Three members of the Climate Justice Working Group stepped down and criticized Gov. Kathy Hochul for failing to take action to ensure reduced pollution.

The contours of a mammoth industrial decarbonization strategy are taking shape ahead of its Feb. 26 unveiling.

An AP report found that South Korea imported biomass from Indonesia that was linked to deforestation of natural, intact forest.

The blazes have killed at least 28 people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.

States need to have and use data privacy laws to bring privacy violations to light and hold companies accountable for them. So, we were glad to see that the Texas Attorney General’s Office has filed its first lawsuit under Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA) to take the Allstate Corporation to task for sharing driver location and other driving data without telling customers.

In its complaint, the attorney general’s office alleges that Allstate and a number of its subsidiaries (some of which go by the name “Arity”) “conspired to secretly collect and sell ‘trillions of miles’ of consumers’ ‘driving behavior’ data from mobile devices, in-car devices, and vehicles.” (The defendant companies are also accused of violating Texas’ data broker law and its insurance law prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices.)

On the privacy front, the complaint says the defendant companies created a software development kit (SDK), which is basically a set of tools that developers can create to integrate functions into an app. In this case, the Texas Attorney General says that Allstate and Arity specifically designed this toolkit to scrape location data. They then allegedly paid third parties, such as the app Life360, to embed it in their apps. The complaint also alleges that Allstate and Arity chose to promote their SDK to third-party apps that already required the use of location date, specifically so that people wouldn’t be alerted to the additional collection.

That’s a dirty trick. Data that you can pull from cars is often highly sensitive, as we have raised repeatedly. Everyone should know when that information's being collected and where it's going.

More state regulators should follow suit and use the privacy laws on their books.

The Texas Attorney General’s office estimates that 45 million Americans, including those in Texas, unwittingly downloaded this software that collected their information, including location information, without notice or consent. This violates Texas’ privacy law, which went into effect in July 2024 and requires companies to provide a reasonably accessible notice to a privacy policy, conspicuous notice that they’re selling or processing sensitive data for targeting advertising, and to obtain consumer consent to process sensitive data.

This is a low bar, and the companies named in this complaint still allegedly failed to clear it. As law firm Husch Blackwell pointed out in its write-up of the case, all Arity had to do, for example, to fulfill one of the notice obligations under the TDPSA was to put up a line on their website saying, “NOTICE: We may sell your sensitive personal data.”

In fact, Texas’s privacy law does not meet the minimum of what we’d consider a strong privacy law. For example, the Texas Attorney General is the only one who can file a lawsuit under its states privacy law. But we advocate for provisions that make sure that everyone, not only state attorneys general, can file suits to make sure that all companies respect our privacy.

Texas’ privacy law also has a “right to cure”—essentially a 30-day period in which a company can “fix” a privacy violation and duck a Texas enforcement action. EFF opposes rights to cure, because they essentially give companies a “get-out-jail-free” card when caught violating privacy law. In this case, Arity was notified and given the chance to show it had cured the violation. It just didn’t.

According the complaint, Arity apparently failed to take even basic steps that would have spared it from this enforcement action. Other companies violating our privacy may be more adept at getting out of trouble, but they should be found and taken to task too. That’s why we advocate for strong privacy laws that do even more to protect consumers.

Nineteen states now have some version of a data privacy law. Enforcement has been a bit slower. California has brought a few enforcement actions since its privacy law went into effect in 2020; Texas and New Hampshire are two states that have created dedicated data privacy units in their Attorney General offices, signaling they’re staffing up to enforce their laws. More state regulators should follow suit and use the privacy laws on their books. And more state legislators should enact and strengthen their laws to make sure companies are truly respecting our privacy.

The Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed settlement agreeing that General Motors and its subsidiary, OnStar, will be banned from selling geolocation and driver behavior data to credit agencies for five years. That’s good news for G.M. owners. Every car owner and driver deserves to be protected.

Last year, a New York Times investigation highlighted how G.M. was sharing information with insurance companies without clear knowledge from the driver. This resulted in people’s insurance premiums increasing, sometimes without them realizing why that was happening. This data sharing problem was common amongst many carmakers, not just G.M., but figuring out what your car was sharing was often a Sisyphean task, somehow managing to be more complicated than trying to learn similar details about apps or websites.

The FTC complaint zeroed in on how G.M. enrolled people in its OnStar connected vehicle service with a misleading process. OnStar was initially designed to help drivers in an emergency, but over time the service collected and shared more data that had nothing to do with emergency services. The result was people signing up for the service without realizing they were agreeing to share their location and driver behavior data with third parties, including insurance companies and consumer reporting agencies. The FTC also alleged that G.M. didn’t disclose who the data was shared with (insurance companies) and for what purposes (to deny or set rates). Asking car owners to choose between safety and privacy is a nasty tactic, and one that deserves to be stopped.

For the next five years, the settlement bans G.M. and OnStar from these sorts of privacy-invasive practices, making it so they cannot share driver data or geolocation to consumer reporting agencies, which gather and sell consumers’ credit and other information. They must also obtain opt-in consent to collect data, allow consumers to obtain and delete their data, and give car owners an option to disable the collection of location data and driving information.

