Target Practice

Plus: Stop SpaceXas!

Dear Citizens,

The Mythos grows! Er … what’s even going on anymore? We live in confusing times. At least though finally, mercifully, someone had the courage to speak up about the grievous centralization of power that will limit and control access to artificial intelligence! Thank you so much, brave brother in arms … erm (checks notes) uhm … (are we sure here?) … welp … Mark Zuckerberg. Okay then. What a crazy world.

Here’s what else to read, listen to and know this week.

🎯 ONE READ: Clickbait 🎯

It’s not often a story grabs you this hard and won’t let go, but Target Practice, in the New York Review of Books by Sophia Goodfriend on apartheid and genocide by automation is chilling and a must read. From the piece (also available here) -

Over the last few years I have spoken with dozens of Israeli reservists and veterans who were involved in the army’s automation efforts. Their testimonies, published here for the first time, offer a newly detailed view into how the AI targeting platforms that the Israeli army has used since October 2023 emerged from ten years of algorithmic surveillance experiments across the occupied Palestinian territories.

The impacts are wide-reaching, from erroneous arrests to far worse: “With this software … putting targets into a “work flow” that “closes the kill chain” was easier than ever: “left click, right click, left click.”

(Bonus read: A Man Gave Border Agents His Phone Passcode. It Wiped Everything. Now He’s Facing Federal Charges, another dystopian read from Jose Antonio Lanz at Decrypt.)

🌊 ONE WATCH: Sponge Cities 🌊

An inspiring and different kind of “one watch” this week, at the intersection of technology and sustainability. It’s been a long, hot summer, with flooding destroying neighborhoods in cities around the world. What if bringing nature back to our gray cities could help us contain urban flooding? Check out this feature from Mashable on the work of some tech savvy urbanists.

Watch here.

👓 TWO (!) ACTION(s): Everything’s Bigger in Texas 👓

Two hot actions to take today, one for our friends in the EU and UK, the other for our US friends.

In the UK or EU? It turns out (you’re shocked, we know) that Meta and Ray-Ban’s Kylie Jenner endorsed AI glasses can film and share your voice and face without your consent. Yikes! But you have a legal right to say no.
Click here to send a legal notice to Meta outlining why you object to their “pervert glasses” anti-privacy play.

In the US? Well, our old friend Elon Musk wants to take over 7,848 acres of land in South Texas to build up his dangerous SpaceX rocket facility. No way! Join the South Texas Environmental Justice Network in saying no, and stopping Elon’s latest land grab here.

That’s all for this week.

Team Citizens

*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already!