I'm so glad somebody is finally writing about this.

#HikVision Thousands of controversial Chinese surveillance cameras installed in public places across Ireland

https://www.thejournal.ie/investigates-hikvision-surveillance-6755381-Jul2025/

via @TheJournal

#Surveillance#SurveillanceCapitalism#DataProtection#GDPR#MastoDaoine

Anyone wearing one of these things should be required to display a warning sign.

“Bee makes a $49.99 Fitbit-like device that listens in on your conversations while using AI to transcribe everything that you and the people around you say, allowing it to generate personalized summaries of your days, reminders, and suggestions from within the Bee app.”

#AI#Privacy#SurveillanceCapitalism

https://www.theverge.com/news/711621/amazon-bee-ai-wearable-acquisition

https://www.404media.co/spotify-publishes-ai-generated-songs-from-dead-artists-without-permission/

Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission

Spotify is publishing new, AI-generated songs on the official pages of artists who died years ago without the permission of their estates or record labels.

According to his official Spotify page, Blaze Foley, a country music singer-songwriter who was murdered in 1989, released a new song called “Together” last week. The song, which features a male country singer, piano, and an electric guitar, vaguely sounds like a new, slow country song. The Spotify page for the song also features an image of an AI-generated image of a man who looks nothing like Foley singing into a microphone.

Craig McDonald, the owner of Lost Art Records, the label that distributes all of Foley’s music and manages his Spotify page, told me that any Foley fan would instantly realize “Together” is not one of his songs.

“I can clearly tell you that this song is not Blaze, not anywhere near Blaze’s style, at all,” he told me on a call. “It’s kind of an AI schlock bot, if you will. It has nothing to do with the Blaze you know, that whole posting has the authenticity of an algorithm.”

The report leaves no doubt: the negative impact of the datacenters is not an (energy) efficiency issue, is about effectiveness: most of the resources are used for private data capture and processing for advertisement and control.

The environmental cost (in lives) is about #SurveillanceCapitalism: again, the appropriation and privatization of the #Commons (everyone), robbed and concentrated in a few hands.

@sutty @mayfirst @sursiendo

@lauren They're using it as a pretext to grab every scrap of private data, turbocharging the #surveillancecapitalism trend.

Now the MS Edge browser has AI assist turned on for all text input fields – and its opt-out. Monstrous.

ORG turns 20 this year and we've lined up a special event! 🎂

Join us for Cory Doctorow @pluralistic in conversation with Maria Farrell.

They'll be getting into Cory's work and taking the fight to Big Tech ✊

🗓️ 16 July
🕕 6pm BST
💻 Zoom

Don't miss it! Register now ⬇️

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/org-at-20-cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-maria-farrell/

#digitalrights#ORG20 #bigtech #surveillancecapitalism #corydoctorow