Jerome D. Greco

Sneak peak of the DEFCON Voting Village speaker schedule (subject to change). Join us in LVCC West 222-223 August 8-10!

docs.google.com/document/d/e...

Front matter for a book entitled The Church Committee Report edited and introduced by Matthew Guariglia and Brian Hochman

I love getting page proofs. Our abridged 50th anniversary edition of the Church Committee Report will be out January 2026.

It's the first time *ever* this landmark investigation into abuses committed by the American Intelligence apparatus has been published by a major press for the general public.

It shouldn’t be a crime to protest for Palestine.

It should be illegal to circumvent privacy protections; sadly asking a buddy in FDNY is one of many available workarounds for this sort of id tech.

I’m thankful for the judge & @legalaidnyc.bsky.social for following up for more answers.

LAS Sues FDNY Over Failure to Release Facial Recognition Records The FDNY used unregulated Clearview AI facial recognition technology at a local protest and shared that information with NYPD.

"The court exposed how the FDNY worked with the NYPD to use unregulated facial recognition software to identify and prosecute a protester — without oversight, without authorization, and in direct violation of established NYPD policy." Shane Ferro,Staff Attorney

More: legalaidnyc.org/news/lawsuit...

Former NYPD Commissioner Accuses Mayor Adams of Running “Criminal Enterprise” and Cites ProPublica Investigation A lawsuit filed by former Commissioner Thomas Donlon alleges that the NYPD’s Community Response Team was a “rogue” unit that answered “only to City Hall.” The complaint draws extensively from ProPubli...

A few months ago, I revealed Mayor Eric Adams' connex w/ a secretive NYPD unit led by Adam's allies and ridden w/ abuses.

A few days ago, the former NYPD commish sued Adams, citing my reporting.

The former commish said the mayor was behind the “rogue” unit.

www.propublica.org/article/laws...

Former NYPD Commissioner Accuses Mayor Adams of Running “Criminal Enterprise” and Cites ProPublica Investigation A lawsuit filed by former Commissioner Thomas Donlon alleges that the NYPD’s Community Response Team was a “rogue” unit that answered “only to City Hall.” The complaint draws extensively from…

A lawsuit filed by former Commissioner Thomas Donlon alleges that the NYPD’s Community Response Team — championed by Mayor Eric Adams — was a “rogue” unit that answered “only to City Hall.”

The complaint draws extensively from ProPublica’s reporting.

By @ericumansky.bsky.social

It is going to be connected to a real-time crime center giving police a huge network of linked surveillance cams (CCTV, body cams, stores, apartments, and Ring).

Your Data Will Be Used Against You.

New York post article titled Andrew Cuomo says he will move to Florida if Zohran mamdani becomes nyc mayor

Help make this happen.

For privacy and security, think twice before granting AI access to your personal data | TechCrunch AI chatbots, assistants and agents are increasingly asking for gross levels of access to your personal data under the guise of needing your information to make them work.

I wrote some ~weekend words~ on why you shouldn't allow AI access to your email, calendar, or any other of your most private data. This may seem obvious to some, but perhaps not to others: the privacy and security risks just aren't worth it.

The Astronomer CEO's Coldplay Concert Fiasco Is Emblematic of Our Social Media Surveillance Dystopia Facial recognition and crowdsourced social media investigations are constantly being used not just on cringe CEOs, but on random people who are simply existing in public.

The gleeful doxing of someone cheating in public is bad even if they are a CEO and even if they are a Coldplay fan. It's bad because this kind of thing is happening to random people on TikTok for such crimes as "sitting silently on a plane" or "being attractive"

www.404media.co/the-astronom...

Please don’t let this become a thing

A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data Personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train image generation models.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/18/1...

Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices....

My response to Ring's decision to roll back reforms and go back to surveillance on behalf of police as a business model.

This is part of a trend of companies bending over backwards to get in on the techno-authoritarian money/power grab that comes with being a lapdog of the carceral state.

When police don’t have access to a tool they want to use, they phone a friend in an agency that does

We at @thecity.nyc want to keep reporting on this. We’d like to understand how widespread this practice is, especially NYPD collaborating with other agencies to get around internal policies on facial recognition tech.

