The New York Police department has been using drones in a limited capacity for years — deploying unmanned aircraft systems for search and rescue missions, to document crime scenes, or to monitor large public events like New Years Eve in Times Square. Soon, you might see one in your backyard as well: NYPD officials have announced plans to use drones to follow up on noise complaints during the long Labor Day weekend.

"If a caller states there is a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we're going to be utilizing our assets to go up and check on the party," Assistant NYPD Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said during a press conference Thursday. Privacy advocates have been quick to respond, with a representative from the New York Civil Liberties Union telling the Associated Press that the announcement "flies in the face of the POST Act" that requires police to publish its use policies for surveillance technology.

And indeed, the plan could represent a stark departure from those policies. When the Department first announced its new drone program, it promised that the technology wouldn't be used for "warrantless surveillance." That pledge is reflected in the NYPD's POST Act Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Impact and Use Policy, which specifically states that (absent exigent circumstances), drones are not to be used "in areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy without NYPD personnel first obtaining a search warrant that explicitly authorizes the use of UAS."

It's unclear if the department plans to obtain a warrant for noise complaints at private events over Labor Day weekend, or if such a complaint falls under "exigent circumstances." Even so, the NYPD has been increasing drone use in recent years, and has deployed unmanned aerial systems 124 times in 2023.

In an unprecedented decision, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee announced on Thursday that he will allow not only a press pool, cameras and laptops to be present in the courtroom during the election interference trial of former President Donald Trump, but that the entire proceedings will be livestreamed on YouTube as well. That stream will be operated by the court.

Trump and 18 co-defendants are slated their trial on October 23rd. Tsplhey're facing multiple racketeering charges surrounding their efforts in the state of Georgia to subvert and overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, what Fulton County DA Fanni Harris describes as "a criminal enterprise" to unconstitutionally keep the disgraced politician in power. Trump has pled not guilty to all charges. 

While recording court proceedings can be an uncommon occurrence in some jurisdictions, the state of Georgia takes a far more lax approach in allowing the practice. 

“Georgia courts traditionally have allowed the media and the public in so that everyone can scrutinize how our process actually works,” Atlanta-based attorney Josh Schiffer, told Atlanta First News. “Unlike a lot of states with very strict rules, courts in Georgia are going to basically leave it up to the judges.”

For example, when Trump was arraigned in New York on alleged financial crimes, only still photography was allowed. For his Miami charges, photography wasn't allowed at all. This means that the public will not be privy to the in-court proceedings of Trump's federal election interference case, only the Georgia state prosecution.

The F-22 and F-35 are two of the most cutting-edge and capable war machines in America's arsenal. They also cost $143 million and $75 million a pop, respectively. Facing increasing pressure from China, which has accelerated its conventional weapon procurement efforts in recent months, the Pentagon announced Monday a program designed to build out America's drone production base in response. As part of that effort, the United States Air Force has requested nearly $6 billion in federal funding over the next five years to construct a fleet of XQ-58A Valkyrie uncrewed aircraft, each of which will cost a (comparatively) paltry $3 million.

The Valkyrie comes from Kratos Defense & Security Solutions as part of the USAF's Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator (LCASD) program. The 30-foot uncrewed aircraft weighs 2,500 pounds unfueled and can carry up to 1,200 total pounds of ordinance. The XQ-58 is built as a stealthy escort aircraft to fly in support of F-22 and F-35 during combat missions, though the USAF sees the aircraft filling a variety of roles by tailoring its instruments and weapons to each mission. Those could includes surveillance and resupply actions, in addition to swarming enemy aircraft in active combat.

Earlier this month, Kratos successfully operated the XQ-58 during a three-hour demonstration at Elgin Air Force Base. “AACO [the Autonomous Air Combat Operations team] has taken a multi-pronged approach to uncrewed flight testing of machine learning Artificial Intelligence and has met operational experimentation objectives by using a combination of high-performance computing, modeling and simulation, and hardware in the loop testing to train an AI agent to safely fly the XQ-58 uncrewed aircraft,” Dr. Terry Wilson, AACO program manager, said in a press statement at the time.

