Big this week Tech News: Uber underperformed. Numerous file dumps show that it deliberately broke the law to roll out its service as broadly and quickly as possible. Of course, the company can blame its disgraced former CEO. “We ask the public to judge us on what we have done over the past five years,” read its pious-sounding statement. What do you think about this? Should Uber pay a higher price for its actions? Or is moving fast and breaking the rules the only way to disrupt the taxi industry? Join in the comments. Meanwhile, here’s this month’s update.
Post monitoringroe U.S.
we’ve been drawing overthrow Roe v Wade, which is expected to result in roughly half of U.S. states banning or severely restricting abortion.One thing that stands out: Law enforcement technology is much more advanced than it was in 1973 roe Decided. Back then, the easiest way for police to catch illegal abortions was to raid a clinic, perhaps on tip. If a woman isn’t caught, it’s hard to prove she had an abortion. The doctor who performs them is the main target.
Today, there is a vast monitoring infrastructure, largely supported by the data clouds we create every day. Prosecutors can subpoena location data (especially in the form of geofencing orders asking for data on anyone who was in a specific location at a specific time), search queries and social media posts, and data from fertility and health tracking apps. 1 A proposed EU regulation to make it easier to catch child sexual abuse material could have the side effect of giving U.S. prosecutors more powers to scan cellphones for information related to abortion. Not all data requires authorization, either: Automated license plate readers can be used to provide evidence that someone drove out of state to perform an abortion or drive someone off, so they could be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a crime.
That means online platforms will also try to avoid prosecution for inadvertently helping people get abortions. At least, Meta has been suppressing some abortion-related content for years. The change in law could make companies more cautious. A preview of how what has happened to sex workers has played out since the passage of the FOSTA-SESTA Act, a 2018 law that allows platforms to be sued for hosting content that promotes or facilitates prostitution. It has caused social media platforms, payment processors, and allegedly even food delivery apps to suspend or ban sex workers. Adjusting this response state by state would be difficult, so it could affect people even in states where abortion is legal.
None of these law enforcement methods are new; they have been used to catch criminals for years. It’s just that half of the nation can now be turned into a potential criminal. It should also get you thinking: How could your data accidentally be used to charge you or others?
China in the driver’s seat
The world is scrambling to switch to electric vehicles, and as our special series reports, China is leading the way. By 2021, nearly 15% of new cars sold there will be electric, compared with 10% in the EU and 4% in the US. It already has some of the biggest electric car makers, and makers like Foxconn (which makes most iPhones) are turning to the automotive space. Chinese companies produce more than 50 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and monopolize a large portion of the global lithium supply, with the country controlling at least two-thirds of the world’s lithium processing capacity. It’s tackling the thorny problem of creating a massive public charging network compatible with many different brands of cars — the lack of which is one of the key reasons for slow adoption in the U.S.
All of this means it’s increasingly likely that your first (or next) EV will be Chinese. “So what?” you could say. Is almost everything you own made in China?Well, yes, but consider the national security implications of having hundreds of thousands of essentially mobile sensing devices – very quickly and Heavy devices, at least in theory, can remote control— roaming the streets, relaying untold amounts of data back to manufacturers controlled by increasingly harsh superpower governments.Horrified when the West decided Huawei-made networking gear could be used for espionage, and those things weren’t even wheel.