These are all important, solid steps, and these sorts of rules should apply to all carmakers. With privacy-related options buried away in websites, apps, and infotainment systems, it is currently far too difficult to see what sort of data your car collects, and it is not always possible to opt out of data collection or sharing. In reality, no consumer knowingly agrees to let their carmaker sell their driving data to other companies.

All carmakers should be forced to protect their customers’ privacy, and they should have to do so for longer than just five years. The best way to ensure that would be through a comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation with strong data minimization rules and requirements for clear, opt-in consent. With a strong privacy law, all car makers—not just G.M.— would only have authority to collect, maintain, use, and disclose our data to provide a service that we asked for.

Steven Strang, a writer and literary scholar who founded MIT’s Writing and Communication Center in 1981 and directed it for 40 years, died with family at his side on Dec. 29, 2024. He was 77.

His vision for the center was ambitious. After an MIT working group identified gaps between the students’ technical knowledge and their ability to communicate it — particularly once in positions of leadership — Strang advocated an even broader approach rarely used at other universities. Rather than student-tutors working with peers, Strang hired instructors with doctorates, subject matter expertise, and teaching experience to help train all MIT community members for the current and future careers becoming increasingly reliant on persuasion and the need to communicate with varied audiences.

“He made an indelible mark on the MIT community,” wrote current director Elena Kallestinova in a message to WCC staff soon after Strang’s death. “He was deeply respected as a leader, educator, mentor, and colleague.”

Beginning his professional life as a journalist with the Bangor Daily News, Strang soon shifted to academia, receiving a PhD in English from Brown University and over the decades publishing countless pieces of fiction, poetry, and criticism, in addition to his pedagogical articles on writing and rhetoric. 

But the Writing and Communication Center is his legacy. At his Jan. 11 memorial, longtime MIT lecturer and colleague Thalia Rubio called the WCC “Steve’s creation,” pointing out that it went on to serve many thousands of students and others. Another colleague, Bob Irwin, described in a note Strang’s commitment to making the WCC “a place that offered both friendliness and the highest professional standards of advice and consultation on all communication tasks and issues. Steve himself was conscientious, a respectful director, and a warm and reliable mentor to me and others. I think he was exemplary in his job.”

MIT recognized Strang’s major contributions with a Levitan Teaching Award, an Infinite Mile Award, and an Excellence Award. In nomination letters and testimonials, students and peers alike told of a “tireless commitment,” that “they might not have graduated, or been hired to the job they have today, or gained admittance to graduate school had it not been for the help of The Writing Center.” 

Strang is also remembered for his work founding the MIT Writers Group, which he first offered as a creative writing workshop for Independent Activities Period in 2002. In yet another example of Strang recognizing and meeting a community need, about 70 people from across the Institute showed up that first year.

Strang is survived by a large extended family, including his wife Ayni and her two children, Elly and Marta, whom Strang adopted as his own. Donations in his memory can be made to The Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Materials like car tires, human tissues, and spider webs are diverse in composition, but all contain networks of interconnected strands. A long-standing question about the durability of these materials asks: What is the energy required to fracture these diverse networks? A recently published paper by MIT researchers offers new insights.

“Our findings reveal a simple, general law that governs the fracture energy of networks across various materials and length scales,” says Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor and professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering at MIT. “This discovery has significant implications for the design of new materials, structures, and metamaterials, allowing for the creation of systems that are incredibly tough, soft, and stretchable.”

Despite an established understanding of the importance of failure resistance in design of such networks, no existing physical model effectively linked strand mechanics and connectivity to predict bulk fracture — until now. This new research reveals a universal scaling law that bridges length scales and makes it possible to predict the intrinsic fracture energy of diverse networks.

“This theory helps us predict how much energy it takes to break these networks by advancing a crack,” says graduate student Chase Hartquist, one of the paper’s lead authors. “It turns out that you can design tougher versions of these materials by making the strands longer, more stretchable, or resistant to higher forces before breaking.”

To validate their results, the team 3D-printed a giant, stretchable network, allowing them to demonstrate fracture properties in practice. They found that despite the differences in the networks, they all followed a simple and predictable rule. Beyond the changes to the strands themselves, a network can also be toughened by connecting the strands into larger loops.

“By adjusting these properties, car tires could last longer, tissues could better resist injury, and spider webs could become more durable,” says Hartquist.

Shu Wang, a postdoc in Zhao’s lab and fellow lead author of the paper, called the research findings “an extremely fulfilling moment ... it meant that the same rules could be applied to describe a wide variety of materials, making it easier to design the best material for a given situation.”

The researchers explain that this work represents progress in an exciting and emerging field called “architected materials,” where the structure within the material itself gives it unique properties. They say the discovery sheds light on how to make these materials even tougher, by focusing on designing the segments within the architecture stronger and more stretchable. The strategy is adaptable for materials across fields and can be applied to improve durability of soft robotic actuators, enhance the toughness of engineered tissues, or even create resilient lattices for aerospace technology.