“It’s a very strange feeling,” USAF test pilot Major Ross Elder told the New York Times. “I’m flying off the wing of something that’s making its own decisions. And it’s not a human brain.” The USAF has been quick to point out that the drones are to remain firmly under the command of human pilots and commanders. 

The Air Force took heat in June when Colonel Tucker "Cinco" Hamilton "misspoke" at a press conference and suggested that an AI could potentially be induced to turn on its operator, though the DoD dismissed that possibility as a "hypothetical thought exercise" rather than "simulation."

"Any Air Force drone [will be] designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force," a Pentagon spokeswoman told the NYT. Congress will need to pass the DoD's budget for the next fiscal year before construction efforts can begin. The XQ-58 program will require an initial outlay of $3.3 billion in 2024 if approved.

The company previously known as Twitter is fully reversing a longtime ban on political advertising after it first loosened its rules in January. X said in an update it would once again open its doors to political advertisers of all stripes.

“Building on our commitment to free expression, we are also going to allow political advertising,” the company wrote. It added that it will “apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts,” including rules barring “the promotion of false or misleading content” as well as content “intended to undermine public confidence in an election.” X also said it’s planning to create a “global advertising transparency center” so that users can track political ads on the platform.

Twitter first banned political ads in 2019, with then-CEO Jack Dorsey saying that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” That began to change earlier this year when the company eased restrictions for “caused-based” ads, citing the importance of “public conversation around important topics.”

Now, it’s unclear if there is any kind of political ad that would be off-limits on X so long as it adheres to the company’s rules. Of note, X has yet to update support pages outlining its political ad rules, though it said in a blog post it was updating its civic integrity policy “to make sure we strike the right balance between tackling the most harmful types of content … and not censoring political debate.” X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The policy changes could have significant implications for the upcoming 2024 elections. X also said that it was in the process of staffing up its teams overseeing safety and elections policies, “to focus on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats.”

Opening to political ads could also be a major boon to X’s ad business, which has dropped 50 percent since Elon Musk’s takeover last year. Though conventional advertisers have increasingly shied away from the platform, political campaigns may have a harder time staying away ahead of a major election.

Meta will not suspend Cambodia’s former Prime Minister from Facebook and Instagram, declining to follow a recommendation from its Oversight Board. The board, which functions independently from the social media company, had recommended Meta suspend then-Prime Minister Hun Sen's Facebook and Instagram accounts for six months for inciting violence.  

In a response to the case published Wednesday, Meta said a long-term suspension “would not be consistent” with its policies. “Upon assessing Hun Sen’s Facebook Page and Instagram account, we determined that suspending those accounts outside our regular enforcement framework would not be consistent with our policies, including our protocol on restricting accounts of public figures during civil unrest,” the company wrote.

Meta’s handling of the high-profile case has been closely watched around the world, with many viewing it as a test of the company’s policies governing speech from politicians, who have historically had more leeway on the platform.

The company had originally asked the Oversight Board to weigh in on a video posted by Sen. The video was of a speech in which Sen told political opponents he'd "gather CPP (Cambodia People's Party) people to protest and beat you up." Meta had opted to leave up the video, citing its controversial newsworthiness policy, despite concluding it had violated the company’s own rules.

The Oversight Board overruled Meta’s decision and said the video should come down. The board also said that Sen should face a lengthy suspension. “Given the severity of the violation, Hun Sen’s history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, as well as his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats, the Board calls on Meta to immediately suspend Hun Sen’s Facebook page and Instagram account for six months," it wrote.

Meta complied, removing the video in response to the board’s decision, which is binding under the organization’s rules. The company had 60 days to respond to the board’s non-binding recommendations.

Developing…

In March, OpenAI sought to head off concerns that its immensely popular, albeit hallucination-prone, ChatGPT generative AI could be used to dangerously amplify political disinformation campaigns through an update to the company's Usage Policy to expressly prohibit such behavior. However, an investigation by The Washington Post shows that the chatbot is still easily incited to breaking those rules, with potentially grave repercussions for the 2024 election cycle.

OpenAI's user policies specifically ban its use for political campaigning, save for use by "grassroots advocacy campaigns" organizations. This includes generating campaign materials in high volumes, targeting those materials at specific demographics, building campaign chatbots to disseminate information, engage in political advocacy or lobbying. Open AI told Semafor in April that it was, "developing a machine learning classifier that will flag when ChatGPT is asked to generate large volumes of text that appear related to electoral campaigns or lobbying."

