Digital Rights • Disinformation • Surveillance • Technology • Threat Management

Gary Marcus — Marcus on AI

1984, but with LLM’s

“Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” — 1984, George Orwell

Artificial Intelligence • Democracy • Digital Rights • Fascism • Surveillance

Elizabeth Spiers — The Nation

Palantir’s Manifesto Promises a Dystopian Future

The tech company’s CEO Alex Karp delivers a self-serving broadside that’s steeped in oligarchic hubris and authoritarian nihilism.

Artificial Intelligence • Cyber Security • Digital Rights • Technology

Anil Dash — anildash.com

ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released their own browser called Atlas, and it actually is something new: the first browser that actively fights against the web.

Cyber Security • Digital Rights • Fascism • Social Media • Surveillance • Technology • Threat Management

Dell Cameron — Wired

ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team

Documents show that ICE plans to hire dozens of contractors to scan X, Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms to target people for deportation.

Artificial Intelligence • Cryptocurrency • Cyber Security • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Europe • Executive Power • Human Rights • Journalism • Legal • Press Freedom • Resistance • Russia • Safety • Social Media • Surveillance • Technology • Threat Management • Violence

Ron Williams

The Resistance Will Be Reported (Updated November 12, 2025)

The environment for press freedom in the United States is entering a perilous new phase. The attacks have been unprecedented, widespread and continue to escalate.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Executive Power • Fascism • Journalism • Press Freedom • Resistance • Social Media • Technology

Jeff Jarvis — Medium

Whither Colbert? Whither Democracy

Mass media are dead: corrupted, complicit, malign, worthless

Artificial Intelligence • Cyber Security • Digital Rights • Surveillance • Technology • Threat Management

Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik — The New York Times

Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans

Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics...

Artificial Intelligence • Cyber Security • Digital Rights • Human Rights • Technology • Threat Management

Nicole Schneidman — If you can keep it

DOGE’s data “panopticon” pales compared to what’s next

If state governments surrender their datasets, there’s no telling how they could be abused

Digital Rights • Journalism • Legal • Press Freedom • Surveillance • Technology

SARAH GREVY GOTFREDSEN — Columbia Journalism Review

Entry: Denied

The “intolerable risk to press freedom” posed by device searches at the border.

Artificial Intelligence • Cyber Security • Digital Rights • Surveillance • Technology • Threat Management

LUKE O’BRIEN — Mother Jones

The Shocking Far-Right Agenda Behind the Facial Recognition Tech Used by ICE and the FBI

Thousands of newly obtained documents show that Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left. Now their digital dragnet is in the hands of the Trump administration.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Elections • Global • Journalism • Legal • Press Freedom

Gretel Kahn, Marina Adami, Eduardo Suárez — Reuters Institute

Shattered by a perfect storm: How Trump’s cuts are crippling journalism beyond the United States

Before Trump’s inauguration, the US government supported independent journalism in more than 30 countries. Most of this funding was channelled through USAID. According to a USAID factsheet recently mentioned by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and now taken offline, the agency funded training and support for 6,200 journalists and assisted 707 outlets.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Executive Power • Journalism

Eric Lutz — Vanity Fair

Donald Trump Is Turning the Press Pool Into a MAGA Echo Chamber

Leavitt insisted the change was a “long overdue” corrective to an “outdated” system, which gave “left wing stenographers” a “monopoly” on access. But the real message behind the move was plain: The Trump administration will punish news organizations for unfavorable coverage and uncomfortable questions.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Press Freedom

BRIAN SNYDER — REUTERS

White House wrests control of presidential press pool from correspondents

The pool has traditionally been overseen by the WHCA to ensure that access isn’t limited to those covering the sitting administration favorably.

Digital Rights • Executive Power • Human Rights • Press Freedom • Social Justice and Equity • Technology • Threat Management

Clayton Weimers — Reporters Without Borders

One month of Trump: Press freedom under siege

The newly-elected president, his administration, and his political allies have conducted a rapid series of attacks on press freedom that amount to a monumental assault on freedom of information.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Executive Power

Harriet Barber, Rebecca Ratcliffe and Deepa Parent — The Guardian

Trump’s aid cuts will lead to a surge in propaganda and misinformation, say press freedom groups

From Ukraine to Afghanistan, independent media organisations across the world are being forced to lay off staff or shut down after losing USAid funding.

