Policy

Plaintiff attorney Rachel Lanier told Judge Carolyn Kuhl this morning that after she’d admonished against using smart glasses in the courthouse, they learned that one person was still wearing them in the hallway where jurors were present. After alerting Meta’s counsel, Lanier said they were told the glasses weren’t recording.

He faces potential “misconduct in public office” charges, related to documents he allegedly passed to Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a trade envoy. Already stripped of his titles, he made a few appearances in the files, and is the first senior British royal to be arrested since 1647.

The FCC has an “enforcement action underway,” Carr said, according to Deadline. This week, Stephen Colbert said CBS banned him from airing his own interview with Talarico, a Democratic state representative from Texas who is running for the US Senate.

The US has been working on an online portal at “freedom.gov” that would let Europeans see content their governments have banned, Reuters reports. A planned launch last week was apparently delayed, and State Department officials have expressed concerns about the project.

California regulators killed a proposal that would have imposed fees on gas-burning furnaces and water heaters that release smog-forming pollutants. More than 20,000 comments they received opposing the proposal were generated by a single AI platform, some addressed from people with no idea their names had been used.

The funding will go toward Meta’s pro-AI super PACs, including two new ones: Republican-focused “Forge the Future Project” and Democrat-focused “Making Our Tomorrow,” the New York Times reports. The PACs will back politicians who are friendly to AI and push back against legislation that could limit the growth of Meta’s AI business.

The Meta CEO walked through the public entrance of the LA Superior Court and past parent advocates and media waiting to learn if they’d get a seat to hear his testimony.

A coalition including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, and Sierra Club have filed suit against the Trump administration for repealing the landmark ‘endangerment finding.’ The repeal — if successful — could strip away the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to to regulate planet-heating pollution.

Otherwise, the TikTok parent will face “immediate litigation” for copyright infringement of Netflix’s Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters, Squid Game, and Bridgerton franchises:

Just after we entered the courtroom, we learned that a juror has been hospitalized. The parties decided to postpone today’s testimony from former Meta employees to see if the juror can return. Regardless, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify tomorrow — either before the original juror, or an alternate.

I’m in downtown Los Angeles where a state judge is hearing the first of several landmark trials about how social media allegedly harmed a teen girl going by K.G.M. We expect to hear from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week.

As Axios reports that the Department of Defense and / or War is preparing to brand Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” one commenter wonders if the Claude company might revisit its Super Bowl ad to turn that to its advantage.

Europe’s privacy watchdog has opened yet another investigation into the millions of sexualized images, some of children, produced and shared on the platform last month. It joins the EU’s DSA effort already underway, whatever France is doing, and a few more in the UK.

Should Anthropic get the designation, “anyone who wants to do business with the U.S. military has to cut ties with the company,” Axios says. The two sides have apparently been negotiating for months over how the military can use Anthropic’s AI tools.

First came Jmail, then Jikipedia. The Epstein files have yielded a lot so far, but I didn’t expect a whole new tech ecosystem to be among them.

In a letter sent to Congress Saturday, the Attorney General said that the DOJ had released “all ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the possession of the Department’” in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. She also included a list of over 300 people mentioned in the files.

Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta have received “hundreds” of subpoenas from the DHS in recent months, according to a report from The New York Times. The agency is reportedly asking the platforms for the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other information associated with accounts that “track or criticize” ICE.

Senate Democrats blocked a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, which could trigger a temporary shutdown of the department. The vote was 52 to 47, with just one Democrat — Sen. John Fetterman — voting in favor.