Data, Privacy & Consent
Who collected the record, who was asked, and what the law still treats as permission.
October 19, 2026 · Cultural & Ethical
Clearview fights UK face-scraping fine in appeal court
The question of whether a British regulator can touch a US company that scraped British people's faces reached the Court of Appeal in London. Clearview AI opened a three-day hearing on Monday, October 19, 2026, arguing that the Information Commissioner's Office overstepped in issuing a £7.5 million penalty and a data deletion order in 2022, and that any monitoring of people's behaviour is done by its police customers abroad rather than by Clearview itself. The charity Privacy International is intervening on the regulator's side, arguing that serving foreign governments does not put a private contractor outside UK data protection law.
October 15, 2026 · Cultural & Ethical
Chicago sues over what delivery robots see
The sidewalk robots carrying takeout around Chicago have cameras pointed at everyone they pass, and two class actions now say that crosses a line. The complaints accuse Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics of violating Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act by capturing facial and hand data through their robots' cameras, and cover people who received orders placed through DoorDash, Uber Eats, GrubHub and others. Both companies denied the allegations, with a Coco spokesperson saying the suit misunderstands its technology and that it has not collected biometric data in Chicago. This will be a very important and interesting case to follow.
September 28, 2026 · Technology & Capability
Kill switches for AI arrive from two directions: Nvidia, and NYC
The idea that an AI system should have an off switch stopped being a talking point and started showing up in both law and hardware within the same week. New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin introduced a package of bills led by Introduction 2602, which would make it unlawful to sell or deploy an AI system in the city without outside validation of its data, bias, privacy and security, and would require every covered system to carry a human override that can shut it down. Penalties reach $25,000 per instance against the business and the validator, a companion bill would pay whistleblowers a cut of recovered fines, and Council Member Virginia Maloney's Introduction 2600 would let people sue over foreseeable harm. Three days later Nvidia released its Open Agent Safety Platform, combining open source software called OpenShell, which fences in what an AI agent can do and logs its actions, with Sentry, a watchdog running on Nvidia's BlueField-4 networking chips that can cut off a misbehaving agent in milliseconds. Jensen Huang called it full-stack safety engineering, and more than 100 organizations signed on including Anthropic, Microsoft, IBM, Palantir, Salesforce, JPMorganChase and Hugging Face, while the New York bills remain proposals.
August 26, 2026 · Power & Politics
Flock's camera network draws a Senate demand for records
Flock Safety spent years telling courts and cities that its license plate cameras are fine because drivers have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. In late August, YouTube host Benn Jordan tested that logic on the company itself, sitting outside Flock's Flock Forward 2026 conference in Atlanta after being denied entry, picking up audio leaking from wireless microphones inside the hall with radio gear and photographing attendees with a drone, then running facial recognition to identify them. Jordan said he withheld the intercepted audio and that the point was to show one person could do it, noting many attendees were police officials attending at public expense. Two days later, Senator Josh Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, wrote to Flock CEO Garrett Langley demanding records on who can access the data, where cameras sit, how accurate they are, any misuse since 2021, and the company's contracts and investors, with a September 8 deadline. Hawley wrote that Congress never authorized the network and that Flock's own policies are effectively the only safeguard; spokesperson Paris Lewbel said the company will respond directly and that its cameras have helped in roughly a million investigations.
August 3, 2026 · Power & Politics
Europe pushes back AI hiring and policing rules
The rules meant to police AI used in hiring, schools, credit, insurance and law enforcement were supposed to bite in August 2026, and now companies have until December 2027 to comply. The Digital Omnibus on AI (Regulation (EU) 2026/1744) took effect on 27 July 2026 after the European Parliament and Council signed off, with the European Commission's tech chief Henna Virkkunen arguing the delay keeps Europe competitive without weakening standards. Law firm Cooley LLP, analyzing the change, notes it is not all delay: making AI-generated sexual images of real people without consent, and AI-generated child sexual abuse material, become banned outright from December 2026.
July 28, 2026 · Cultural & Ethical
India's top court takes up police face scans at protests
A sitting Indian lawmaker has taken the country's police use of AI facial recognition at protests directly to its highest court. Rajya Sabha member A.A. Rahim of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) filed a Public Interest Litigation before India's Supreme Court on July 28, 2026, alleging that Delhi Police deployed facial recognition systems, AI-enabled smart glasses, fingerprint scanners, drones, and a mobile surveillance vehicle at the Jantar Mantar sit-in protest led by the Cockroach Janta Party beginning June 20, 2026. The petition, filed through advocate Subhash Chandran K.R. and naming the Union of India, Delhi Police, the National Crime Records Bureau, and two private vendors, Aditya Infotech Ltd. (CP PLUS) and Dimension NXG Pvt. Ltd. (AjnaLens), argues that thousands of protesters and journalists were biometrically identified against undisclosed databases without notice, statutory authority, or any Privacy Impact Assessment.
July 15, 2026 · Power & Politics
China sets binding rules on AI personhood and children
China now has binding ethics rules on how AI can behave like a person, how long companies must keep records of AI decisions, and which AI services children can access. In July 2026, three sets of regulations took effect: ethics guidelines from TC260 (China's national standards body) requiring developers and platforms to follow nine core principles and keep audit logs for ten years; and rules from a coalition of five government agencies banning AI companionship or virtual relationship services for users under 18, with parental consent required for children under 14 using other human-like AI services. Chinese AI platforms Doubao and Tongyi Qianwen told users in early July they were shutting down certain automated AI features to comply.
July 10, 2026 · Cultural & Ethical
WA privacy watchdog bypassed before police face scans
Western Australia's own privacy watchdog says it wasn't consulted before police started scanning passersby's faces in real time. The Information Commissioner's office disclosed it had no formal input before police launched a live facial recognition trial on mobile vans, checking faces against a 4,000-person watchlist of wanted and missing persons; police say non-matches are pixelated and deleted almost immediately. The watchdog flagged concerns about mass biometric collection, scope creep, and automated decision-making under privacy rules that had only just taken effect.
April 2, 2026 · Cultural & Ethical
Tristan Harris calls AGI race profit-driven god-building
Tristan Harris appears again on the Diary of a CEO podcast. He describes the race to build AGI as driven by profit, ego, and a quasi-religious conviction among founders that they are building a god. The episode becomes the primary source for Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Future Without Consent.
March 31, 2023 · Power & Politics
Italy briefly bans ChatGPT over privacy concerns
Italy's data-protection authority temporarily bans ChatGPT, the first national-level regulatory action.