// WA-AIR ROOM

The internet is an essential resource for young people and adults to access information, explore community, and find themselves—both inside countries and across continents. Yet governments around the world continue to introduce and implement legislation requiring all online users to verify their ages before accessing the digital space. In some cases, politicians are going further, putting forth proposals to ban social media for younger users.   In late 2025, Australia’s government rolled out the first complete ban on users under 16 from having social media accounts. In this sweeping regime,...

Private surveillance firm Facewatch has announced plans to expand its services into pharmacies, meaning the possibility of facial recognition technology being used to surveil the public as they seek medical care. Responding to the announcements, Big Brother Watch Head of Advocacy Jack Coulson said: “We’re appalled that Facewatch is seeking to plague UK healthcare with […] The post Big Brother Watch response to Facewatch’s plans to sell intrusive facial recognition tech to pharmacies appeared first on Big Brother Watch.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said Friday he is pausing the state’s data center tax incentives starting in July amid a push to address concerns about electricity costs and water resources that have plagued the AI infrastructure build-out nationwide. He directed state officials to pause agreements under the Data Center Investment Program, which exempted data...

Located in Gray and Roberts Counties, Texas

California lawmakers are again considering A.B. 412, a bill that would require AI developers to identify and disclose copyrighted works used to train generative AI systems. The problem this year is the same as last year: it’s practically impossible to comply with this law. The bill demands information that often does not exist, and cannot realistically be obtained.  EFF submitted an opposition letter to the California Senate Privacy Committee explaining why we continue to believe A.B. 412 is simply unworkable. To the extent developers do follow this law, it will have the effect of locking i...

Raising a responsible child and building responsible AI both require a deep awareness of what we are training them to notice and value.

"Hochul has an opportunity to demonstrate concern for affordability and listen to public opinion rather than corporate lobbyists." The post Gov. Hochul Must Sign One-Year AI/Crypto Data Center Moratorium Passed by Legislature appeared first on Food & Water Watch.

“Hochul would demonstrate New York’s leadership on this critical issue rapidly consuming the country.” The post NY Gov. Hochul Must Sign One-Year AI Data Center Moratorium Passed by Legislature appeared first on Food & Water Watch.

Business mogul Kevin O’Leary said late Wednesday he is willing to scale back his controversial 40,000-acre artificial intelligence data center campus in Utah after mounting backlash over the development’s size and environmental impact. The “Shark Tank” investor told NBC News he is “going to have to” slim down the development amid political pushback from state...

Accelerate siting, de-Risk power, and outpace the competition

Most days in her chambers, Judge Maritza Braswell, a federal magistrate judge in Colorado, sifts through stacks of documents written by people without a lawyer. Many of them can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and others have cases too weak or too small to interest one. She reads each one carefully, mindful of how daunting…

The insane Meta AI hack; Amazon's internal AI leaderboard; and our lawsuit against ICE.

The researchers compared AI to the near-sighted cartoon character Mr. Magoo, who can’t see he’s stumbling through dangerous situations.

Jqwik is a test engine for Java programs. Jqwik does not welcome AI coding: [GitHub, archive] the copyright consequences of training an LLM with mostly public code repositories have not been clarified. Moreover, hyper-scaled GenAI is a fundamentally unethical technology that should be banned. You are not supposed to use jqwik with your coding bot. […]

States, organizations push back against Trump's weakening of nuclear regulations. Read more The post Data Center Victory: Implementing Oregon’s POWER Act first appeared on Columbia Riverkeeper.

Pope Leo XIV presented his first encyclical letter to the Vatican on Monday. Titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or Magnificent Humanity, the 43,000 word missive specifically takes aim at AI — and the AI bros. [Vatican] It’s a book-length writeup on the AI bubble and why it’s terrible. It details all the current human abuses of AI […]

Haven’t you heard? White-collar jobs are going away, decimated by AI. Waves of layoffs in the tech sector (most recently at Coinbase and Meta and Cisco) are said to presage what will soon come for all of us knowledge workers. But before you quit your job as a software developer or financial analyst—or tech journalist—and…

GOLDENDALE, Wash. – High up on the Washington side of the Columbia River near the John Day hydroelectric dam, members of the Yakama Nation gathered to protest a clean energy storage project slated to be built on a sacred tribal site. Supporters of the Goldendale pumped-hydro energy storage project have said it will help meet […]

WASHINGTON — Higher electric rates? Massive data centers looming over neighborhoods? Ugly political fights over what to do about them? The future of data centers and their huge appetite for electricity is quickly escalating as a political flashpoint from coast to coast, moving from cities and states now to the nation’s capital.  Bills are under […]

Live facial recognition was deployed at a protest setting for the first time on 16 May when it was used to police an anti-immigration protest in London. Privacy and civil liberties campaigners warn such large-scale screening of innocent people risks normalising mass surveillance of the UK public. Jasleen Chaggar, Big Brother Watch’s senior legal and […] The post Reuters – Facial recognition technology used at London protest for the first time appeared first on Big Brother Watch.