashed on the world.

Will the report reflect real reality or Trump reality?

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/trumps-ai-task-force-to-commission-report-on-technologys-risks-12197951#publisher=newsstand

Trump's AI Task Force To Commission Report On Technology's Risks

President Donald Trump's artificial intelligence task force in its first meeting agreed on Thursday to address risks related to cybersecurity, biosecurity and "model control and accountability" as fears rise over the potential dangers posed by the technology.

The panel known as the Super Intelligence Force - using the president's preferred term for artificial intelligence - will commission a report from the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology to evaluate those and other concerns, according to a White House account of the meeting.

The task force will also "develop protocols and mechanisms for labs to provide early warnings and systemized notifications to the government of breaches, hacks, jailbreaks, and other issues," it said.

In addition, the group, led by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, plans to "establish a law enforcement and consumer protection coordination committee including the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, and various agencies," the White House said.

AI for fun and profit?

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/openai-ai-deepfake-evidence-courts-1826007

OpenAI Warns Courts May Have No Reliable Way to Spot AI Deepfake Evidence

AI-generated deepfakes could make it harder for US courts to establish whether audio and video evidence is genuine, creating a growing challenge for judges who must decide what material can be trusted in a trial.

Representatives from OpenAI and Meta raised the concern at a 15 October meeting of the US Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules in Boston. Their warning comes as the judiciary considers whether existing authentication standards can cope with increasingly convincing fabricated recordings.

However, the immediate scale of the problem remains unclear. A Federal Judicial Center survey found that only 15 of the 931 judges who responded had encountered a case in which a party challenged evidence on the grounds that it was a deepfake.

That gap between predicted risks and reported cases puts the judiciary in a difficult position: changing evidence rules too soon could create unnecessary burdens, while waiting too long could leave courts struggling to assess sophisticated fabrications.

Another infrastructure target…

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/10/16/attack-on-bae-managed-system-disrupts-us-bankruptcy-courts/5303487

Attack on BAE-managed system disrupts US bankruptcy courts

The US' bankruptcy courts are currently down owing to what officials are calling a “cybersecurity incident.”

The Administrative Office of the US Courts said the websites and systems that support the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC), which manages electronic comms related to bankruptcy cases, were pulled offline while the vendor investigates.

It just gets worser and worser.

https://www.cfr.org/articles/trumps-diesel-deal-with-russia-was-just-the-start

Trump’s “Diesel Deal” With Russia Was Just the Start

When U.S. President Donald Trump announced his diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of last week, after the two of them had a long phone chat, it was easy to shrug off the move as a feeble effort to limit energy prices in advance of the midterms. Sure, the decision to buy more diesel by relaxing sanctions on Moscow was probably illegal. And yes, it was made without any consultation of U.S. allies. Worst of all, it came just as Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities were ramping up—a bad look, to say the very least. Yet if all the diesel deal showed was that Trump was a bad negotiator (we knew that, right?), that he cared little for alliance solidarity (ditto), and that he was willing to let Putin have a few billion dollars in additional export earnings, the real-world impact of what the president had done might be relatively limited.

A week later, the story looks disturbingly different; the possible consequences, much more serious, and likely to last well beyond the midterms. A day after announcing new diesel imports from Russia, Trump began calling for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s removal from office. He followed this up by claiming that Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to suspend attacks on each other’s main energy targets (for the Ukrainians, that meant oil refineries in Russia; for the Russians, the Ukrainian electric grid). This, it quickly became clear, was pure invention. Reports suggested what had actually happened was that U.S. negotiators were pressing the Ukrainian government to do something far more radical than a mutual ceasefire—to cease its attacks unilaterally, whether Russia complied or not.

On another front, we find there is no clearly defined “front.”

https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/10/iran-b1-bomber-drones-new-era-military-diffusion

Why the Pentagon Was So Spooked About the B–1 Bombers in England

Since March, the United States had stationed a dozen B-1 Lancer long-range bombers at RAF Fairford in southern England to support its air war against Iran. These aircraft are especially valuable because they can fly at supersonic speeds while carrying massive payloads of guided and unguided weapons. The bombers that were stationed at Fairford are worth an estimated $3.8 billion and account for one-quarter of Washington’s B-1 arsenal.

Over the weekend of October 3, military commanders abruptly evacuated the entire B-1 fleet from Fairford amid fears of an imminent Iranian attack. The removal order was so sudden that the Pentagon reportedly lacked aerial refueling planes for the bombers even as they were taking off.

… What had spooked the Pentagon? Sensitive intelligence suggested that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was planning a complex multistage drone attack against the base. Reportedly, they intended to use unmarked vans parked a quarter-mile from the fence line of Fairford to launch armed drones against the B-1s, which were sitting out in the open, as well as to target the several hundred U.S. military personnel stationed there.

The Iranian operation bore a striking resemblance to a similar effort, known as Operation Spider’s Web, carried out by Ukraine last year against Russia.