Abstract--The 2024 July Revolution in Bangladesh represents a landmark event in the study of civil resistance: a successful, student-led civilian uprising that overthrew a long-standing authoritarian regime despite facing brutal state repression. This study investigates the central paradox of its success: how state violence, intended to quell dissent, ultimately fueled the movement's victory. We employ a mixed-methods approach. First, we develop a qualitative narrative of the conflict's timeline to generate specific, testable hypotheses. Then, using a disaggregated, event-level dataset, we employ a multi-method quantitative analysis to dissect the complex relationship between repression and mobilisation. We provide a framework to analyse explosive modern uprisings like the July Revolution. Initial pooled regression models highlight the crucial role of protest momentum (measured by a feedback loop effect) in sustaining the movement. T o isolate causal effects, we specify a Two-Way Fixed Effects panel model, which provides robust evidence for a direct and statistically significant local suppression backfire effect. Our V ector Autoregression (V AR) analysis provides clear visual evidence of an immediate, nationwide mobilisation in response to increased lethal violence. We further demonstrate that this effect was non-linear . A structural break analysis reveals that the backfire dynamic was statistically insignificant in the conflict's early phase but was triggered by the catalytic moral shock of the first wave of lethal violence, and its visuals circulated around July 16th. We conclude that the July Revolution was driven by a contingent, non-linear backfire, triggered by specific catalytic moral shocks and accelerated by the viral reaction to the visual spectacle of state brutality. N August 2024, the fifteen-year rule of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh came to a sudden and dramatic end. After weeks of escalating nationwide protests, she resigned from her post and fled the country. These authors contributed equally to this work. Saiful Bari Siddiqui is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh (e-mail: saiful.bari@bracu.ac.bd). Anupam Debashis Roy is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom (e-mail: anu-pam.roy@sant.ox.ac.uk). In a matter of weeks, this initial spark grew into a nationwide fire, as hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens joined the students, bringing the country to a standstill and achieving a political transformation that had seemed unthinkable just a month earlier.

Argentinian security forces have announced plans to use artificial intelligence to'predict future crimes' but experts warn the move could threaten citizens' rights. Far-right president Javier Milei has created the Artificial Intelligence Applied to Security Unit which will use algorithms to analyse historical crime data. The data produced will then be used to predict future crimes, The Guardian has reported. The security unit is also expected to be able to use facial recognition software to track down wanted persons and detect suspicious activity. However, the Minority Report-esque resolution has concerned human rights campaigners who fear certain groups in society may be over-scrutinised by the AI technology.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, there are cameras everywhere. In Silwan, in occupied East Jerusalem, residents say cameras were installed by Israeli police up and down their streets, peering into their homes. One resident named Sara said she and her family "could be detected as if the cameras were just in our house … we couldn't feel at home in our own house and had to be fully dressed all the time." Surveillance cameras now cover the Damascus Gate, the main entrance into the old city of Jerusalem and one of the only public areas for Palestinians to gather socially and hold demonstrations. It's at that gate that "Palestinians are being watched and assessed at all times", according to an Amnesty International report, Automated Apartheid.

Global internet freedom declined for a thirteenth consecutive year in 2023, partially as a result of AI being used to sow disinformation and enhance content censorship, according to a new report from U.S.-based nonprofit Freedom House. The 2023 Freedom on the Net report, published on Oct. 4, assesses the state of internet freedom in 70 countries through a comprehensive methodology examining obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. The report found that many countries--including Myanmar, the Philippines, Costa Rica--have drastically restricted online freedoms this year. China has the lowest levels of internet freedom for the ninth consecutive year, the report said. Freedom House, established in 1941, publishes Freedom in the World and Freedom on the Net annually.

Waging brutal repression at home and allegedly helping Russia in its war against Ukraine, Iran is becoming an unsolvable challenge for Western powers eager to avoid a new nuclear power in the Middle East. "We're in a delicate situation and an obvious impasse," a French diplomat admitted before Wednesday's UN Security Council meeting on suspected Iranian drone use by Russian forces. Despite Tehran's new support for an increasingly isolated Moscow, the United States and the European Union still hope to revive the 2015 deal aimed at curtailing Iran's nuclear programme -- even though the prospect is dimming. "Iran's repression at home and aggression in Ukraine have increased the political cost for and decreased the appetite of the West to grant Tehran sanctions relief," said analyst Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group. "But the West has no good options, as the only thing worse than a repressive regime that kills its own people is a nuclear armed one that does so."

The United States Treasury slapped sanctions on 25 individuals and entities on Friday, citing human rights abuses, and blacklisted a Chinese maker of artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition software, citing its role in the repression of Muslim Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. In addition to China, Friday's raft of sanctions targeted people and entities linked to human rights abuses in Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh. Canada and the United Kingdom joined the US in announcing sanctions over repression in Myanmar. "On International Human Rights Day, Treasury is using its tools to expose and hold accountable perpetrators of serious human rights abuse," said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo in a statement posted on the department's website. Treasury added AI firm SenseTime Group Limited to a list of Chinese blacklisted firms for developing facial recognition programmes "that can determine a target's ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs".

Which languages and language-users are prioritized by digital platforms? Speakers of non-dominant languages are disproportionately subject to algorithmic harms.¹ They confront content moderation algorithms that "only work in certain languages"² on platforms that structurally omit non-Western nations from governance considerations. I call this tendency algolinguicism -- a matrix of automated processes that minoritize language-users outside the Global North and obstruct their access to political participation. This essay addresses digital platforms as sites of algolinguicism.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. French soccer player Antoine Griezmann ended his affiliation with Huawei on Thursday, saying there are "strong suspicions" that the Chinese tech giant has contributed to the repression of the mostly Muslim minority Uighurs. The 29-year-old Barcelona forward's announcement followed media reports that Huawei has tested facial recognition software intended to help China's surveillance of the group. "Following strong suspicions that the Huawei company has contributed to the development of a'Uighur alert' thanks to facial recognition software, I am announcing the immediate termination of my partnership with the company," Griezmann said in an Instagram post.

Beijing – Muslims in China's Xinjiang were "arbitrarily" selected for arrest by a computer program that flagged suspicious behavior, activists said Wednesday, in a report detailing big data's role in repression in the restive region. The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said leaked police data that listed over 2,000 detainees from Aksu prefecture was further evidence of "how China's brutal repression of Xinjiang's Turkic Muslims is being turbocharged by technology." Beijing has come under intense international criticism over its policies in the resource-rich territory, where rights groups say as many as 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been held in internment camps. China defends the camps as vocational training centers aimed at stamping out terrorism and improving employment opportunities. Surveillance spending in Xinjiang has ballooned in recent years, with facial recognition, iris scanners, DNA collection and artificial intelligence deployed across the province in the name of preventing terrorism.

When it comes to AI ethics around the use of facial recognition, China does not have a good record. As India has banned Chinese apps including TikTok, one that went viral in 2019 and 2020 that uses AI to recommend micro videos, Australia and the U.S. are likely to be next. Kevin Mayer left Disney recently to join ByteDance, as CEO of TikTok, but you cannot separate TikTok, from its parent company with an HQ located in Beijing. If this company isn't helping export China's police surveillance capitalism play, I don't know what is. It's the greatest PR stunt by ByteDance I've seen yet.