Woodrow Hartzog
@hartzog.bsky.social
Andrew R. Randall Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. Author of "Privacy's Blueprint" (2018) and co-author of "Breached!" (2022). Posting mainly about privacy, tech and the law.
You cannot make mass surveillance "safe" or "good" by adding more guardrails. The only way to make Flock safe is to get rid of Flock. www.gpb.org/news/2026/08...
Analysis: More 'guardrails' needed to prevent police misuse of Flock cameras
Inappropriate use of Flock cameras by law enforcement officials have raised questions about how much surveillance is too much.
gpb.org
New: Police in Wisconsin used Flock to create a pretext to search a man's car for weed. Their justification? He drove from Wisconsin to Michigan, a “known source state for marijuana as it is legal there,” and Flock showed he "travels to Michigan frequently." www.404media.co/cops-used-fl...
Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines to Create Pretext to Search His Car for Weed
"The vehicle travels to Michigan frequently which is a known source state for marijuana as it is legal there," a probable cause justification reads.
404media.co
This is concerning for a zillion reasons but, a dispensary in Michigan went viral for blocking a Flock camera in its parking lot designed to create a record of every car that goes there. Easy to imagine this being used in abortion, gender affirming care cases
New from 404 Media: Apple's 'Private Relay' is exposing users' real IP addresses. Private Relay is supposed to protect all your browsing in Safari. But researchers found a bunch of issues that are exposing real IPs. I verified they do. Not fixed, a live issue www.404media.co/apples-priva...
Apple's ‘Private Relay’ Is Exposing Users' Real IP Addresses
Researchers found a group of issues that mean Private Relay isn't actually protecting users' real IP addresses. 404 Media verified the issues do expose IP addresses.
404media.co
New @bloomberglaw.com article by Olivia Carville - TikTok experimented on users, putting 10% (about 15M people) in a "filter bubble" exposing them to repetitive content that the algorithm thought they wanted, but was toxic. If you want to know why these cases are going to be massive...
As Jane shows, telling students it’s OK to use AI for brainstorming or outlining is telling them to use AI to think and write for them. It is to also telling them to cheat and helping them cheat.
Trying out the features in Claude for education. Join me as I see how it "helps" me write a research paper. My chosen topic: "AI and education". /1
I would have liked 6 more months with this symposium essay but so appreciated the opportunity to write it.
Congratulations to ISP Executive Director @chinmayiarun.bsky.social on her new paper: Digital Platforms and Epistemic Authority (forthcoming in the Texas Law Review). papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
"The link between broad-based literacy and the rise of democracy is well known:…What happens when the process goes into reverse? When people lack the patience to absorb arguments…[or] the ability to contradict those arguments because they’ve never honed..the most essential skill for clear thinking?"
Opinion | I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I. (Gift Article)
It’s bad for your brain and worse for democracy.
nytimes.com
By me at this.weekinsecurity.com: A major online ads company that claims to serve 1.5 billion ads a day was hacked and began serving malware designed to steal a person's crypto. This is the latest perfect example why you should use an ad-blocker.
Online advertising giant Adform was hacked, proving once again why ad blockers are necessary
The hacked digital advertiser was caught serving malicious ads that allowed hackers to steal a victim's cryptocurrency.
this.weekinsecurity.com
Communities across the country are canceling their Flock contracts under public pressure. We built a toolkit to help yours be next! Because here’s the thing: these aren’t normal traffic cameras. They log every passing car into a national database law enforcement—including ICE—can search.
smartphones and the internet, man. they might have destroyed journalism, driven people insane by the tens of millions, fueled a rise in global fascism, and literally touched off genocides, but at least they seem to have caused a global collapse in relationship formation too
Excellent (and terrifying) new paper alert!
How to spoil your weekend: Read my new paper, “Putting the Brakes on a No-Drive List” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... Its trying to get ahead of plausibly foreseeable repression. I hope it scares you. It scares me.