Rosamunde Van Brakel
@rosamundevb.bsky.social
assistant prof criminology teaching legal, ethical & social issues AI/sociology of law @VUB research: digital & more-than-human criminology, surveillance & AI, youth justice, human rights https://researchportal.vub.be/en/persons/rosamunde-elise-van-brakel
++BREAKING++ The UK and Spanish governments have issued a joint statement overnight: "[We] agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life." www.gov.uk/government/n...
Coexisting with bears isn't easy, but it's possible! Great story about the bears of Haines Junction. Also, the café mentioned in the article has lots of yummy treats. Can confirm! 🤎🐻🤎 #Yukon, #bears, #coexist thenarwhal.ca/grizzly-bear...
How a Yukon town lives alongside grizzly bears | The Narwhal
Haines Junction sits in one of Yukon’s densest grizzly bear corridors. Indigenous Knowledge and decades of prevention are helping people and bears coexist
thenarwhal.ca
Wishful thinking: A woman attempting to smuggle a python in her bra at Schiphol Airport raises security and animal safety concerns. dailydutchnews.nl/schiphol-sna...
Schiphol Snake Smuggling - Daily Dutch News
The Schiphol snake smuggling incident highlights security and animal safety concerns as a woman attempts to hide a python in her bra.
dailydutchnews.nl
Tiny, invisible swirls and twirls – not much bigger than a coin – deep below the ocean’s surface are silently shaping some of the biggest forces steering our climate: sea-level rise, fisheries collapse, extreme flooding, and how much carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs. today.ucsd.edu/story/scient...
Scientists Unravel the Fast-Moving ‘Butterfly Effect’ of the Deep Ocean
Scripps Oceanography researchers and colleagues found that deep ocean turbulence affects our lives not on a scale of thousands of years as was previously thought, but within the span of a human lifeti...
today.ucsd.edu
Findings reveal how state legitimacy initiatives may instead widen racial divides and weaken coalitions for structural reform. www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...
When trust building looks like surveillance: Public polarization toward Chicago policing
Experimental exposure to a police trust-building initiative widened gaps in police trust and support for racial equity policies.
science.org
UN experts warn world has entered 'water bankruptcy' as global scarcity worsens www.thenationalnews.com/news/2026/07...
UN experts warn world has entered 'water bankruptcy' as global scarcity worsens | The National
Experts call water 'pillar of national security'
thenationalnews.com
America’s retreat from wildlife protection will be felt far beyond its borders
America’s retreat from wildlife protection will be felt far beyond its borders
For more than half a century, the United States treated the protection of habitat as part of protecting endangered wildlife. The Endangered Species Act prohibited killing protected wildlife, and the…
news.mongabay.com
Ricky eiste ook dat ze zijn naam in haar lichaam zou kerven en naaktfoto’s zou sturen. Toen ze weigerde, volgde een ongekende intimidatie. Met fakemeldingen stuurde hij midden in de nacht een compleet arrestatieteam op haar af. www.ad.nl/redactie/202...
Hij vroeg om naaktfoto’s, deelde haar adres en lokte de politie naar haar huis
Wat begint als samen gamen, verandert in chantage en doodsbedreigingen. Wanneer Dana blijft weigeren, doet haar belager een valse gijzelingsmelding bij de politie.
ad.nl
Researchers from the University of Queensland say the threat posed by domestic cats to endangered wildlife in urban areas could be overstated. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07...
Researchers say pet cats wrongly blamed for injuring native wildlife
University of Queensland researchers say the threat posed by pet cats to Australian wildlife could be overstated, but other experts disagree.
abc.net.au
England & Wales water firms lose 2.87bn litres a day, 20% of all water pumped through network. Hosepipe ban would save 577m(4%) litres a day. Violating hosepipe ban is a criminal offence, potential penalty of £1,000. No water execs fined or prosecuted. No new reservoirs built since privatisation
Water firms in England and Wales ‘leak five times what hosepipe ban would save’
Greenpeace UK says 2.87bn litres lost daily, a fifth of all water pumped through network
theguardian.com
The Silent World Cup Winners are the Companies Normalizing Surveillance www.techpolicy.press/the-silent-w...
The Silent World Cup Winners are the Companies Normalizing Surveillance
Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) released an investigation into the companies supporting surveillance and policing in the 16 host cities of the 2026 World Cup.
techpolicy.press
The Chat Control gambit: The EU's 'undemocratic' revival of chat scanning may have long term consequences for digital privacy www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-priv...
The Chat Control gambit: The EU's 'undemocratic' revival of chat scanning may have long term consequences for digital privacy
The temporary CSAM scanning law got the green light despite the majority of MEPs voting against it — three months after Parliament killed it
techradar.com
The federal police will also be allowed to use "behavior recognition" on surveillance footage, an AI system that is supposed to be able to assess if a figure in a crowd is acting in a threatening or otherwise conspicuous way — by throwing a punch, for example.
