Data

Lawyer for DoJ argued actions taken in public while in possession of a smartphone afforded no expectation of privacyThe US supreme court is considering whether sprawling warrants for smartphone location data infringe on Americans’ privacy rights and violate the constitution.Justices heard opening arguments in Chatrie v United States on Monday that concerned law enforcement’s reliance on so-called “geofence warrants” in difficult cases. The case was originally brought by Okello Chatrie, whose phone location data helped police in Richmond, Virginia, track him down after he robbed a bank at gunpoint and escaped with $195,000 in 2019. Chatrie pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but his lawyers argue none of the evidence against him should have been admissible in court. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Investigation into campaigning materials for local polls in May challenges tactical voting claims Election leaflets are providing “grotesque” information about how to vote tactically in the May elections, using national polling data, “dodgy” bar charts and doorstep surveys to support claims about parties’ chances of winning.Leaflets distributed by local politicians across England are claiming that either only their party can win, or another party “can’t win here” when “there is no good evidence to show that’s true”, a Full Fact investigation for the Guardian has revealed. Continue reading...

Discrepancy in forecasts raises questions over government planning for net zeroOne vision of the UK’s future involves a decarbonised economy powered by clean, renewable energy. Another involves making the UK an AI superpower.The government departments responsible for these two visions do not appear to have agreed on their numbers. Continue reading...

• X-Energy, a nuclear power company, completed its Nasdaq debut with CEO Clay Sell announcing plans to deliver clean energy solutions to data centers and industrial customers. • The company is positioning itself as part of the broader reinvention of nuclear power to meet growing energy demands from artificial intelligence and cloud computing infrastructure. • The move reflects investor appetite for clean energy technologies as data center operators seek sustainable power sources to support AI expansion.

Janet Mills says moratorium would’ve been ‘appropriate’ if it didn’t interfere with ongoing datacenter project in MaineThe Democratic governor of Maine on Friday vetoed a bill that would have made it the first US state to impose a moratorium on large new datacenters, even as local opposition to the electricity-hungry facilities grows.The decision reflects the difficult trade-off facing political leaders, who must weigh the impact of datacenters on the environment and household energy bills against the millions of dollars in investment and tax revenue they can bring. Continue reading...

Revised figures increase fears about how the energy-intensive sites could worsen the climate emergency The UK government vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials raised their estimate of carbon emissions from the technology by a factor of more than 100.According to new data quietly published this week, energy use by AI datacentres in the UK could cause the emission of up to 123m tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO₂) – about as much as generated by 2.7 million people – over the next 10 years. Continue reading...