In addition to affordability, New York City's mayor-elect will be forced to reckon with the NYPD's sweeping mass surveillance operations. New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani may have an ambitious policy agenda, but overhauling the self-governing and deeply dysfunctional behemoth that is the New York City Police Department is not on the list. Mamdani surprised supporters by asking current Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to stay on after his inauguration early next year. Tisch, a technocrat heir to a vast real estate fortune, clashes with Mamdani on several fronts, including policy (she believes New York State's bail reforms caused rising crime) and the geopolitics that inevitably make their way into New York City's streets. One area where Mamdani is guaranteed to clash with Tisch is on the NYPD's massive technical surveillance apparatus and intelligence-gathering methods, which have metastasized since 9/11 to levels that rival the capabilities of a midsize country.

What does recognising a Palestinian state mean? Why have Spain, Italy sent ships to assist the Gaza flotilla? Who are the artists speaking out against the war? Why has Microsoft cut Israel off from some of its services? Microsoft has announced that it has withdrawn some of its services from the Israeli army, following an investigation that raised concerns that Israel may be violating the company's terms of service by using its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services to spy on millions of Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank.

Why have Spain, Italy sent ships to assist the Gaza flotilla? Israel's mass surveillance: Microsoft blocks the army from using its software United States tech giant Microsoft has cancelled some services it provides to the Israeli military over concerns it is violating its terms of service by using the firm's cloud computing software to spy on millions of Palestinians, the company's vice chair and president Brad Smith confirmed. Smith wrote in a Thursday blog post that the company had "ceased and disabled a set of services" to a unit within the Israeli Ministry of Defence in response to an August 6 joint investigation by The Guardian newspaper, +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. Unit 8200 is the Israeli military's elite cyber warfare unit responsible for clandestine operations, including collecting signal intelligence and surveillance. The investigation by journalists revealed that following a 2021 meeting between Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Unit 8200's leader Yossi Sariel, an agreement was reached to collaborate on moving large volumes of sensitive intelligence material into the company's Azure platform.

After 25 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cindy Cohn is stepping down as executive director. In a WIRED interview, she reflects on encryption, AI, and why she's not ready to quit the battle. After a quarter century defending digital rights, Cindy Cohn announced on Tuesday that she is stepping down as executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cohn, who has led the San Francisco-based nonprofit since 2015, says she will leave the role later this year, concluding a chapter that helped define the modern fight over online freedom. Cohn first rose to prominence as lead counsel in, the 1990s case that overturned federal restrictions on publishing encryption code. As EFF's legal director and later executive director, she guided the group through legal challenges to government surveillance, reforms to computer crime laws, and efforts to hold corporations accountable for data collection. Over the past decade, EFF has expanded its influence, becoming a central force in shaping the debate over privacy, security, and digital freedom. In an interview with WIRED, Cohn reflected on EFF's foundational encryption victories, its unfinished battles against National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, and the organization's work protecting independent security researchers.

Nearly 200 workers inside Google DeepMind, the company's AI division, signed a letter calling on the tech giant to drop its contracts with military organizations earlier this year, according to a copy of the document reviewed by TIME and five people with knowledge of the matter. The letter circulated amid growing concerns inside the AI lab that its technology is being sold to militaries engaged in warfare, in what the workers say is a violation of Google's own AI rules. The letter is a sign of a growing dispute within Google between at least some workers in its AI division--which has pledged to never work on military technology--and its Cloud business, which has contracts to sell Google services, including AI developed inside DeepMind, to several governments and militaries including those of Israel and the United States. The signatures represent some 5% of DeepMind's overall headcount--a small portion to be sure, but a significant level of worker unease for an industry where top machine learning talent is in high demand. The DeepMind letter, dated May 16 of this year, begins by stating that workers are "concerned by recent reports of Google's contracts with military organizations."

The European Union is considering controversial proposals to mass scan private communications on encrypted messaging apps for child sex abuse material. Under the proposed legislation, photos, videos, and URLs sent on popular apps such as WhatsApp and Signal would be scanned by an artificial intelligence-powered algorithm against a government database of known abuse material. The Council of the EU, one of the bloc's two legislative bodies, is due to vote on the legislation, popularly known as Chat Control 2.0, on Thursday. If passed by the council, which represents the governments of the bloc's 27 member states, the proposals will move forward to the next legislative phase and negotiations on the exact terms of the law. While EU officials have argued that Chat Control 2.0 will help prevent child sex exploitation, encrypted messaging platforms and privacy advocates have fiercely opposed the proposals, likening them to the mass surveillance of George Orwell's 1984.

The EU has taken a major step towards passing one of the world's first laws governing artificial intelligence after its main legislative branch approved the text of draft legislation that includes a blanket ban on police use of live facial recognition technology in public places. The European parliament approved rules aimed at setting a global standard for the technology, which encompasses everything from automated medical diagnoses to some types of drone, AI-generated videos known as deepfakes, and bots such as ChatGPT. MEPs will now thrash out details with EU countries before the draft rules – known as the AI act – become legislation. "AI raises a lot of questions socially, ethically, economically. But now is not the time to hit any'pause button'. On the contrary, it is about acting fast and taking responsibility," said Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market.

Meredith Whittaker is the president of Signal – the not-for-profit secure messaging app. The service, along with WhatsApp and similar messaging platforms, is opposing the UK government's online safety bill which, among other things, seeks to scan users' messages for harmful content. Prior to Signal, Whittaker worked at Google, co-founded NYU's AI Now Institute and was an adviser to the Federal Trade Commission. After 10 years at Google you organised the walkout over the company's attitude to sexual harassment accusations, after which in 2019 you were forced out. How did you feel about that?

If you had "leaking classified US military documents for the lulz" on your 2023 Bingo card, congratulations. The fast-paced drama surrounding the online disclosure of top-secret material ripped through this week's news. We'll dive into the details below, but there's one key takeaway: This bizarre kind of leak may be only the beginning. Anyone worried about chaos agents of a different variety now have a new way to protect their online identities. LinkedIn this week began to roll out new tools that allow you to verify your identity and your job.

Live facial recognition cameras are a form of mass surveillance, human rights campaigners have said, as the Met police said it would press ahead with its use of the "gamechanging" technology. Britain's largest force said the technology could be used to catch terrorists and find missing people after research published on Wednesday reported a "substantial improvement" in its accuracy. The research, carried out by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), found there were minimal discrepancies for race and sex when the technology was used at certain settings. It was commissioned by the Met and South Wales police in late 2021 after fierce public debate about police use of the technology. But the human rights groups Liberty, Big Brother Watch and Amnesty have said the technology is oppressive and "turns us into walking ID cards".