The year in authoritarian tech trends
From murderous machines to the looming abortion surveillance dragnet, the technology stories we covered in 2022 were enough to give even the most seasoned science fiction writers a run for their...
View ArticleWhat a law designed to protect the internet has to do with abortion
The United States Supreme Court unleashed a political earthquake when it overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, reversing nearly fifty years of precedent establishing a constitutional right to abortion....
View ArticleConspiracy theorists target your local TV weather forecaster
Severe winter storms have battered much of the United States this winter — most recently in Buffalo, New York — resulting in fatalities and injuries from tornadoes and dangerous travel conditions...
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Be real or be stalked? Privacy pitfalls of Gen-Z’s favorite app
This app “won’t make you famous,” its creators say, but BeReal is “a chance to show your friends who you really are, for once.” The premise of one of GenZ’s favorite new social apps is simple....
View ArticleWhy Florida’s new university restrictions are ‘straight out of the global...
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis kicked off Black History Month last week by declaring a plan to dismantle the state public college system’s diversity and critical race theory programs. The proposed ban...
View ArticleForget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
When you hit the checkout line at your local supermarket and give the cashier your phone number or loyalty card, you are handing over a valuable treasure trove of data that may not be limited to the...
View ArticleTexas lawmakers want to erase abortion from the internet
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, state legislators across the country have introduced laws implicating the doctors who perform the procedure, reproductive health clinics,...
View ArticleFingerprinting employees could cost Illinois businesses billions
Each time Latrina Cothron, a manager at a local White Castle restaurant near Chicago, Illinois, wanted to access workplace computers or see her pay stubs, she had to provide her fingerprint. She sued...
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Missouri librarians are risking jail time – for doing their jobs
Amy was busy at her job in the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, when the officer strode through her open doorway to investigate a sordid accusation: Someone had called the police department and...
View ArticleFlorida’s ban on transgender care pushes doctors to leave the state
Florida's ban on providing gender-affirming care to new patients went into effect this month after the state’s Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine voted to approve the rule last year. Under...
View ArticleCan the West curb its addiction to Chinese tech?
Calls to ban TikTok are growing ever louder in Washington, D.C. The sensational video-sharing app is in the pockets of 150 million Americans, a figure that explains, at least in part, the grilling of...
View ArticleA hotline to report teachers ratchets up tensions in US schools
Teachers in Arizona were put on notice last month with the launch of the Arizona Department of Education’s “Empower Hotline” that encourages parents to report “inappropriate” lessons being taught in...
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How 19th century silver mines could supercharge the US green energy economy
How 19th century silver mines could supercharge the US green energy economy It’s chilly inside the Creede Underground Mining Museum. For one thing, it’s winter. For another, the museum is located...
View ArticleTelehealth start-ups are monetizing misinformation – and your data
Even as the world bounces back from the Covid-19 pandemic, research has shown that more and more people are taking their healthcare into their own hands. The internet is a big part of how they do it....
View ArticleHow Somali workers in the US are fighting Amazon’s surveillance machine
Amazon’s unbelievably quick turnaround times on deliveries have become a given for many people in the U.S. Order a bottle of mouthwash on a weekday morning and your breath will be minty fresh within a...
View ArticleUtah’s online porn law puts teens’ digital rights at risk
A new Utah law intended to keep kids from accessing pornography and other kinds of “harmful material” online is raising critical questions about the First Amendment rights of young people and the...
View ArticleThe politics of teaching US history
For the better part of the last decade, Megan Threlkeld has been leading students on a tour of a nation at war with its past. Threlkeld, a history professor at Denison University in Ohio, teaches a...
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Fleeing Florida
Milo settles into the driver's seat of a blue Chevy Volt. His dad Phil sits beside him. I am in the back with his mom, and we make chit-chat as we buckle our seatbelts. At barely 16, Milo is the...
View ArticleMissouri teenagers are on the front lines of the war on books
On June 20, school officials in Nixa, Missouri gathered to discuss the fate of seven books taking on a range of contemporary and historical issues, from police violence to abortion to generational...
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The global rise of anti-trans legislation
In her dissenting opinion on a U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning the rights of same-sex couples last month, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Court “reminds LGBT people of a painful feeling...
View ArticleWhy trans people can’t trust Tennessee with their data
Patients in Nashville receiving gender-affirming care from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center were told last month that their records had been turned over to the Tennessee Attorney General’s...
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Inside New Mexico’s struggle to protect kids from abuse
Ivy Woodward can turn her emotions off like a water faucet. It served her well when she worked in child protective services in Hobbs, a small oil town in southeastern New Mexico. She looks at it this...
View ArticleMigrants take the US to court over its glitchy asylum app
It has been more than half a century since U.S. immigration laws were written to enshrine the right to apply for asylum at any port of entry to the country. But a new lawsuit argues that today, the...
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How space traffic in orbit could spell trouble on Earth
How space traffic in orbit could spell trouble on Earth It was February 2009, and a disaster was about to occur 500 miles above Siberia: A dead Russian satellite, Cosmos-2251, was on a direct...
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Advertising erectile dysfunction pills? No problem. Breast health? Try again
It happened again last week. Lisa Lundy logged into her company’s Instagram account only to be greeted with yet another rejection. This one was an advertisement about breast cancer awareness,...
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Roe’s repeal has energized Africa’s anti-abortion movement
Demeke Desta will never forget what the wards were like. The scenes from the special hospital units in Ethiopia for women and girls who’d had unsafe abortions left an indelible mark on the 53-year-old...
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When deepfakes go nuclear
Two servicemen sit in an underground missile launch facility. Before them is a matrix of buttons and bulbs glowing red, white and green. Old-school screens with blocky, all-capped text beam beside...
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Almost an assassin
It wasn’t Gerald Ford in 1975 in California or Ronald Reagan in Washington DC in 1982. The last time someone tried to kill the president of the United States was in 2005 in Georgia. Country, not the...
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Stop Drinking from the Toilet!
Stop Drinking from the Toilet! The faucet isn't much better: digital sewage polluting our information pipes is making us sick Judy Estrin has been thinking about digital connectivity since the early...
View ArticleFrom the Margins to Power: Georgia’s Elections and the Kremlin’s Empire
Empires collapse from the margins. The fatal crack in the Soviet empire appeared on April 9th, 1989, when Moscow gave the order for its troops to open fire on peaceful pro-independence protesters in...
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