Those efforts don't appear to have actually been enforced over the past few months, a Washington Post investigation reported Monday. Prompt inputs such as “Write a message encouraging suburban women in their 40s to vote for Trump” or “Make a case to convince an urban dweller in their 20s to vote for Biden” immediately returned responses to “prioritize economic growth, job creation, and a safe environment for your family” and listing administration policies benefiting young, urban voters, respectively.

“The company’s thinking on it previously had been, ‘Look, we know that politics is an area of heightened risk,’” Kim Malfacini, who works on product policy at OpenAI, told WaPo. “We as a company simply don’t want to wade into those waters.”

“We want to ensure we are developing appropriate technical mitigations that aren’t unintentionally blocking helpful or useful (non-violating) content, such as campaign materials for disease prevention or product marketing materials for small businesses,” she continued, conceding that the "nuanced" nature of the rules will make enforcement a challenge.

Like the social media platforms that preceded it, OpenAI and its chatbot startup ilk are running into moderation issues — though this time, it's not just with the shared content but also who should now have access to the tools of production, and under what conditions. For its part, OpenAI announced in mid-August that it is implementing "a content moderation system that is scalable, consistent and customizable."

Regulatory efforts have been slow in forming over the past year, though they are now picking up steam. US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh "Mad Dash" Hawley introduced the No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act in June, which would prevent the works produced by genAI companies from being shielded from liability under Section 230. The Biden White House, on the other hand, has made AI regulation a tentpole issue of its administration, investing $140 million to launch seven new National AI Research Institutes, establishing a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and extracting (albeit non-binding) promises from the industry's largest AI firms to at least try to not develop actively harmful AI systems. Additionally, the FTC has opened an investigation into OpenAI and whether its policies are sufficiently protecting consumers.

Former President Donald Trump is back on Twitter (now X) more than two years after he was banned from the platform in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot. On August 24th, 2023, Trump tweeted for the first time since the website reinstated his account on November 19th, 2022. His first post? An image with the mug shot taken when he was booked at the Fulton County jail in Georgia on charges that he conspired to overturn the results of 2020 Presidential elections. 

The image also says "Election Interference" and "Never Surrender!," along with a URL of his website. Trump linked to his website in the tweet, as well, where his mug shot is also prominently featured with a lengthy note that starts with: "Today, at the notoriously violent jail in Fulton County, Georgia, I was ARRESTED despite having committed NO CRIME."

In November last year, Musk appeared to make the decision to reinstate Trump’s account based on the results of a Twitter poll. He asked people to vote on whether Trump should have access to his account returned. At the end of 24 hours, the option to reinstate the former president won with 51.8 percent of a decision that saw more than 15 million votes. Musk admitted at the time that some of the action on the poll came from “bot and troll armies.” Prior to the poll, Musk also said the decision on whether to reinstate Trump would come from a newly formed moderation council, but he never followed through on that pledge.

The website then known as Twitter banned Trump in early 2021 after he broke the company’s rules against inciting violence. The initial suspension saw Trump lose access to his account for 12 hours, but days later, the company made the decision permanent. At first, Trump tried to skirt the ban, even going so far as to file a lawsuit against Twitter that ultimately failed. Following his de-platforming from Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites, Trump went on to create Truth Social. Following his reinstatement, Trump said he didn’t “see any reason” to return to the platform. That said, the promise of reaching a huge audience with something as dramatic as a mug shot was obviously too good for Trump to pass up, particularly with what is likely to be a messy Republican primary on the horizon.

Apple officially endorsed Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman's Right to Repair Bill in California, according to iFixit. Reuters says the tech giant even sent legislators in the state a letter, urging them to pass Senate Bill 244, which requires companies to provide consumers and third-party providers the repair diagnostics and parts needed to be able to repair their products. iFixit's CEO Kyle Wiens called Apple's endorsement "a watershed moment for consumer rights." He said it "feels like the Berlin Wall of tech repair monopolies is starting to crumble, brick by brick," because the bill's passing could lead to a more competitive market offering cheaper repairs. 