Got info? Email me: smaldonado@thecity.nyc or reach out on Signal: smaldo.11

NYC lawmakers are now working to close loopholes in a the POST Act, a city law that requires tracking intergovernmental data sharing.

On the table: requiring all agencies to disclose surveillance tech use & a ban on using it on law enforcement’s behalf.

Manhattan DA first charged Ahmed w a felony hate crime, but downgraded the charge.

It appears from videos that whatever Ahmed was accused of throwing at another person was not a rock. The person barely flinched & tossed away the object.

A Legal Aid lawyer said the saga “brings up questions about the First Amendment and the NYPD’s prohibition on using facial recognition technology to identify people at political rallies.”

The judge’s ruling pulls no punches:

exhibit c

bsky.app/profile/smal...

NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Pro-Palestinian Student Protester Barred from using Clearview AI, NYC police relied on a marshal in the fire department to run a search that turned up photos of the student at his high school graduation.

FDNY helped NYPD identify a pro-Palestinian protestor using the facial recognition tech, Clearview AI — which the NYPD isn’t allowed to use. Manhattan DA used the ID to charge a hate crime.

A judge dismissed the case & warned about government surveillance:

www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/18/n...

NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Pro-Palestinian Student Protester Barred from using Clearview AI, NYC police relied on a marshal in the fire department to run a search that turned up photos of the student at his high school graduation.

“The way that the NYPD used FDNY to access broader and even more unreliable facial recognition technologies — in this case, to identify a protester — brings up questions about the NYPD following its own policies, the NYPD complying with the POST Act...” @shaneferro.bsky.social said.

Why is FDNY using Clearview AI to identify protesters? GREAT QUESTION and they won't tell me so we are suing to try to find the answer www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/18/n...

NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Pro-Palestinian Student Protester Barred from using Clearview AI, NYC police relied on a marshal in the fire department to run a search that turned up photos of the student at his high school graduation.

"It’s something straight out of a dystopian, futuristic movie"

Seattle's new police cameras may be watching you Seattle's newly revamped Real Time Crime Center is operational, with analysts monitoring dozens of surveillance cameras placed in areas with high crime rates.

No strong studies show real-time crime centers actually cut crime, yet they “end up collecting massive amounts of data without proper audit or oversight" - a situation that's ripe for abuse, EFF’s Beryl Lipton told @seattletimes.com.

~this week in security~ a free cybersecurity newsletter by @zackwhittaker, delivered weekly.

My free weekly cybersecurity newsletter ~this week in security~ goes out every Sunday and includes:

🗞️ all the cyber news you need to know
🐈 a reader-submitted cyber-cat
😁 the happy corner of good news
🐈‍⬛ did I mention cats?
👀 no email open/link trackers
😻 cats! (OK, sometimes dogs too! 🐶)

Sign up:

How US States Are Shaping AI Policy Amid Federal Debate and Industry Pushback | TechPolicy.Press Tech Policy Press associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong checks in with NYU's Scott Babwah Brennen and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Hayley Tsukayama.

With a federal moratorium on state AI laws in the rearview for now, state legislatures across the US are tackling issues like AI safety, deepfakes, algorithmic bias, and more. Tech Policy Press associate editor Cristiano Lima-Strong spoke to NYU's Scott Babwah Brennen and EFF's Hayley Tsukayama.

So, I read an article about Jack Dorsey's new Bitchat app, and I have some THOUGHTS (as someone who is also working in the privacy/decentralized chat space.

1. Bitchat doesn't work. I mean, that's the big one right now, but that can and probably will be fixed. No biggie, it's early.

Police who keep their identities secret are, quite literally, secret police. I don’t know why this is even controversial. You don’t get to yank people off the streets while hiding your face and identity and still retain the respectability of an accountable, democratic police force.

How the Farm Industry Spied on Animal Rights Activists and Pushed the FBI to Treat Them as Bioterrorists For years, a powerful ‘Big Ag’ trade group served up information on activists to the FBI. Records reveal a decade-long effort to see the animal rights movement labeled a “bioterrorism” threat.

America’s agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI. www.wired.com/story/fbi-wm...