SAN FRANCISCO – U.S. police departments used location data and other user information from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to track protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday. Facebook, which also owns Instagram, and Twitter shut off the data access of Geofeedia, the Chicago-based data vendor that provided data to police, in response to the ACLU findings. The report comes amid growing concerns among consumers and regulators about how online data is being used and how closely tech companies are cooperating with the government on surveillance. "These special data deals were allowing the police to sneak in through a side door and use these powerful platforms to track protesters," said Nicole Ozer, the ACLU's technology and civil liberties policy director. The ACLU report found that as recently as July, Geofeedia touted its social media monitoring product as a tool to monitor protests.

Entrepreneurs need little convincing that technology is important, rapidly evolving, and likely to have a profound impact on their businesses. But keeping track of developments, and knowing where to focus one's attention, is anything but straightforward. Analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers (pdf) say the impact of constant technological breakthroughs represent a "megatrend" – a change so big that "every business should develop an emerging technology strategy". They have highlighted eight key areas that all businesses should pay attention to. The artificial intelligence market is growing rapidly and forecast to be worth 36bn by 2025.

Recognizing the central role that technology now plays in the global economy, the World Economic Forum is establishing a new center in San Francisco to connect tech companies and policymakers in the heart of the world's technology industry. Building off the Forum's thesis of a "Fourth Industrial Revolution," the new facility will focus on bringing government officials and tech companies together to create frameworks for more productive legislative policies that can be implemented worldwide. "Depending on the collective choices we make -– as consumers, as communities, as business, government, and civil society leaders -– these technological breakthroughs could give us the power to move into a world that is even more prosperous, while being more sustainable and more inclusive," reads an early version of remarks prepared by World Economic Forum founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab. "Alternatively, we could end up in a world where our economic, political and social systems are more rigid, more unequal and more conflicted." Despite their deep roots in government-funded research, the relationship between policymakers and the tech companies that have sprung from the civic-minded seeds they nurtured with financing has always been a thorny or even openly antagonistic one (cf.

Maintaining the highest level of user safety will be non-negotiable when it comes to the deployment of autonomous vehicles whether they are used for personal or mass transport, or logistics in industrial environments. However, for reasons of sheer volume, it will be road vehicles where the biggest changes will be felt. Vehicle efficiency and road safety will be improved and congestion will come down and the technology and legislation is in development to make it a reality. It is generally agreed that the transition to autonomous driving will be gradual. In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has defined five levels of automation, from 0 to 4, which it refers to as the automation continuum.

In July, the Pentagon announced it was putting 20 million towards counter-drone weapons, citing the threat from ISIS. Shortly afterwards, pictures surfaced of an American-made anti-drone rifle in Iraq. Rather than destroying a drone with bullets, the Battelle Drone Defender stops drones by jamming GPS and radio signals, causing it to lose contact with its pilot and, ideally, land. Going further, DARPA wants the United States to have anti-drone lasers by 2020, a goal every part of the military, from the Air Force to the Marine Corps, is independently working towards. Laser weapons are costly to build, but their appeals as an anti-drone weapon is that every shot of directed energy is cheap, so one laser system could shoot down many cheap drones, without spending expensive missiles or lots of bullets to do so. In the meantime, people and police departments are exploring everything from elaborate net-guns to eagles as a way to take down drones.

Robotics and AI have "huge potential" to reshape the way people work and live, but the government needs to do more to address the issues raised by such technology, says a report. MPs on the Science and Technology Committee have called for careful scrutiny of the probable ethical, legal and societal impact. They want the government to establish a commission to look at the issues. That will include new skills for humans as artificial intelligence takes jobs. Others, such as Tesla boss Elon Musk, have gone further - declaring AI to be the biggest threat to the survival of the human race.

Life and stories are so closely intertwined that, at times, it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins. On Flipboard, stories flow from one to the next, weaving a rich tapestry that does an amazing job of showcasing all that life has to offer. The Galaxy Note 7 was the best phone available when it was released in August. A culmination of all of the company's strongest technologies to date, coupled with some fascinating new arrivals, Samsung somehow made the whole thing work in harmony, fit into a beautifully crafted 5.7-inch design. Even a war as pitiless as Syria's can have a low point.

It could be the ultimate upgrade for the discerning tank owner - a kit that makes your vehicle entire remote controlled. General Dynamics, the maker of the Abrams tank and the Stryker armoured fighting vehicle, has revealed a partnership to do just that. It is working with Kairos Autonomi, to create a simple plug in kit that could let army bosses upgrade their tanks, troop carriers and virtually any other vehicle. The M1 Abrams is an American third-generation main battle tank named after General Creighton Abrams, former Army chief of staff and commander of United States military forces in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. Weighing nearly 62 metric tons, it is one of the heaviest main battle tanks in service.

President Barack Obama has set a goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and getting them safely home again. In a commentary appearing on CNN.com, Obama set an ultimate goal of setting up a habitat on Mars so astronauts can live there for an extended time. "When our Apollo astronauts looked back from space, they realized that while their mission was to explore the moon, they had'in fact discovered the Earth,' " Obama wrote. "If we make our leadership in space even stronger in this century than it was in the last, we won't just benefit from related advances in energy, medicine, agriculture and artificial intelligence, we'll benefit from a better understanding of our environment and ourselves." Talking about his "sense of wonder" about the U.S. space program, Obama wrote about the country's next chapter in space exploration – Mars.

Just days after threatening to jail a political opponent should he win the presidency, Donald Trump's got a new campaign website that's so very … Trumpian. "Together, we are making waterboarding part of the Republican Party again," it declares. Truer words have never come out of Trump's mouth. A Trump AI generated all of the site's copy on its own. This is the work of MIT researcher Brad Hayes, who's taken his tweeting AI called DeepDrumpf and turned up its political aspirations.