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The form asked my permission to share my health data. Then it wouldn’t let me say no.

Over the last year, Alex Rosenblat, Director of Sociotechnical Research, The Markup, interviewed more than 20 patients, healthcare providers, experts and advocates about the privacy forms they must sign to get care at their providers’ offices. Time and again she was told the same thing: Across the country, from large hospital systems to small, private clinics, patients are being asked to sign waivers blindly without knowing exactly what they’re signing. When patients ask to see more, staff usually don’t have an easy way to show them. When patients do get the forms, it tells them all the ways their medical data will be shared and reused, and some of the ways patients can refuse. But electronic systems make it impossible to opt out on the spot, requiring follow up emails. Records sharing between unaffiliated providers through these networks can benefit patients by making their scattered records more visible to the provider who is treating them. But it can also harm patients.

Attacks against the International Criminal Court: Who cares about victims of atrocity crimes?

The attacks against the ICC are part of a wholesale U.S. assault on international legal norms and institutions since the 20 January 2025 inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. Exactly a year later, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney made a blunt statement at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the world order has been ruptured, and that we now face a “brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.” This article by Catherine Morris, attorney and founding director of Peacemakers Trust, considers what can be done to strengthen respect for human rights and to fulfill the promise of equal justice for the millions of victims of atrocity crimes around the world, who, as their last resort, seek accountability of perpetrators in the ICC.

AI in Finance and Banking, January 31, 2026

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. Six highlights from this post: The FCA has launched a review into the implications of advanced AI on consumers, retail financial markets and regulators; The Dangerous Illusion Of Explainable AI In Modern Finance; Companies including Palantir and Deloitte have collectively reaped more than $22bn from contracts linked to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown; Digital Economics and AI Tutorial, Spring 2026, Alfred P. Sloane Foundation; Speculative Growth and the AI; and Behavioral Economics of AI: LLM Biases and Corrections.

The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health, and the Rule of Law – Part 6

As we approach January 20, 2026, the one year mark of the second Trump administration, Americans are witnessing the exercise of vast, often illegal and unconstrained presidential powers, unprecedented in our history. The impact of these powers, within our government, the private sector, and around the globe, continue to resonate. Part 6 of this series gives special attention to how operationalizing the full scope of actions outlined in the “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” has impacted the lives of ordinary Americans, regardless of where they live, with which party they may be affiliated, their age, ethnicity or gender. Consistent with the previous five parts of Sabrina I. Pacifici’s series, this article examines only one month, December 2025, of the Trump administration’s war every aspect of our democracy.

AI in Finance and Banking, December 15, 2025

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Five highlights from this post: FCA sets out plans to help build mortgage market of the future; GDP Nowcasting Performance of Traditional Econometric Models vs Machine-Learning Algorithms: Simulation and Case Studies; UK banks turn to AI for fraud prevention and to improve services. Tools help detect organised crime, automate lending checks and deliver personalised financial offerings; Firms harness AI tools in search for competitive edge.

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 29, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Is Your Android TV Streaming Box Part of a Botnet?; FCC Corrects Course, Outlines Improved Cybersecurity Measures; Social data puts user passwords at risk in unexpected ways; Homeland Security Is Reportedly Probing Bitcoin Mining Giant Bitmain for National Security Reasons; and Senator urges CBP to quit using tech to track and detain ‘suspicious’ drivers.

Drone Resources 2025

This article by Marcus P. Zillman includes links to a range of guides for current and future drone pilots interested in photography, medicine, civil security, real estate, and e-commerce, and also includes product reviews and buying guides.

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 25, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Publishers Adopt Aggressive New Tactics to Block AI Scraping; What the Huge AWS Outage Reveals About the Internet; Social Security Administration (SSA) is warning the public about a new government imposter scam; Image Scrubber for obscuring faces, stripping out the identifying metadata attached to your photos; and Clickbait Gives AI Models ‘Brain Rot,’ Researchers Find.

Google wasn’t against this privacy bill, officially. Behind the scenes, it orchestrated opposition.

Reporters Khari Johnson and Yue Stella Yu investigate how Google organized business owners against California legislation to force its Chrome web browser to safeguard personal data.

AI In Finance and Banking, August 16, 2025

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Six highlights from this post: Algorithmic Coercion with Faster Pricing; Forrester – The Future Of Digital Experiences In Banking; Empowering Sustainable Finance with Artificial Intelligence: A Framework for Responsible Implementation; The Transformative Role of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data in Banking; BIS – Financial stability implications of artificial intelligence; The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will launch a Supercharged Sandbox to help firms experiment safely with AI to support innovation; and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Corporate Finance.

