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keep your electric eye on me
@ubisurv.net

David Murakami Wood (DMW)
Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance & Security Studies
Director, CSS/Lab, uOttawa
Co-editor-in-Chief, Surveillance & Society
Surveillance / Security / Cities / Technology / Human Rights / Environment
https://ubisurv.net .. more

Political science 39%
Sociology 28%
Pinned
For those just arriving here, I have 3 starter packs (bsky only allows 150 people/pack):
1. #Surveillance Studies Starter Pack (full): go.bsky.app/HYGu6oX
2. #Surveillance Studies Extension Pack (growing): go.bsky.app/HoDHyNe
3. Critical #SmartCities Starter Pack (growing): go.bsky.app/H1Xd6SL

Hasn't that always been the case? As usual, the Liberals are all about business as usual while claiming to be transformative.
ummm isn't this Carney's former(?) gig?
"... will acquire up to $100 billion of AI infrastructure assets, deploying investment across every stage of the value chain—from energy and land to data centers and compute." bam.brookfield.com/press-releas...
Brookfield Launches $100 Billion AI Infrastructure Program
Brookfield Launches $100 Billion AI Infrastructure Program
bam.brookfield.com
I wrote about why we should understand the metaverse hype cycle as a dress rehearsal for the generative AI hype cycle www.fastcompany.com/91467599/met...
What was the metaverse?
Mark Zuckerberg effectively declared its death last December. But the delusional fervor it inspired lives on.
www.fastcompany.com

Unfortunately the current centre-right EU government is about as timid and lacking in vision as it's possible to be and has failed to stand up to the growing far-right threat within, let alone protect others from the far-right threat from outside.

However disappointing Habeck was in government, this is an idea that both #Greenland and the #EU should consider. It might also be a spur to #Canada giving serious thought to joining, and then you have a whole different situation...

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Trump is ready to grab Greenland. The EU should move first – and offer it membership | Robert Habeck and Andreas Raspotnik
The US president’s threats to the territory show Europe needs a new strategy for its far north: one based on cooperation, not domination, say Robert Habeck, former German vice-chancellor, and Andreas ...
www.theguardian.com
Coming up on one year since this statement.

Reposted by Dagmar Hoffmann

NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE — 21 January 2026

🎉 The submission deadline for SSN 2026 has been extended to 21 January 2026

#SSN2026 takes place 9–12 June 2026 at Université Catholique de Lille, France, with in-person and online tracks

#surveillance #data #privacy

ssn2026.sciencesconf.org
Planetary Intelligence and Surveillance - The 11th Biennial Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society Conference - Sciencesconf.org
Planetary surveillance : 11th Biennal Conference Surveillance Studies Network
ssn2026.sciencesconf.org
Malaysia and Indonesia become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and non-consensual images.
Malaysia, Indonesia become first to block Musk’s Grok over AI deepfakes
Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked access to Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok due to its misuse in generating explicit images.
bit.ly
Erich Von Däniken has died.

A major influence on pseudoarchaeology and conspiracy theory in the U.S., many people are still unaware of the antisemitic and literal Nazi background to this flavor of "ancient astronaut" stuff.
Trump posts that he’s “Acting President of Venezuela”
NEW: The Palantirisation of the UK military is a national security disaster.

Peter Thiel is now the third wheel in the US-UK ‘special relationship’.

1/

open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

Evan Solomon is every bit as ineffectual as Mark Carney. This is a government of moral weaklings, too afraid to stand up to the billionaires, and still believing Canada can somehow benefit by catching some crumbs off the table of US techno-imperialism.
The concept of posting “Canada is not considering a ban of X” as a QUOTE of your post condemning deepfake sexual abuse happening **ON X** of women and kids………….

That's so bleak.
The Looki L1 AI wearable
“…continuously captures a wearer's point of view, promising to advise when to avoid another cup of coffee, to comment on places or objects around you, and to summarize each day in a comic strip.”
AI pendants back in vogue at tech show after early setback
Pendants and brooches packed with artificial intelligence abounded at the Consumer Electronics show, using cameras and microphones to watch and listen through the day like a vigilant personal assistan...
uk.finance.yahoo.com
"aaronparnas NEWS: ICE has purchased new technology that allows it to track the phones of citizens and non-citizens alike without a warrant, per 404 Media."

