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March 31, 2025: Emergency surveillance update

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Today: Emergency surveillance update

Recent surveillance news has taken on a new urgency. Alexa spy devices are now sending all audio to Amazon, your DNA may be on sale at 23andMe, Elon Musk’s DOGE is accessing citizens’ private data, and the government is now disappearing people who are flagged by surveillance AI.

• Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28 (Ars Technica, March 14, 2025): “Starting on March 28, recordings of every command spoken to the Alexa living in Echo speakers and smart displays will automatically be sent to Amazon and processed in the cloud.”

• DNA of 15 Million People for Sale in 23andMe Bankruptcy (Jason Koebler in 404 Media, March 24, 2025): “There is no way to know what a buyer will want to do with the reams of genetic information it has collected. Customers, meanwhile, still have no way to change their underlying genetic data.”

• How to Delete Your 23andMe Data (EFF, March 26, 2025): “Our DNA contains our entire genetic makeup. It can reveal where our ancestors came from, who we are related to, our physical characteristics, and whether we are likely to get genetically determined diseases. Even if you don’t add your own DNA to a private database, a relative could make that choice for you by adding their own.”

• Facial Recognition Company Clearview Attempted to Buy Social Security Numbers and Mugshots for its Database (by Freddy Martinez in 404 Media, March 19, 2025): “Clearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase ‘690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos’ from all 50 states, court records reveal.”

• Struggle Over Americans’ Personal Data Plays Out Across the Government (gift link; by Andrew Duehren and Cecilia Kang in NYT, Feb 19, 2025): “Employees from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency are gaining access to vast amounts of information held by federal agencies, even as lawsuits try to stop them.”

    --> Past guest Kashmir Hill commented: “In the world of privacy coverage, there has always been a central question of who is a greater threat to it: the government or corporate America. Now with DOGE, the two are merged into one.”

• Urgent warning: Black Mirror has entered the United States, with AI as its handmaiden (Gary Marcus, March 10, 2025): “Axios broke a story this morning that made my blood curdle. The State Department intends to revoke the visas of large numbers of foreigners (in this case largely student protestors) in part based on AI analysis of their social media posts. . . . I fear a world in which the State department can judge anyone, at any time, to be a ‘threat’ to the state, even based on superficial AI analysis, and deport them without due process, using AI as a smoke screen to authoritarian action.”

• Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds (by Mike Masnick in TechDirt, March 27, 2025):

The federal government isn’t just pressuring universities over speech — it’s literally disappearing students for their political expression. If you support actual free speech, now is the time to speak up. The latest example of this authoritarian overreach is particularly chilling: Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish PhD student at Tufts who was here legally on a student visa, was abducted by masked agents in broad daylight. She was disappeared without due process or explanation — only later did we learn she had been renditioned to a detention center in Louisiana.

Her supposed crime? A year ago, she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily criticizing her university administration’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Not advocating violence. Not supporting terrorism. Not even criticizing the U.S. government. Just exercising core First Amendment rights by publishing criticism of her own university’s policies in a student newspaper.

• Trump Admin Spies on Social Media of Student Visa Holders (Ken Klippenstein, March 28, 2025):

The Trump administration is requiring that foreign students studying in, or seeking to study in the United States, pass an ideological test in order to obtain a visa, according to a “sensitive” State Department directive issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and which I obtained.

The crackdown, instituted on Tuesday, makes it “mandatory” for consular officers and State Department personnel to conduct a “social media review” — including screenshotting posts — of new and returning student visa applicants for any evidence of terrorist connections.

• Madison Square Garden Bans Fan After Surveillance System IDs Him as a Critic of Its CEO (Gizmodo, March 28, 2025): “The man created — but didn’t wear — a shirt critical of James Dolan, the venue’s CEO. . . . A friend of Miller’s wore that shirt to MSG in 2021 and very publicly got kicked out and banned from the venue for it. The fact that Miller made the shirt was apparently enough to get him put on the venue’s ban list should he ever show up, which he finally did about four years after his friend got the boot.”

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