Bloomberg reports that Amazon's new smart glasses for delivery drivers will take several thousand photos during a typical shift, feeding them into Amazon's AI Wellspring platform. Amazon executive Viraj Chatterjee said faces and license plates will be blurred before human review, but confirmed the company hasn't considered letting customers opt out, and images could be obtained with a warrant. Amazon plans to deploy 20,000 more pairs of the glasses by the end of 2027, after a pilot program that has logged over 275,000 deliveries.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-30
OpenAI chief research officer Mark Chen responded to scrutiny following hacking incidents affecting the company, rejecting the idea that visible real-world impacts mean OpenAI's models are unsafe or misaligned. He discussed what OpenAI is doing to improve model safety and defended the company's broader role in AI development. Separately, MIT Technology Review made available an on-demand Roundtables discussion of its investigation into failures of US border surveillance towers.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-30
A new book and recent reports describe how companies are using vast troves of consumer data combined with AI to calculate individualized prices for online shoppers, rather than setting prices based on product cost or general market value. The pricing can vary from person to person depending on data profiles rather than the item itself.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-29
Author Lindsay Owens argues in her new book Gouged that surveillance pricing—where companies use personal data to set individualized prices—does not benefit ordinary shoppers as often claimed. She disputes the notion that such pricing acts like a 'Robin Hood' mechanism, charging wealthier customers more and poorer customers less.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-09-29
British Transport Police ran an 18-deployment trial of live facial recognition across major London railway stations from February to July, scanning over 500,000 faces at a cost exceeding £320,000 and nearly 100 officer-hours. The trial produced a single watchlist alert, which proved to be a false match, and no arrests. BTP has since extended the trial by four months into London Underground stations, reporting three confirmed alerts of individuals complying with court-imposed conditions.
theguardian.com
· 2026-09-29
Lindsay Owens, CEO of Groundwork Collaborative and former economic adviser to Senator Elizabeth Warren, discusses her new book 'Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet' in an interview timed to its release. She argues that software and algorithmic tools have enabled companies to move away from fixed pricing toward personalized, variable pricing that can disadvantage consumers, and warns that generative AI could accelerate this trend.
wired.com
· 2026-09-29
Cybersecurity researcher Joshua Michael published a map based on Flock Security's own leaked location data, identifying more than 170,000 cameras and 130,000 related devices, including 27,000 acoustic sensors, across the US. That total roughly triples the 120,000-camera figure Flock had publicly cited this summer, and the findings were referenced during a Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing on the company.
theintercept.com
· 2026-09-28
Arlington-based Quartermaster raised a $140 million Series B just months after closing a $43 million Series A in May, according to CEO Neil Sobin. Roughly $100 million came from equity investors led by Insight Partners, with new backer Overmatch Ventures and existing investor First Round Capital, while the remaining $40 million came as debt financing from Stifel. The startup builds weather-hardened camera and radio hardware called SmartMast that mounts on ship masts to deliver real-time maritime data beyond basic AIS location pings.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-28
MIT Technology Review's newsletter highlights growing concern among experts that AI agents could soon bypass their sandboxed environments to access systems they weren't meant to reach, warning of a more serious incident ahead. The outlet also released its latest AI Hype Index, covering topics including Chinese chipmakers and German wiki sites, and is hosting a subscriber roundtable on its investigation into deaths near US border surveillance towers.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-28
Security researcher Joshua Michael found a flaw in Flock's website that exposed an access token without login credentials, letting him query ArcGIS and pull a database of camera locations in November 2025. He used that data to build the Flock Surveillance Map, listing 335,701 camera locations, and Flock has now filed a trademark infringement complaint seeking to take the site down.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-27
Newly unsealed court documents show five Indianapolis police officers have been charged with misusing the department's Flock automatic license plate readers, including 18-year veteran Jonathan Schultz, accused of using roughly 300 cameras to stalk his ex-wife and another woman. Separately, Franklin County, North Carolina ended its Flock contract and fired a detective for tracking a private citizen, while San Jose officials are pushing for tighter controls after an officer shared Flock data with a relative accused of domestic violence.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-27
Palm Beach resident Lindsey Isaacs, 23, was arrested and had her Dodge Durango towed after a Flock automated license plate reader camera recorded her car's plate near the site of a fatal three-person collision. Isaacs spent 13 days in jail, part of it in solitary confinement, before authorities determined she was not involved in the crash.
jezebel.com
· 2026-09-26
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