The Boston city government abandoned Flock Safety's license-plate reader cameras after the company shared data nationwide in violation of a contract provision, according to city officials.
"We have actually abandoned Flock," Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in her monthly "Ask the Mayor" segment on GBH News last week. Wu made the comment a few days before the release of Boston's annual surveillance technology report, which said a Flock "vendor error" resulted in nationwide data sharing.
The report, which covers 2025, describes how the Boston Police Department deployed about 45 Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras in a trial with Flock from April to September last year. The unauthorized data sharing occurred during the first few days of the pilot, the report said:
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Xi Jinping proposed a BRICS open-source AI community as China expands technology cooperation and competes with the U.S. for influence over global AI.
The post President Xi Jinping Proposes BRICS AI Open-Source Zone as China Expands Tech Influence appeared first on TechRepublic.
OpenAI rules out a 2026 IPO over AI safety concerns, potentially giving Anthropic more room to pursue its own reported public-market debut.
The post OpenAI Wonβt Go Public in 2026: What It Means for Anthropic appeared first on TechRepublic.
On the heels of the hottest summer on record and a United Nations report warning that global temperatures are likely to push climate risks to βincreasingly dangerous heights,β the Trump administration overturned most of a Biden-era rule limiting climate pollution from power plants, the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced a final plan Monday that guts the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which the agency said exceeds its authority under the Clean Air Act by requiring control technologies βthat are not adequately demonstrated.β The agency also proposed revoking βall remaining GHG emissions requirements for power plants,β arguing their emissions βhave no material impact on climate change.β
The plan to revoke the Carbon Pollution Standards was initially revealed last spring.
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Elon Musk is seemingly done attacking Apple over its decision to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone features.
Back in 2024, when the partnership was first announced, Musk slammed the integration as an agreement from Apple to let OpenAI install βcreepy spywareβ on usersβ devices. The next year, he sued, claiming the partnership gave the firms a βmonopolyβ on Apple usersβ AI prompts, which allegedly harmed competition in both smartphone and chatbot markets.
For Musk, the fight with Apple seemingly escalated after he believed that his chatbot, Grok, was perhaps being illegally blocked from topping Appleβs App Store rankings. Last August, he claimed that βApple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.β
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The US is not backing down from its fight to deport noncitizen technology researchers who monitor safety risks on the biggest online platforms.
In July, a judge blocked as unconstitutional an immigration policy that the US relied on to weigh whether to detain and deport people who flag illegal or harmful online content as national security risks. In his announcement of the policy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that by targeting a list of researchersβwhich he stood βready and willingβ to expandβthe policy supposedly served to prevent foreign nationals from manipulating digital town squares and censoring Americans.
However, in his order siding with the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) and staying the policy, US District Judge James Boasberg said the US showed no evidence linking any targeted researchers to a foreign power that might be attempting to censor Americans or manipulate US public debate. Deemed too broad, the policy could sweep in seemingly any noncitizen working in content moderation, the judge said.
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Malaysia has completed its draft AI Governance Bill, bringing proposed risk, oversight, and incident-reporting rules closer to enterprises.
The post Malaysia Advances AI Governance Bill as New Enterprise Rules Take Shape appeared first on TechRepublic.
The use of coal to generate electricity on the US grid has been plunging for nearly two decades, and the first Trump administration was unable to affect the trend. So his second administration has attempted more aggressive interventions to prop up coal use. One of its most direct means of doing so is to order coal plants that were scheduled to close to remain open, even if there is no need for them.
The administration's justification for these orders is a statute that allows the Department of Energy (DOE) to declare an emergency in the case of wartime or a sudden shortfall in generation. A number of parties, including states where coal plants have been slated to close, have challenged this declaration. And on Friday, in the first of these cases to make its way through the courts, the declaration was judged to be contrary to the statute. While this only affects a single coal plant in Michigan, the reasoning of the decision will apply to every coal plant closure that has been blocked by the DOE.
The decision was issued by a unanimous three-judge panel from the DC Circuit's Court of Appeals. It focuses on the J.H. Campbell Generating Plant, which was scheduled to close last year but has been kept open by a total of five emergency declarations by the DOE, each limited to 90 days by the Federal Power Act. At issue was section 202(c) of that Act, which allows the DOE to declare emergencies when the US is at war or when βan emergency exists by reason of a sudden increase in the demand for electric energy, or a shortage of electric energy.β
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The New Mexico Supreme Court held a ChatGPT-using lawyer in direct contempt of court for submitting a brief with "false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses," including fake police testimony and other mistakes. The state's top court referred the lawyer to a disciplinary board for further proceedings and concluded that he "demonstrated a lack of remorse and a lack of concern for his client."
Attorney Stephen Aarons "admitted to the Court that he did not verify the factual claims and legal authority in his AI-generated brief before signing it and filing it with the Court, and that he did not inform his client of this failure or that the brief in chief contained multiple factual and legal misrepresentations," the state Supreme Court said in an order on Wednesday.
Aarons has been a criminal defense lawyer in New Mexico for over 40 years and was hired by a defendant's family members to appeal a murder conviction. Aaron's now-former client, Oscar Renee Sandoval, was sentenced to life in prison in February 2025 after being convicted of killing Shiereen Al-Jibury, who was his partner and the mother of his children.
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See what you missed in Daily Tech Insider from Sept. 7β11.
The post AI Agents, Foldables, Cyberthreats, and Chip Deals Define This Week in Tech appeared first on TechRepublic.
California creates standards and a registry for independent AI assessors. Learn what the new framework could mean for businesses and IT leaders.
The post California Establishes Framework for Independent AI Assessors appeared first on TechRepublic.
LinkedIn beat two lawsuits over its practice of scanning usersβ browser extensions, with a judge granting the Microsoft subsidiary's motion to dismiss the cases. The users who sued LinkedIn failed to adequately allege that they have standing to sue because neither asserted that they "had browser extensions installed that conveyed private information to LinkedIn," ruled Judge Vince Chhabria in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
In his ruling on Tuesday, Chhabria gave the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaints but said he doubts they can make a plausible case. "Given LinkedInβs further arguments that users voluntarily download browser extensions, which by their nature intentionally expose data to websites, it seems unlikely that the plaintiffs will ever be able to allege a privacy violation, much less prevail at the end of the day," Chhabria wrote.
California residents Nicholas Farrell and Jeff Ganan separately filed class actions against LinkedIn in April, seeking to represent themselves and other LinkedIn users. Ganan's attorney, J.R. Howell, said he is evaluating whether to bring the claims in a California state court, which has different requirements on standing, or to appeal the US district court ruling in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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