AI In Finance and Banking July 31, 2025

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Eight highlights from this post: Preparing for systemic risks in the age of generative artificial intelligence; JPMorgan, Robeco Quietly Deploy AI in Daily Wall Street Routines; Can finance put an end to AI data mining; The Transformational Effects of Artificial Intelligence on the Finance Sector Workforce; Algorithmic Coercion with Faster Pricing; AI-Powered Trading, Algorithmic Collusion, and Price Efficience; From Banks to Bots: Behind the Rise of AI Money; and Federal Reserve conference included Fireside Chat – Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle W. Bowman and Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO; and Here’s What ‘Terrifies’ OpenAI’s CEO About Financial Institutions Today.

We caught 4 more states sharing personal health data with Big Tech

State-run health care websites around the country, meant to provide a simple way to shop for insurance, have been quietly sending visitors’ sensitive health information to Google and social media companies, Colin Lecher and Tomas Apodaca of The Markup and CalMatters found. The data, including prescription drug names and dosages, was sent by web trackers on state exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act to help Americans purchase health coverage. The exchange websites ask users to answer a series of questions, including about their health histories, to find them the most relevant information on plans. But in some cases, when visitors responded to sensitive questions, the invisible trackers sent that information to platforms like Google, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. The Markup and CalMatters audited the websites of all 19 states that independently operate their own online health exchange. While most of the sites contained advertising trackers of some kind, The Markup and CalMatters found that four states exposed visitors’ sensitive health information.

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 15, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Protect Yourself Online; Study: OpenAI Has Been Breached More Than 1000 Times; Feds warn: Hang up on phone scammers pretending to be border patrol agents; and Cybercriminals Are Hiding Malicious Web Traffic in Plain Sight.

Trump Administration Continues Scrubbing Statistics and Disappearing Data

What is the status of the official data published by U.S. federal statistical agencies? As the current administration continues its disassembling of huge swaths of the federal government, not only are the workers and services gone, so of course is much of the data generated by those employees. And federal statistical data and datasets, whether census data or statistics on the economy, health, education, or other critical public matters, are what librarians and information professionals rely upon to answer patron questions and perform research and analysis for internal, data-driven projects. This article by Robert Berkman is a roundup of where these cuts and significant changes are happening and offers alternatives to locate datasets and statistical data that are no longer available.

Trump Is Creating a Deportation Army of Local Cops

Mohamed Al Elew and Wendy Fry’s reporting analyzes federal data that my be a surprise to Floridians about ICE’s 287(g) program. All Florida residents now live in a county where local police will be trained to work on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to federal data analyzed by The Markup. The training is part of a rapidly expanding federal program to deputize state and local authorities as immigration enforcers, with the number of participating agencies doubling since January, according to the data. There are now over 10 million Americans living in a county with an immigration delegation agreement, The Markup’s review shows.

Censor, purge, defund: how Trump is following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities

Professor of Operational Research Christian Pagel has mapped 35 of the Trump administration’s attacks on science and universities to the authoritarian playbook – and considers what it means for attacks still to come. Pagel states that the attacks on science and universities are neither random nor new, and identifies key factors at work – controlling research to serve those in power; undermining independence and suppressing dissent; and attacking work that the Trump roadmap characterizes as having a foundation in neoliberal agendas that undermine national sovereignty and prioritize global elites over local needs.

Pete Recommends Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 22, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Memo details Trump plan to sabotage the Social Security Administration; Everything You Say To Your Fire TV & Echo Will Be Sent to Amazon Soon; The DNA of organised crime is changing – and so is the threat to Europe; Judge Rips DOGE Dig Into Social Security Records; and Big AI platforms can generate Chrome malware with this technique.

Without a Trace: How to Take Your Phone Off the Grid

Monique O. Madan and Wesley Callow from The Markup walk us through each step to safely purchase, set-up, and connect an off-the-grid phone, using multiple email accounts, and thereafter how and when to use it, keeping it otherwise turned off and not connected to WiFi.

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 15, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring; US cities warn of wave of unpaid parking phishing texts; OPM watchdog to investigate IT risks tied to DOGE’s agency access; and A Brand-New Botnet Is Delivering Record-Size DDoS Attacks.

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, January 18, 2025

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Apps That Are Spying on Your Location; AI-supported spear phishing fools more than 50% of targets; Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), once celebrated as an unbreakable defense, is crumbling under the weight of its outdated technology; NSA Warns iPhone And Android Users – Disable Location Tracking; and Chinese Innovations Spawn Wave of Toll Phishing Via SMS.