Renate Samson
@renatesamson.bsky.social
Longtime policy wonk, consultant, researcher and speaker about the impact of data driven tech and AI. immersed in researching young people’s digital lives and AI in education. Previously biometrics, online harms, digital ID, online privacy
🧵NEW: For more than a decade, police in South West England have been quietly experimenting with algorithms to score thousands of people. Most of them didn't know anything about it. Over two years, me and Mark Wilding investigated the messy setup, multiple parts have now been scrapped
British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine. Some Results Couldn’t Be Trusted
As UK police embrace the AI revolution, a WIRED investigation reveals the messy inside story of one region’s experiment with predictive analytics.
wired.com
UK school’s network left wide open for invasion, student found
UK school’s network left wide open for invasion, student found
And the admin password was right in the Active Directory description field
theregister.com
😳🤔 www.anthropic.com/news/fable-m...
Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5
The US government has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States.
anthropic.com
SignalTrace "links devices that regularly travel together, correlating them to license plate." It is a surveillance product that will sweep up and add all sorts of Bluetooth and other data to license plate readers, linking specific devices—and people—to cars.
This Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to License Plate Readers
SignalTrace "links devices that regularly travel together, correlating them to license plate." It is a surveillance product that will sweep up and add all sorts of Bluetooth and other data to license...
404media.co
Trump’s postponed AI executive order revealed more than internal disagreement over regulation. The real story is the now opaque system for governing frontier AI — shaped by secrecy, influence, and closed-door negotiations, argues James Görgen.
Trump Abandons 'FDA for AI' Proposal
James Görgen argues that Trump's postponement of AI order reflects an approach shaped more by secrecy and influence than public accountability.
buff.ly
New, by me at this.weekinsecurity.com: Health wearable giant Oura says it has received government demands for users' information (because Oura does not use end-to-end encryption). Will Oura say how often it gets demands for user data, and how often Oura hands over users' data to authorities?
Oura says it gets government demands for user data. Will it share how many?
Oura users' data is not end-to-end encrypted and can be handed to the government. Will the wearable tech maker say how often it turns over data?
this.weekinsecurity.com
15 years ago, I wrote a book called The Filter Bubble, warning that algorithmic personalization was going to fracture our shared reality. I’m sharing new research because we are about to do this again, but on a far bigger and faster scale. AI is coming for the info environment, and fast.
New_ Public | After the Feed
What happens after the social media feed? A presentation on the future of conversation, community, and social connection, and how AI will affect the everyday lives of billions.
newpublic.org
i-Ready has quietly taken over America’s public schools, reaching nearly 14 million students each year. Now, a growing number of families and educators say they’re fed up with i-Ready’s personalized math and reading lessons, which feature repetitive cartoons and slow voice-overs. nbcnews.to/4wr8tjb
This is brilliant A gift to those who don’t understand about cookies and fingerprinting sinceyouarrived.world/taken
taken.
A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of them tell you.
sinceyouarrived.world
This is a shocking read. The burden of proof being placed on the victims is astonishing. This case is a warning. We are not responsible for the decisions algorithms make, we just have to live with the outcome. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
I took an algorithm to court in Sweden. The algorithm won | Charlotta Kronblad
Gothenburg promised to optimise school admissions with a piece of code. The resulting chaos showed how unaccountable systems are ruining lives, says Charlotta Kronblad of the University of Gothenburg
theguardian.com
“We can't just give someone a self-help book,” says Plante. “We can't just give someone a block on a few apps, tell them to chain their iPhone to the wall, when really what they're looking for is to be propped up in a community of people." www.usatoday.com/story/life/h...
Young people are crowding underground phone-free parties. I went to one.
I went to an underground phone-free party in Brooklyn, and it’s nothing like I expected.
usatoday.com
This paper represents a small but deeply impressive and genuinely important achievement by the much maligned British state in what is probably the most important global issue of our era. Hear me out ( 🧵) 1/ www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/our-eva...
Our evaluation of Claude Mythos Preview’s cyber capabilities | AISI Work
We conducted cyber evaluations of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview and found continued improvement in capture-the-flag (CTF) challenges and significant improvement on multi-step cyber-attack simulati...
aisi.gov.uk
I guess what I’m saying is great consumer products don’t make young people feel anger and despair the more they use them www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/s...
Quantum computers are coming sooner than expected. Now's a good time to check if your encrypted messenger has moved to post-quantum cryptography. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Yikes, Encryption’s Y2K Moment is Coming Years Early
Google moved up its estimated deadline for quantum preparedness in cryptography to 2029—only 33 months from now. That’s earlier than previous deadlines, and they proposed the new post-quantum
eff.org
It's official: Australia's teen social media ban isn't working, yet. www.crikey.com.au/2026/03/31/a...
It's official: Australia's teen social media ban isn't working, yet.
The first eSafety report on the social media minimum age shows that kids are getting around the ban, they're reporting the same level of online abuse, and age checking technology isn't working as…
crikey.com.au
‘Met Police claims crime in Croydon has gone down by 12% since fixed FR cameras were installed. Our analysis found this is only true for certain crime types — & that crime increased in one of the immediate areas with cameras & in several neighbouring areas’ www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno...
The rise of facial recognition policing
The technology is being rolled out by forces across the country—and there are no obvious limits on how it can be used
prospectmagazine.co.uk
In this blog @jenitennison.com shares why we're winding up in 2027. "When I set up Connected by Data I also stated my intention that this organisation would have a maximum lifespan of 3-5 years. We are now at the end of our fourth year..." Read the full blog at: connectedbydata.org/blog/2026/03...
This 50 yr old woman spent 5 months in jail accused of a crime in a state she's never even been to, because Clearview AI misidentified her as the suspect. A judge signed off on it, cops went along with it, no process in place to even question the AI. www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/u...
Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited | CNN
A Tennessee grandmother spent more than five months in jail after police used an AI facial recognition tool to link her to crimes committed in North Dakota – a state she says she’d never been to befor...
cnn.com
Meta wants to quietly roll out facial recognition technology in its smart glasses, hoping Americans won’t notice the potential risk to their privacy and civil rights. They’re mistaken. I have serious questions about the privacy risks and ethics of deploying this technology.
NEW: Character.AI continues to host bots styled after prolific abusers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as roleplay "scenes" created to gamify Epstein's island. They aren't hidden. One roleplay is called "Epstein's Island Adventure." futurism.com/artificial-i...
My college students are writing articles on AI and the future of the arts from a consumer perspective (they are electrical, motor vehicle and carpentry students resitting their GCSE English Language). When asked how they’d feel if they connected with a song or a story and were then told it was AI…
www.theguardian.com/education/ng...
Cheating machine or powerful assistant? The AI anxieties of a trainee teacher
The long read: I was a newcomer, negotiating all of usual classroom difficulties for the first time. Throwing AI into the mix felt like downing a coffee in the middle of a panic attack
theguardian.com
Last night, someone on this here website told me that no one is using AI agents yet and they're still way far in the future. But it's already happening. A friend last year told me that most people are distracted by the idea that AI is "chatbots." I didn't get that at the time, but now I think I do.
Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · 6mo ago"For much of the country, AI has come to mean ChatGPT, Google’s AI overviews, and the slop that now clogs social-media feeds. Meanwhile, tech hobbyists are becoming radicalized by bots that can work for hours on end, collapsing months of work into weeks, or weeks into an afternoon."
I would love to believe that BBCs Evan Davies was playing devils advocate just now when talking about Ring cameras and their ability to “find” lost dogs in the USA. But frankly he seemed completely unable to comprehend the privacy issues from this commercial mass surveillance. Depressing