by Katie Rose Quandt | Jul 4, 2026 | FCC, Fifth Amendment, Florida, Incarcerated People, JPay, lawsuits, media access, News, Prisons, Technology, Tennessee, Wisconsin
Between 2016 and 2025, Michelle Shoemaker spent more than $1,000 on songs and games for her tablet — a rudimentary, prison-approved device she purchased from JPay, a subsidiary of the massive prison communications company Aventiv. Her tablet also held hundreds of emails and photographs, including treasured photos and messages from her deceased father, daughter, and mother. One email contained the…
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by Katie McKellar | Jun 1, 2026 | AI, Data Center, Environment, Great Salt Lake, News, Technology, Utah
Amid ongoing outcry over a massive, 40,000-acre data center campus being planned in northern Utah, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams announced that he’s calling for the project to be scaled back dramatically. “I’ve sent a letter directly to Kevin O’Leary calling for a 75% reduction in the proposed data center project area, from 40,000 acres to approximately 10,000 acres,” Adams said in a…
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by Jake Johnson | Jun 1, 2026 | AI, Artificial Intelligence, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, News, Technology
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday announced he will soon introduce legislation that would give the American public “a direct ownership stake” in the largest artificial intelligence companies in the U.S. by establishing a sovereign wealth fund, which would ensure everyone benefits from the rapidly advancing technology. Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a New York Times op-ed that his American AI Sovereign…
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by Jake Johnson | May 25, 2026 | AI, encyclical, News, Pope Leo, Pope Leo XIV, Technology, Vatican
Pope Leo XIV on Monday released a 42,000-word encyclical calling for government regulation of artificial intelligence and implored world leaders to ensure the burgeoning technology is used for the benefit of all humankind — not concentrated in the hands of a powerful, profit-seeking few. Leo warned in the first major theological document of his papacy that unrestrained AI and its potentially…
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by Mike Ludwig | Apr 30, 2026 | Activism, big tech, Civil Rights, Delia Ramirez, Democrats, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, doxxing, EFF, Facebook, Fascism, First Amendment, free speech, Google, ICE, Israel, Meta, News, Privacy, Reddit, Social Media, spying, Spyware, Summer Lee, Surveillance, Technology, Trump Administration
Lawmakers and privacy advocates are demanding answers from the Trump administration about its weaponization of digital tools and popular web platforms to spy on critics and activists. Targets have included a student who attended a pro-Palestine protest and anonymous web users posting about President Donald Trump’s violent immigration crackdown, but the administration’s secret systems of…
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by Amy Goodman | Dec 12, 2025 | AI, big tech, Drones, Gaza, Google, Interview, Israel, Journalists, Microsoft, Palantir, Palestine, Reporters, Surveillance, Technology
Award-winning Palestinian reporter Mohammed Mhawish, who left Gaza last year, joins us to discuss his new piece for New York magazine about Israel’s surveillance practices. It describes how Palestinians throughout the genocide in Gaza have been watched, tracked and often killed by Israeli forces who have access to their most intimate details, including phone and text records, social relations…
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