#technology #politics #immigration #citizens #noncitizens #tracking #warrant #phones #cellphones
Homan: "We gotta stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It's just ridiculous. It's gonna infuriate people more which means there's gonna be more incidents like this."
Deadline extended to 21st of January! #surveillance #AI #digitalcriminology
Still time to submit your abstracts till 10th of January for #SSN2026! Join us in Lille!

All info: ssn2026.sciencesconf.org

#surveillance #surveillancestudies
The concept of posting “Canada is not considering a ban of X” as a QUOTE of your post condemning deepfake sexual abuse happening **ON X** of women and kids………….
WSJ investigation: In the past 6 months ICE agents have fired at vehicles 13 times, leading to:

* 8 people shot
* 5 of which were U.S. citizens
* 2 died
* no victims drew a weapon

The playbook: Agents box in a vehicle, block attempts to flee, then fire

www.wsj.com/us-news/vide...
Videos Show How ICE Vehicle Stops Can Escalate to Shootings
A WSJ visual investigation found that the Minneapolis ICE killing is one of 13 incidents where federal immigration agents have used deadly force against civilians in vehicles since July.
www.wsj.com
“Uruguay did what most nations still call impossible: it built a power grid that runs almost entirely on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere—if governments have the courage to change the rules.”
Uruguay’s Renewable Charge: A Small Nation, A Big Lesson For The World
Uruguay built a power grid that runs 99% on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. Here’s how its bold energy overhaul became a global model.
www.forbes.com

I'd really like the ban the use of verbs like "say" when it comes to LLMs. Grok doesn't "say" anything. Grok produces more or less coherent streams of letters, symbols and images in response to instructions. It's not even speech, let alone a speech-act.

I am really getting frustrated by many journalists reporting stuff produced through the Grok LLM as if it is statements made by a sentient person, or that it represents some official position of X. It's just text strings generated in response to prompts. There is no conscious content.
Yesterday Elon Musk retweeted "white solidarity is the only way to survive". In our numb overwhelmed media environment it barely made headlines that the world's richest man endorsed blood-curdling white nationalism. My brief writeup for @religiondispatches.org

religiondispatches.org/elon-musk-ju...
Elon Musk Just Endorsed Blatant White Nationalism And the Silence is Deafening
On Thursday morning Elon Musk retweeted (with a ‘100%’ endorsement) a post declaring that: If white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non-Whites openly hate White men while...
religiondispatches.org
In case you've seen the story about “grok now only generates images for paid users”, it's untrue. Apparently everyone just reported it because… it was what grok told them 🤦🏼
www.theverge.com/news/859309/...
No, Grok hasn’t paywalled its deepfake image feature
X’s sexual deepfake machine is still running, despite Grok saying otherwise.
www.theverge.com
Yeah, so Trump’s use of CCR's anti-war song “Fortunate Son” in his TruthSocial video of the military raid in Venezuela wasn't a mistake — it’s part of a very deliberate far-right approach to aesthetics. A short thinkpiece I did for @newrepublic.com

newrepublic.com/article/2049...
The End Goal of Trump’s Cringey, Nonsensical Videos
Trump’s use of the anti-war song “Fortunate Son” in a video of the military raid in Venezuela was no mistake. It’s part of a very deliberate far-right aesthetic.
newrepublic.com
Republican bullies deploy more threats against the UK to protect their big tech corporate allies.
“The doctor has nothing left to do but sit and cry next to this patient who is denied treatment and denied travel.”
‘We just sit and cry’: Gaza’s cancer patients die waiting for treatment
Gaza cancer deaths triple as doctors say Israel allows entry of 'chocolates and chips" but blocks chemotherapy drugs.
www.aljazeera.com
This statement was posted exclusively on X, which is also the primary platform Canada's AI Minister posts on

@evansolomon.bsky.social has 215,000 followers on X, but only 1,200 on Bluesky. These people just can't let their vanity follower counts go, it's really as simple as that