Johana Bhuiyan

The children facing quick deportation, alone, in SF immigration court At rarely seen hearings, unaccompanied teenagers and families with toddlers face lawyers for the government.

I've been wanting to draw immigration court in SF for years but could never get the assignment. Now I'm an editor so I could make the assignment.

A heartbreaker from Jesse Alejandro Cottrell and Dan Bransfield. sfstandard.com/2025/08/11/a...

it's apparently now Good Business (and Government) to rip through rounds of indiscriminate firings and then ask those people to come back

Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike near al-Shifa hospital Israel said it targeted well known reporter Anas al-Sharif and alleged he was part of Hamas, which Al Jazeera has denied.

The basement is sub-basement. This is unacceptable. For press freedom. For the reporters who lost their lives. The truth that has been recast so grossly to frame these people as terrorists, simply for doing their jobs of shedding light on what is happening in Gaza. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What Does Palantir Actually Do? Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.

NEW: @carolinehaskins.bsky.social breaks down what Palantir actually does, and why answering that question is trickier than it might seem (or need to be). www.wired.com/story/palant...

ChatGPT Lured Him Down a Philosophical Rabbit Hole. Then He Had to Find a Way Out A husband and father was developing a philosophical belief system with ChatGPT that took over his life — and he found himself in an AI spiral.

My latest AI piece is about a man who wanted to use ChatGPT to develop an idea for a short story. Instead he experienced more than a month of psychosis as he conjured “ghosts” of famous philosophers in a quest for ultimate meaning and truth. By the end, he had stopped sleeping.

Social media accounts of Palestinians desperate for funds are being flagged as spam People in Gaza use Bluesky to crowdfund for milk and diapers – repeated deletion of their profiles has spawned a guerrilla verification squad

My interview with The Guardian

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

How International Press Groups Are Reacting to Israel’s Labeling Six Gaza Journalists as ‘Terrorists’ With more than 130 media workers killed, international press groups suspect Israel's accusation is intended to stifle coverage in North Gaza.

When Israel labeled six journalists in Gaza - incl Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif - “terrorists” last year, press freedom groups expressed alarm.

“The fear is that these six will now possibly be targeted,” @rsf.org’s Rebecca Vincent told me at the time.

time.com/7098857/isra...

In July, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged the international community to protect Al Sharif.

Today, the Israeli military confirmed he was killed in an airstrike.

www.reuters.com/world/middle...

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

Because I am angry I will share this again. One of the reasons that Israel is able to target individuals so precisely is that it collects every phone call in Gaza and stores the recordings in Microsoft Azure, then uses AI to analyze and pick targets.

My 1.5 year old calls hijabs “kebabs” and it’s hard not to feel like I’m getting hate crimed by his half white side

My latest for @theguardian.com on Joe Biden’s complicity in the famine unfolding in Gaza today www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The UK's Online Safety Act is a licence for censorship – and the rest of the world is following suit | Taylor Lorenz From the US and Australia to France and Italy, those seeking to obliterate privacy and restrict content are on the move, says technology journalist Taylor Lorenz

Democrats and Republicans are completely aligned on restricting free speech and anonymous use of the internet.

From Gaza, this is my reality:
Israel is starving us. We're forced to beg for food online while our donation posts are deleted as “spam.” We’re trying to survive just asking for milk, flour, or diapers. But even that is too much for this world.

Social media accounts of Palestinians desperate for funds are being flagged as spam People in Gaza use Bluesky to crowdfund for milk and diapers – repeated deletion of their profiles has spawned a guerrilla verification squad

Gazans use social media, especially Bluesky, to crowdfund for milk and diapers. Their desperation leads them to behave like bots. Social networks repeatedly delete their profiles. A guerrilla verification squad has formed to help. @jmbooyah.bsky.social reports www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Social media accounts of Palestinians desperate for funds are being flagged as spam People in Gaza use Bluesky to crowdfund for milk and diapers – repeated deletion of their profiles has spawned a guerrilla verification squad

Social media accounts of Palestinians desperate for funds are being flagged as spam by @jmbooyah.bsky.social

Bluesky has been doing this for months and months as people starve

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Gaza has reached catastrophic levels of famine, according to aid and human rights organizations, which raises the stakes of each fundraising campaign and even each post on Bluesky. The impact of donating to individual campaigns can be immediate www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Social media accounts of Palestinians desperate for funds are being flagged as spam People in Gaza use Bluesky to crowdfund for milk and diapers – repeated deletion of their profiles has spawned a guerrilla verification squad

New: Israel is starving Palestinians, forcing them to beg for donations on sites like Bluesky. Their accounts keep getting flagged as spam. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

Israel is using Microsoft Azure to store recordings of every phone call made by Palestinians in the occupied territories, then using AI to analyze the contents and select targets. Microsoft is (dubiously) claiming ignorance.

