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  Uber ran secret tools to dodge cops and spy on Lyft's own drivers. Today it's the only one of the four -- Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart -- telling you how long it keeps your location data. Read all four companies' privacy policies: only Uber gives a specific number. No federal law requires one -- two bills died in Congress. California residents do have a real, enforceable fix. https://www.thebluf.news/p/rideshare-delivery-app-secret-tools-data-retention #Privacy #Sur...

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  An 11-year-old girl was stopped and searched because Rite Aid's facial recognition falsely matched her. The FTC banned the company from using it for five years. From 2012 to 2020 Rite Aid ran the system in roughly 200 stores, concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods and ones that were majority Black, Latino or Asian. https://www.thebluf.news/p/rite-aid-retail-facial-recognition-loyalty-data-surveillance #Privacy #Surveillance

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  Your voice assistant can wake and record without the wake word. A peer-reviewed study from Northeastern and Imperial College London measured it: smart speakers falsely wake about 1.43 times per 10,000 words spoken nearby. In March 2025 Amazon told owners of three Echo models it was ending "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" — the last option to keep your audio off its cloud. https://www.thebluf.news/p/alexa-siri-google-assistant-voice-surveillance #Privacy #Surveillance

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  CBP can keep a non-citizen's face data for up to 75 years. A U.S. citizen's photo, from the same camera at the same checkpoint, is discarded within 12 hours. TSA's domestic face scan is optional by policy. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal body, found that right is communicated inconsistently at the checkpoint. https://www.thebluf.news/p/tsa-cbp-airport-facial-recognition-biometrics #Privacy #Surveillance

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  Correction. On Sept 1 we posted that ShotSpotter is "wrong on 85–89% of alerts." That was wrong twice over. Nobody found 85%. We widened the range ourselves. The real figures: the MacArthur Justice Center found 89% of Chicago alerts turned up no evidence of a gun crime; NYC's Comptroller found 87% saw no confirmed shooting. "No evidence found" is not the same as "wrong." We've deleted that post. https://www.thebluf.news/p/s...

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  Walmart's privacy policy says the company may collect your FACE GEOMETRY, your VOICEPRINT, your IRIS, and your FINGERPRINTS. It says LICENSE PLATE READERS may be in use on its lots. That is not a leak. That is not a lawsuit. That is the policy, published and in effect. What the company actually did is in court: two active suits, over voiceprints taken by an AI phone system and over fingerprint time clocks. https://www.thebluf.news/p/walmart-biometric-privacy-policy-update #Privacy

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  They're warning you AI could be catastrophic. Anthropic tightened its rules because it couldn't rule out helping build a bioweapon. A hacking group used it to run a real attack. Nobody's slowed down — Anthropic's own revenue just topped $65B. So who's actually being warned? New York already forced a real answer once. Watch: https://www.thebluf.news/p/ai-pocalypse-now #AI #TechPolicy

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  Ask a Democrat what their party stands for and watch the pause. The party HAS a platform — 92 pages, formally adopted in Chicago in 2024. So why can't the people who vote for it name a single plank? Three documented reasons: it's orphaned, it has no voice, and it can't deliver. Part 2 of The Realignment: https://www.thebluf.news/p/name-one-plank #Politics #Democrats