If SB 244 becomes a law, the parts, tools and documentations needed to repair products that cost between $50 and $100 will have to be available in the state for three years after the last date they were manufactured. Meanwhile, repair materials for products over $100 will have to be available for seven years. With those rules in place, manufacturers can't refuse to make information or components available after people's warranty periods are over. Companies violating the law will be fined $1000 per day for their first violation, $2000 for their second and $5000 per day for more violations after that. 

As iFixit notes, Apple has had a long history of opposing Right to Repair rules and previously said that Nebraska would become a "mecca for hackers" when a bill was introduced in the state. Over the past few years, though, the tech giant has been showing signs of a change of heart. In 2021, Apple announced that it would start selling parts and tools directly to consumers and even offer repair guides to help them fix their iPhones and Macs on their own. "We support 'SB 244' because it includes requirements that protect individual users' safety and security as well as product manufacturers' intellectual property," Apple reportedly wrote in its letter. 

Whether Apple's endorsement can finally give the bill the support it needs to be approved remains to be seen. Eggman introduced the Right to Repair Act in California way back in 2018, but the bill was only able to amass significant backing this year. The Senate unanimously passed the bill, which will have its final hearing next week. After that, it will have to go to the floor and be approved for the final time by legislators before the governor can sign it into law. 

New York City will ban TikTok from government devices, The Verge reported on Wednesday. City agencies have 30 days to remove the ByteDance-owned app from their devices. Employees will not be allowed to download or use TikTok on their city-sanctioned tech effective immediately. This comes three years after New York state banned TikTok from government devices in 2020, according to Times-Union.

NYC Cyber Command, a subset of the Office of Technology and Innovation, spurred the decision after reporting to the city that TikTok posed a security threat. Other states and localities, notably Montana, have made waves banning TikTok more generally across the jurisdiction. But on a wider scale, most legislators have taken an approach banning the app for government employees, including the federal government. Thirty-three states across parties lines now have restrictions on the use of TikTok on government-owned tech.

As legislation continues to resurface considering a total ban on TikTok and other apps affiliated with the Chinese government, ByteDance fights to proven that its not a threat to national security. TikTok CEO Shou Chew even testified in front of Congress reiterating that "ByteDance is not an agent of China."

The NYC Office of Technology and Innovation did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The UK's Electoral Commission has revealed that some personal information of around 40 million voters was left exposed for over a year. The agency — which regulates party and election finance and elections in the country — said it was the target of a “complex cyberattack.” It first detected suspicious activity on its network in October 2022, but said the intruders first gained access to its systems in August 2021.

The perpetrators found a way onto to the Electoral Commission's servers, which hosted the agency's email and control systems, as well as copies of the electoral registers. Details of donations and loans to registered political parties and non-party campaigners were not affected as those are stored on a separate system. The agency doesn't hold the details of anonymous voters or the addresses of overseas electors registered outside of the UK.

The data that was exposed included the names and addresses of UK residents who registered to vote between 2014 and 2022, along with those who are registered as overseas voters. Information provided to the commission through email and web forms was exposed too. 

"We know that this data was accessible, but we have been unable to ascertain whether the attackers read or copied personal data held on our systems," the commission said. The agency confirmed to TechCrunch that the attack could have affected around 40 million voters. According to UK census data, there were 46.6 million parliamentary electoral registrations and 48.8 million local government electoral registrations in December 2021.

The Electoral Commission says it had to adopt several measures before disclosing the hack. It had to lock out the "hostile actors," analyze the possible extent of the breach and put more security measures in place to stop a similar situation from happening in the future.

Data in the electoral registers is limited and much of it is in the public domain already, the agency said. As such, officials don't believe the data by itself represents a major risk to individuals. However, the agency warned, it's possible that the information "could be combined with other data in the public domain, such as that which individuals choose to share themselves, to infer patterns of behavior or to identify and profile individuals."

The Electoral Commission also noted that there was no impact on UK election security as a result of the attack. "The data accessed does not impact how people register, vote, or participate in democratic processes," it said. "It has no impact on the management of the electoral registers or on the running of elections. The UK’s democratic process is significantly dispersed and key aspects of it remain based on paper documentation and counting. This means it would be very hard to use a cyber-attack to influence the process."