Sheera Frenkel

Congrats to BART rider and Oakland legend Alysa Liu on winning a gold medal at the Olympics and making the Bay Area proud!

Big Oakland pride for this skater!

Defense Dept. and Anthropic Square Off in Dispute Over A.I. Safety

New story today on the public battle between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, which is really a fight about the future of AI in warfare:

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/t...

Worried about first amendment rights? Want to make a difference?
Support a newsroom.

Here’s a few I pay to support:

@404media.co
@wired.com
@washingtonpost.com
@calmatters.org
@npr.org

And I pay for my paper delivery of the @nytimes.com because I still love the smell of a newspaper.

Thanks for sharing.

It’s leading our home page:)

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

DHS is being more aggressive than ever targeting anonymous social media accounts that have spoken out against ICE, asking Big Tech to hand over information on users without signed judicial warrants

story w/ @sheeraf.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

I didn’t see those. Could you email/DM me? (Or repost, whatever is easy). I am looking to collect as many examples as possible. Sheera.Frenkel@nytimes.com

Story with @mikeisaac.bsky.social !

FWIW- this is why I was trying to reach Bluesky early this week. I received no response back.

Our reporting uncovered that hundreds of administrative subpoenas have been sent by the Homeland Security Department to Meta, Google, Reddit, and other social media companies. Some of the accounts they have sought to unmask have flight back in court.

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

New story up on the Homeland Security Department’s new tactic: flood social media companies with subpoenas to unmask anonymous accounts that criticize ICE or monitor the movements of ICE agents.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

In an internal memo in May, Meta laid out its plans to release facial recognition in its smart glasses, to the blind first, & then to the general public.

“Civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

🤣😂

Seems like the right place to ask: who is doing press for Bluesky these days?

Will Lewis was too busy to join the call to tell his staff he’s destroying the @washingtonpost sports department yesterday … but he did have time to walk the red carpet at NFL Honors here in San Francisco today. Amazing.

. @nickijhabvala.bsky.social: "Will Lewis was too busy to join the call to tell his staff he’s destroying the @washingtonpost.com sports department yesterday … but he did have time to walk the red carpet at NFL Honors here in San Francisco today. Amazing."

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Same.

We are all the worse off for the loss of these foreign bureaus and reporters who brought news from the rest of the world to American homes. You can probably trace a direct line from the lack of knowledge to current issues facing the rest of the world, to growing xenophobia in the U.S.

As of yesterday, the Wpost was the only one left of the list above with foreign correspondents of its own. These jobs have not been replaced by independent journalists or substacks because of the immense logistics, expense, and personal safety issues around them.

When I started out in journalism in the mid-2000’s, there were almost a dozen US papers with bureaus in critical areas like the Middle East. Papers like The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Miami Herald, and Washington Post each had correspondents who were fierce competitors and colleagues.

We stand with you, @postguild.bsky.social

Joe Menn is a powerhouse of cybersecurity and tech reporting. His work has been nominated for Pulitzers, Loebs, and Sabew prizes in journalism.

I’m going to share some posts from amazing Wpost reporters who lost their jobs today. I’m regularly jealous of Nitasha’s reporting and know from my days at BuzzFeed that she is a wonderful and generous colleague.

Federal Agents Deploy High Tech to Track Protesters | KQED We talk to experts about how federal surveillance technologies work and what they mean for enforcement and civil liberties.

🎙️ON AIR:

We're talking to @brennancenter.org's @rlevinsonwaldman.bsky.social and @nytimes.com's @sheeraf.bsky.social about how the facial-recognition tools used by federal immigration agencies work and what they mean for enforcement and civil liberties.

❓What are your Qs about this tech?

📻Listen:

Federal Agents Deploy High Tech to Track Protesters | KQED We talk to experts about how federal surveillance technologies work and what they mean for enforcement and civil liberties.

Join me and @sheeraf.bsky.social at 1 pm ET/10 am PT *today* as we talk with @kqedforum.bsky.social about ICE surveillance and more. www.kqed.org/forum/201010...

Washington Post Begins Sweeping Layoffs

NEWS: The cuts were so severe that at least one department head asked to leave The Post rather than be included in the planning.

Peter Finn, The Post's international editor, requested that he be laid off once he learned about the scope of the cuts to his section.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/b...

The Wpost had shredded their coverage of the Middle East and Ukraine.

Take a moment to think about that.

Two areas where U.S. interests and involvement are critical, and where their reporters have produced award-winning work, (at great risk to their own lives).

A staggering statement from former Washington Post editor Marty Baron: "This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world's greatest news organizations."

This is terrible news for the entire journalism industry. The Washington Post regularly produces critical reporting. Its international reporters were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize last year. It’s an institution for a reason.