Rosamunde Van Brakel@rosamundevb.bsky.social · 3w agoMaybe the most significant element of the new Federal Police Law is that it allows the use of AI-supported facial recognition surveillance in public spaces where the federal police have jurisdiction (airports, intercity railway stations, and near Germany's borders). www.dw.com/en/germany-f...
Maybe the most significant element of the new Federal Police Law is that it allows the use of AI-supported facial recognition surveillance in public spaces where the federal police have jurisdiction (airports, intercity railway stations, and near Germany's borders). www.dw.com/en/germany-f...
Germany massively expands federal police powers
The German government has increased the powers of its federal police, especially in the use of AI, surveillance and drone defenses. But experts warn of constitutional challenges.
dw.com
Technologies used incl low-, medium- & high-frequency sonar, acoustic modems, drones, sensors generating electromagnetic waves, radioactive neutron generators ...all instruments that according to experts have impacts on marine environment & fauna #morethanhuman www.journalismfund.eu/unseen-israe...
The Unseen Israeli Surveillance Network Under The Greek Sea | Journalismfund Europe
journalismfund.eu
I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all | Peter Geoghegan
I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all | Peter Geoghegan
Paid-for political access and threadbare regulations have helped to embed the US tech firm in the NHS – and beyond. But there is a way to free ourselves, says Peter Geoghegan of Democracy for Sale
theguardian.com
Resistance to data centres – which are vital for AI – is growing. But these social justice efforts mostly operate at a local level. So what happens if data centres are put into space? Quito Tsui & @sixfouronea.net explore in our latest blog post #LSEInequalitiesBlog
What the AI space race means for inequality on earth
Resistance to data centres is rising due to intense resource demands, pollution and wider social impacts. What happens, then, if data centres are put into space?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
I had a great time in Nottingham at @bsc2026conf-ntu.bsky.social, enjoying the keynotes on hope and resilience and presenting on more-than-human harms of predictive policing of fisheries crimes in a great panel on green criminology!
The new race for space is accelerating ... They're planning to launch millions of satellites & data centres in orbit, raising concerns over pollution. Scientists say that the environmental impacts of this expansion remain largely unknown, while governance is lagging behind www.ftm.eu/articles/elo...
Musk and Bezos want to transform space. But at what cost?
The new race for space is accelerating, pitting Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin against Chinese players. They are planning to launch millions of satellites and data centres in orbit, ra...
ftm.eu
The UK AI pushback: 42% of people are deliberately limiting their AI use and 70% of people think it would be difficult or impossible to avoid being exposed to AI even if they wanted to. New report from us at @kings-dfi.bsky.social : www.kcl.ac.uk/news/over-40...
Over 40% of people are limiting AI use, as popularity starts to wane | King's College London
People are increasingly choosing to limit or reject the use of AI tools, according to a new report published today by the Digital Futures Institute at King’s College London and Responsible AI UK.
kcl.ac.uk
Another example of EU law not being scientifically informed and motivated by other desires
Rosamunde Van Brakel@rosamundevb.bsky.social · 4w ago“Trying to protect children with suspicionless mass surveillance is like frantically mopping the floor while the faucet is still running. Blanket chat control is just as unacceptable as indiscriminately opening everyone’s physical mail.” www.patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-parlia...
“Trying to protect children with suspicionless mass surveillance is like frantically mopping the floor while the faucet is still running. Blanket chat control is just as unacceptable as indiscriminately opening everyone’s physical mail.” www.patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-parlia...
EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0 – Breyer: "Our children lose out"
Today, the European Parliament allowed the suspicionless mass scanning of private communications ("Chat Control 1.0") to pass, a measure it had rejected twice in March. Although a majority of voting M...
patrick-breyer.de
Wonderful keynote by David Goyes at #BSC2026 talking about the need for critical hope in #criminology drawing on bell hooks and Paolo Freire!
We tend to think of plants as passive. What if they're constantly sensing, responding to and interpreting the world around them? Nigel Chaffey's extraordinary glimpse into the hidden lives of plants.
The plants are watching (listening, smelling, tasting, and feeling…)
Plants are like us in more ways than we may be aware of, with a sensory life adapted to their rootedness in the soil. Who knew?
eastangliabylines.co.uk
I have a new Op-Ed in @theguardian.com (with Bruce Schneier) on the social chill of AI surveillance. If widely deployed, it will be corrosive to democracy & social progress. We cite my new book #ChillingEffects on how surveillance & tech shapes behavior at scale: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
AI surveillance is being supercharged – and it will chill social progress | Bruce Schneier and Jon Penney
These systems will soon be able to track our public and private lives. But we can make the policy choices to reject it
theguardian.com
