@eleag.bsky.social
Who's in the room when legislators make tech decisions? What makes communities visible? What makes science legible? Some highlights from CAT Lab @cornelluniversity.bsky.social Summit on NY State tech policy.
citizensandtech.org/2025/10/at-c...
w @eleag.bsky.social @natematias.bsky.social
defend science and the rule of law.
21.10.2025 20:42 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
A cartoon image of 5 people standing shoulder to shoulder, with two holding laptops. There is a green stripe across the front and words in white that say "HRDAG Stands Against Tyranny"
HRDAG remains a nonpartisan, nonpolitical organization. Our mission is focused on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Today, we denounce violations of human rights occurring in the United States. hrdag.org/in-the-face-...
BREAKING
@knightcolumbia.org just won their case against Trump admin’s policy arresting/deporting noncitizen stud. & fac. participating in pro-Palestinian activism
This is a threat mailed to chambers of the 84yo Reagan appointed judge. He started the opinion with it and this is how he ended.
1/2
We’re a small team of just four full-time data scientists, but our work has a global impact. Every donation helps us take on the toughest challenges, from exposing state violence to ensuring that victims are never erased from history.
Please support us today. hrdag.networkforgood.com
A man with his shoes off in first class on this airplane, reading an email called “15 Subtle Habits to Make People Secretly Respect You More”
11.09.2025 23:13 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Read part two of @hrdag.org's "Gathering the Data" series on substack, in which we explore how human rights workers document evidence even in the face of death threats and potential violence.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
Watch this compelling interview with
@hrdag.org's Patrick Ball on
@plutopia.io
.
"People who commit violence and, even more so, those who apologize for people who commit violence, always lie about it."
youtu.be/7mG4Tt5rEEM?...
One of grants frozen at Cornell: $6.7M (4 yrs) to develop heart pumps for babies born w/ heart defects.
It took decades of work to get to point of prepping device for in-human clinical trials. No private company could do this.
The cruelty of the Trump administration is heartbreaking. So to speak.
Peeps always think they can control the insight machine because they learned how to talk down to their human underlings but they forget the underlings make the administrative wheels and rules that eventually shape the whole institution while all the while smiling and taking condescension on the chin
19.04.2025 14:03 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Friends attending #CHI2025, keep your eyes peeled for the AMAZING @cyberbya.bsky.social. She's doing incredible research on anti-harassment using community-led and anti-colonial practices!
citizensandtech.org/2025/04/embo...
Why everyone needs privacy. @meredithmeredith.bsky.social of @signal.org explains. #SXSW Surveillance power can be used to devastate anyone.
07.03.2025 19:09 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Wear a suit, they said.
But don't wear a trouser suit if you're a girl.
Enough jewelry to display status, but not too many earrings.
Tattoos only in quiet, covered places.
Make sure, they said, not to offend with your dress.
This scrum of pot-bellied, sunken-chested betas trying to bully an all-black clad badass Eastern European wasteland survivor while dressed like Men’s Wearhouse mannequins is peak cinema.
28.02.2025 19:22 — 👍 65205 🔁 10165 💬 3286 📌 622Given recent actions by the new admin, more folks looking to encryption. We thought we'd share early reflections from a survey of encrypted app users. Participants share that privacy means a lot of things, but importantly, for folks at risk, privacy IS safety.
opcandado.citizensandtech.org/blog/
"...Palantir CEO Alex Karp recently referenced the “disruption” of DOGE’s cost-cutting initiatives and said, “Whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir.”/🧵
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"...CIOs manage an agency’s information technology and oversee access to sensitive databases and systems, including classified ones...
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
"Over the past few weeks, several Musk-aligned tech leaders have been installed as chief information officers, or CIOs, at the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Energy.
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
What I worry it could mean is that the legality of ownership or control of the different pieces of data will not help us, not when a wholly new data picture emerges about all of us, based on the new set of talents and motivations being brought to bear by this intrusion into these systems.
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Maybe accidental privacy by chaos and fragmentation helped stave off some of the downsides of mandatory digital identity systems for a while.
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
"...It holds records for millions of federal workers and millions more Americans who have applied for federal jobs." (this from the @eff.org, which is also suing. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0"...union activities, salaries, performance, and demotions; health information like life insurance and health benefits; financial information like death benefit designations and savings programs; and classified information nondisclosure agreements..."
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0What's in OPM's database? "OPM’s records are one of the largest, if not the largest, collection of employee data in the country. In addition to personally identifiable information such as names, social security numbers, and demographics, it includes work experience...
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0"The Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service administers numerous payment systems containing sensitive personal information—such as social security numbers, taxpayer ID numbers, information on children, and home addresses—from tens of millions of individuals."
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
What's in the OPM and Treasury Department databases - for example - that the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Democracy Forward, and a federal worker filed suit over on Tuesday? epic.org/press-releas...
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0These systems test the limitations (both technical and human) of safe and well-governed data control mechanisms for decades. And if you have concerns about the harms and overreach potential of AI-driven insight systems, you should be paying attention to this moment very closely.
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0The US has been in a situationship with digital identity for a long time. We've never had a mandatory digital identity system, but critical data about us is spread across hundreds of systems, each with decisive input to how we live our lives. 🧵
12.02.2025 22:37 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0News that wiki editors are facing threats from Musk and the Heritage Foundation because of “bias” should be raising alarm bells for platforms that rely on user moderation (basically all of them, but Reddit esp. since its mods have come under fire recently).
11.02.2025 19:30 — 👍 188 🔁 77 💬 3 📌 3Much how-to safety work and rights material has been drafted for specific constituencies and often we don’t fit into those categories as cleanly. lots of historical reasons why. Read widely and broadly to see what you personally can use.
04.02.2025 13:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