Cyber Security • Democracy • Digital Rights • Fascism • Technology • Threat Management

Gil Duran — thenerdreich.com

Memo: 'Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries'

Memo details how Elon Musk has orchestrated a stunning takeover of the U.S. government

Democracy • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Journalism

Oliver Darcy — Status

Trumpocalypse Now

After years of warnings about what Donald Trump would do if he returned to power, the president is dismantling institutions, warping law enforcement agencies, seeking retribution on his critics, treating undocumented immigrants with cruelty, imposing and threatening seismic tariffs, and openly musing about seizing foreign territories. The American experiment is convulsing before our eyes. And yet, you wouldn't quite realize it from the tone of the news coverage.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Elections • Journalism • Legal • Press Freedom

CHRIS LEHMANN — The Nation

The MAGA Assault on the Media Is Picking Up Steam

Trump’s courts-based intimidation campaign against the press descends from handiwork of one of his most prominent Silicon Valley backers, venture capitalist and neo-reactionary ghoul Peter Thiel.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Elections • Journalism • Legal • Press Freedom

Adrienne LaFrance — The Atlantic

Capitulation is Contagious

The brave few who stood up to the magnates of the Gilded Age came to mind this month, when Ann Telnaes, a Washington Post cartoonist, resigned over the paper’s refusal to publish a cartoon in which she skewered today’s titans of industry—­Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, among them.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Journalism

DAN FROOMKIN — Press Watch

How a great nonprofit news organization would cover national politics

Unlike commercial news organizations, it would be accessible, explanatory, committed to fighting disinformation, and crusading.

Cyber Security • Democracy • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Exile • Global • Surveillance • Technology • Threat Management

Reporters Without Borders — rsf.org

New report on Russian media in exile: RSF calls for increased support amid unprecedented digital repression

Independent Russian media in exile are a vital line of defence against the Kremlin’s massive digital censorship project, which has an estimated budget of nearly 630 million euros, according to the latest report by The Fix and the JX Fund. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urges European states, international donors, and tech giants to step up their support for these media outlets as they face unprecedented repression and major logistical, financial, and security challenges.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Elections • Journalism • Technology

Sheera Frenkel — New York Times

Liberals Are Left Out in the Cold as Social Media Veers Right

Hundreds of thousands of posts lauding Mr. Trump’s victory filled Truth Social, the social platform that the president-elect owns. Speculation about what the new administration would accomplish ran rampant on X, which is owned by Elon Musk. Gab, Parler and other right-wing social media sites were flooded with thousands of memes glorifying Mr. Trump.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Disinformation • Surveillance • Technology

CAROLE CADWALLADR — How to Survive the Broligarchy

Total Information Collapse

The destabilisation in our information system that we woke up to in 2016 has now entered a wholly dangerous new reality: the merger of Silicon Valley and an authoritarian US state.

Digital Rights • Disinformation • Journalism • Social Media • Technology

GEORGE A. POLISNER — https://bomdia.substack.com

The Media Pipeline

Hint: It's Dangerously Corroded

Artificial Intelligence • Cyber Security • Digital Rights • Surveillance • Technology • Threat Management

BERYL LIPTON AND MATTHEW GUARIGLIA — EFF

GAO Report Shows the Government Uses Face Recognition with No Accountability, Transparency, or Training

Face recognition technology, particularly when used by law enforcement and government, puts into jeopardy many of our important rights.

Artificial Intelligence • Democracy • Digital Rights • Financial • Technology

Jonathan Taplin — Vanity Fair

The Four Billionaire Techno-Oligarchs Creating an Alternate, Autocratic Reality

In an excerpt from his new book, The End of Reality, the author warns about the curses of AI and transhumanism, presenting the moral case against superintelligence.

Democracy • Digital Rights • Press Freedom • Russia

JIM HEINTZ AND DASHA LITVINOVA — AP News

Russia outlaws top independent news site in latest crackdown

Meduza, an independent news website that has been critical of Russia’s military action in Ukraine was declared “undesirable” by the government Thursday, effectively outlawing its operation within the country as part of the Kremlin’s latest crackdown on dissent.

Digital Rights • Journalism • Press Freedom • Russia • Technology

Reporters Without Borders

RSF creates “mirror” of leading Russian exile news site blocked by Kremlin

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has used the mirror site technology of its Collateral Freedom operation to unblock access to Meduza, the most popular Russian independent news website.

Recommended