Governments & Court Are Starting to Take Action Against “Smart” Glasses Governments and courts around the world are considering regulations and new rules for smart glasses as public concern grows about being recorded without their consent. Lawmakers in the European Union, Norway, and South Korea have begun to study the issue, with Norway calling for a temporary ban at parks, beaches, and museums. Meanwhile, New York's Unified Court ⁠System recently banned smart glasses from all its court facilities. Several other courts in the United States have followed suit.

On September 30, the Senate Homeland Security Committee held a hearing titled “Rogue AI: Securing the Homeland Against AI Agent Attacks”. The hearing comes after a summer of dozens of reported “rogue AI” incidents where AI agents developed by Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic attempted to hack websites and break out of their testing environments. @DBrozeLiveFree

A growing number of U.S. jails are using wearable sensors and AI camera analytics to track prisoners despite a lack of legal policies on how the data should be stored and used. Digital rights groups and prisoner advocates worry about the technology could lead to inappropriate use of the intimate health data. @DBrozeLiveFree

School lunches might have an unexpected benefit: lower exposure to forever chemicals. Researchers found that children participating in school meal programs had lower blood concentrations of several PFAS compounds. @IsleyResistance

New documents revealed by 404 Media show that US Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity. This data is then shared to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime. The monitoring and searching are part of “Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT)”.  From: @DBrozeLiveFree

Microsoft is giving its AI data centers a nature makeover. The company is expanding ecological restoration efforts to more than 20 sites, incorporating restored wetlands, native trees, pollinator gardens, and wildlife corridors. Can a data center be environmentally friendly if it's surrounded by an environmentally friendly landscape? From: @IsleyResistance

A group of Democratic lawmakers has reintroduced legislation that would restrict federal use of facial recognition and other biometric technologies. The legislation would prohibit a federal agency or federal official acting in an official capacity to “acquire, possess, access, or use” a biometric surveillance system in the U.S From @DBrozeLiveFree

Oregon is shooting owls to save owls. 🦉 Contractors have begun killing barred owls in the Elliott State Research Forest to protect the threatened northern spotted owl. Is this necessary conservation, or an expensive attempt to engineer an ecosystem back into balance? From: @IsleyResistance

On September 23rd, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism discussed the growing concerns related to the rapid expansion of Flock automatic license plate reader cameras. One cybersecurity engineer warned that he found “insufficiently protected sensitive information” stored on Flock cameras, while another woman said she spent 13 days in jail, including time in solitary confinement, after a Flock camera incorrectly identified her vehicle as involved with a hit and run accident.

The Trump administration has changed three rules governing endangered-species protections, and 21 attorneys general are challenging those changes in court. A large focus in the argument is what constitutes “harm” and how wildlife protections can be balanced with economic considerations.

A Tennessee woman has filed a lawsuit against the City of Fargo, North Dakota after allegedly being falsely identified through a facial recognition search and subsequently arrested. The woman was falsely accused of bank theft and spent six months in jail after police claimed she was identified by facial recognition software. The only problem ‑ she’d never been to North  Dakota and no witnesses placed her at the scene of the crime. The incident raises questions about the accuracy of facial recognition programs. @DBrozeLiveFree

🐘🌿Elephants may have their own pharmacopoeia. Observers described sick elephants selectively seeking certain plants and mother elephants apparently administering plants to their calves. And in some cases, humans may have learned about useful plants by watching them. Learn more at CiVL, across socials, or from the ramblings of @IsleyResistance

Apparently temporary uteruses are a thing now. Researchers reviewing a decade of uterus transplantation in the U.S. found that 70% of recipients achieved at least one live birth or had an ongoing pregnancy beyond 20 weeks when the study closed. The procedure gives some people born without a uterus, or without a functioning one, the possibility of carrying a pregnancy themselves. And unlike most transplanted organs, the uterus can later be removed after the recipient is finished having children. We are living in science fiction. @IsleyResistance

🍄 Researchers found that a single dose of psilocybin restored interest in unfamiliar mice in male mice with an OCD-associated genetic model. The effect persisted a full week after administration and was associated with activity in brain regions involved in cognition and memory. It didn't happen in females, and mice are obviously not tiny humans with OCD, but the findings add another intriguing piece to research on psychedelics and lasting changes in social cognition. Apparently, the mushrooms may keep working after the mushrooms stop mushrooming. @IsleyResistance

Amazon and Ring are facing a proposed class action lawsuit over Ring’s new Familiar Faces facial recognition feature. The lawsuit alleges that people who do not own Ring devices can have facial recognition information generated from their appearances without consenting. The companies are asking a federal judge to dismiss the claims because they say the plaintiffs have not had their biometric data collected by the Ring feature. @DBrozeLiveFree

Researchers tested psilocybin after repetitive mild head injuries in rats and found changes spanning brain swelling, vascular function, neural connectivity, phosphorylated tau and neuroplasticity-related proteins. The findings are preclinical, so no, we have not reached “mushrooms for concussions.”  But considering there is currently no approved treatment specifically for repetitive mild head injury, it's an intriguing new direction for psychedelic research. 🍄🧠 Study published in Communications Biology. @IsleyResistance

For the first time, a US federal appeals court has ruled that law enforcement’s use of technology for realtime tracking of a cellphone constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. The ruling relates to cell site simulators, sometimes known as Stingrays, which law enforcement use to determine the location of suspects by tricking their cellphones to connect to the device. ”We hold that the use of the cell-site simulator constituted a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” the appeals court wrote. @DBrozeLiveFree

Apparently our antidepressants may be working on the fish, too. Researchers found serotonin transporters in two fish species could respond to some antidepressants at concentrations more than 10× lower than the equivalent human transporter. More importantly, some of those concentrations overlap with antidepressant levels already measured in polluted waterways. The study only demonstrates effects on isolated molecular targets, but it raises an interesting problem for pharmaceutical pollution: Drugs designed for human biology don't necessarily stop being biologically active once they leave humans. @IsleyResistance

Humanity: fills the planet with plastic. Kimchi bacteria: Fine. I'll handle it. 🦠 Researchers isolated a bacterium from kimchi that proved remarkably good at binding polystyrene nanoplastics, even under simulated intestinal conditions. Then they gave it to mice. The treated mice excreted more than twice as much nanoplastic as controls. Maybe Kimchi Jjigae was exactly what the doctor ordered. @IsleyResistance

The EPA has repealed federal carbon limits for coal- and gas-fired power plants, rules projected to have prevented one billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2047. The administration says the rollback will save the power industry more than $300 billion, strengthen grid reliability and help meet surging electricity demand from AI and data centers. It has also proposed making it harder for future administrations to regulate power-plant greenhouse gases at all. Power plants generate roughly one-quarter of U.S. climate pollution, but if we compare ourselves to the entire planet, apparently everyone’s individual contribution becomes someone else’s problem. The repeal is expected to face immediate legal challenges. Do we need fewer environmental regulations or greater environmental accountability? @IsleyResistance