Only 1.5% of Gaza cropland left for starving Palestinians due to Israel’s war, UN says Figure down from 4% in April, suggesting Israel has continued to target farmland in once-abundant Gaza Strip

By me: Israel’s destruction of Gaza has left starving Palestinians with access to only 1.5% of cropland that is accessible & suitable for cultivation, according to @fao.org. Before the genocide, Gaza was a thriving agricultural hub
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

screenshot of this page https://sam.gov/opp/53dc2fa997954c1d8acf8888fd8f0b56/view

Description NOTICE OF INTENT TO ISSUE A SOLE SOURCE U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intends to solicit, negotiate, and award a sole source purchase order to Bi2 Technologies, LLC (Bi2) for licenses for the Inmate Identification and Recognition System (I.R.I.S.™) and the Mobile Offender Recognition & Information (MORIS™) for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). The Government intends to award the sole source in accordance with the procedures of FAR Subpart 13.5, using the statutory authority of 41 USC 1901. The Government conducted extensive market research and determined that Bi2 is the only company that can provide the required services.

IRIS TECHNOLOGY MORIS™ works in conjunction with BI2's Inmate Recognition and Identification System (I.R.I.S.M), the nation's only secure, encrypted, real-time national criminal justice data sharing network, based on Iris Biometric technology. SPEED Any offender enrolled in the national database can be positively identified in seconds from virtually anywhere.

I.R.I.S.TM BI2 Technologies and the nation's sheriffs have created what no other organization in the world - public or private - have been able to accomplish: the implementation of the nation's only secure, encrypted, real-time national criminal justice data sharing network, based on iris recognition technology, which enables law enforcement agencies across the country to positively identify individuals in seconds from virtually anywhere. The Inmate Identification and Recognition System (I.R.I.S.M) positively identifies offenders using the most anatomically unique biometric - the iris. Sheriff's Offices and correctional facilities have been utilizing iris biometric recognition technology for essential responsibilities, such as:

ICE just announced a no-bid contract with BI2 Technologies for iris and facial recognition tech that ICE agents can have on their iPhones. The software scans all databases nationally to identify people.

Public Interest Law Firm Applauds Westchester County Village for Ending License Plate Reader Contract - Institute for Justice ARLINGTON, Va.—Today, the Institute for Justice (IJ) applauds the village of Scarsdale, New York for terminating its contract with the automated license plate reader (ALPR) […]

🚨Today, the village of Scarsdale, NY terminated its automated license plate reader camera contract, after 450 residents spoke out against it.

@ij.org applauds this move & the hard work of the activists who reached out to us to protect their 4th Amendment rights.
ij.org/press-releas...

Decision Guide for Considering AI Use — TechTonic Justice

New resource from us: a critic's guide to deciding if AI is right for your organization. It's a punchy 5 pages of the right questions to ask before hopping on the AI hype train. /1

www.techtonicjustice.org/resources/de...

How Your Utility Bills Are Subsidizing Power-Hungry AI | TechPolicy.Press The next few years will be pivotal for determining the future of AI and its impact on energy grids worldwide, write Sasha Luccioni and Yacine Jernite.

As tech firms keep adding the largest and most compute-intensive AI models into more and more aspects of our digital lives, they are increasingly dependent on a growing share of existing energy and natural resources, leading to rising costs for everyone else, write Sasha Luccioni & Yacine Jernite.

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

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NEW: I spoke with a woman named Andrea about her experience being detained by ICE after calling the cops for help during a domestic violence incident.

She was recently postpartum, breastfeeding & put in an all-male facility. She was detained for 2.5 months.

The People Being Arrested By ICE That No One’s Talking About The Trump administration’s deportation machine is detaining immigrant women at record numbers — and they've become invisible targets.

The Trump administration’s deportation machine has made women invisible targets.

If you’ve ever wondered, like me, what happens to all the women ICE detains:

The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza Israel controls the flow of food. It calculated how much Gaza needs – but data shows how this is being withheld

Between March and June, Israel allowed just 56,000 tonnes of food to enter the territory, less than a quarter of Gaza’s minimum needs for that period …

Even if every bag of UN flour had been collected and handed out … starvation was inevitable. Palestinians did not have enough to eat.”

YouTube video by 9NEWS Full interview: Flock Safety CEO addresses mass surveillance, access concerns

It’s often interesting to hear the way surveillance bros craft the narrative about how they decided to help create the panopticon. This guy’s story begins with him making license plate readers at his kitchen table because some cars in his neighborhood got broken into.

Israel’s new measures do nothing to stop the starvation crisis in Gaza, say aid workers Humanitarian workers say airdrops and corridors to allow trucks into region have done little to stop the rising death toll

Aid groups report that Israel is refusing to allow any olives or other “fruits or vegetables with pits or seeds that could be planted” into Gaza. They will only allow in pitted olives.