Their open-access paper, “Scaling Law for Intrinsic Fracture Energy of Diverse Stretchable Networks,” is available now in Physical Review X, a leading journal in interdisciplinary physics.

Bia Adams, a London-based neuropsychologist, former professional ballet dancer, and MIT Open Learning learner, has built her career across decades of diverse, interconnected experiences and an emphasis on lifelong learning. She earned her bachelor’s degree in clinical and behavioral psychology, and then worked as a psychologist and therapist for several years before taking a sabbatical in her late 20s to study at the London Contemporary Dance School and The Royal Ballet — fulfilling a long-time dream.

“In hindsight, I think what drew me most to ballet was not so much the form itself,” says Adams, “but more of a subconscious desire to make sense of my body moving through space and time, my emotions and motivations — all within a discipline that is rigorous, meticulous, and routine-based. It’s an endeavor to make sense of the world and myself.”

After acquiring some dance-related injuries, Adams returned to psychology. She completed an online certificate program specializing in medical neuroscience via Duke University, focusing on how pathology arises out of the way the brain computes information and generates behavior.

In addition to her clinical practice, she has also worked at a data science and AI consultancy for neural network research.

In 2022, in search of new things to learn and apply to both her work and personal life, Adams discovered MIT OpenCourseWare within MIT Open Learning. She was drawn to class 8.04 (Quantum Physics I), which specifically focuses on quantum mechanics, as she was hoping to finally gain some understanding of complex topics that she had tried to teach herself in the past with limited success. She credits the course’s lectures, taught by Allan Adams (physicist and principal investigator of the MIT Future Ocean Lab), with finally making these challenging topics approachable.

“I still talk to my friends at length about exciting moments in these lectures,” says Adams. “After the first class, I was hooked.”

Adams’s journey through MIT Open Learning’s educational resources quickly led to a deeper interest in computational neuroscience. She learned how to use tools from mathematics and computer science to better understand the brain, nervous system, and behavior.

She says she gained many new insights from class 6.034 (Artificial Intelligence), particularly in watching the late Professor Patrick Winston’s lectures. She appreciated learning more about the cognitive psychology aspect of AI, including how pioneers in the field looked at how the brain processes information and aimed to build programs that could solve problems. She further enhanced her understanding of AI with the Minds and Machines course on MITx Online, part of Open Learning.

Adams is now in the process of completing Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python, taught by John Guttag; Eric Grimson, former interim vice president for Open Learning; and Ana Bell.

“I am multilingual, and I think the way my brain processes code is similar to the way computers code,” says Adams. “I find learning to code similar to learning a foreign language: both exhilarating and intimidating. Learning the rules, deciphering the syntax, and building my own world through code is one of the most fascinating challenges of my life.”

Adams is also pursuing a master’s degree at Duke and the University College of London, focusing on the neurobiology of sleep and looking particularly at how the biochemistry of the brain can affect this critical function. As a complement to this research, she is currently exploring class 9.40 (Introduction to Neural Computation), taught by Michale Fee and Daniel Zysman, which introduces quantitative approaches to understanding brain and cognitive functions and neurons and covers foundational quantitative tools of data analysis in neuroscience.

In addition to the courses related more directly to her field, MIT Open Learning also provided Adams an opportunity to explore other academic areas. She delved into philosophy for the first time, taking Paradox and Infinity, taught by Professor Agustín Rayo, the Kenan Sahin Dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Digital Learning Lab Fellow David Balcarras, which looks at the intersection of philosophy and mathematics. She also was able to explore in more depth immunology, which had always been of great interest to her, through Professor Adam Martin’s lectures on this topic in class 7.016 (Introductory Biology).

“I am forever grateful for MIT Open Learning,” says Adams, “for making knowledge accessible and fostering a network of curious minds, all striving to share, expand, and apply this knowledge for the greater good.”

Better late than never: last night a federal district court held that backdoor searches of databases full of Americans’ private communications collected under Section 702 ordinarily require a warrant. The landmark ruling comes in a criminal case, United States v. Hasbajrami, after more than a decade of litigation, and over four years since the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that backdoor searches constitute “separate Fourth Amendment events” and directed the district court to determine a warrant was required. Now, that has been officially decreed.

In the intervening years, Congress has reauthorized Section 702 multiple times, each time ignoring overwhelming evidence that the FBI and the intelligence community abuse their access to databases of warrantlessly collected messages and other data. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which Congress assigned with the primary role of judicial oversight of Section 702, has also repeatedly dismissed arguments that the backdoor searches violate the Fourth Amendment, giving the intelligence community endless do-overs despite its repeated transgressions of even lax safeguards on these searches.

This decision sheds light on the government’s liberal use of what is essential a “finders keepers” rule regarding your communication data. As a legal authority, FISA Section 702 allows the intelligence community to collect a massive amount of communications data from overseas in the name of “national security.” But, in cases where one side of that conversation is a person on US soil, that data is still collected and retained in large databases searchable by federal law enforcement. Because the US-side of these communications is already collected and just sitting there, the government has claimed that law enforcement agencies do not need a warrant to sift through them. EFF argued for over a decade that this is unconstitutional, and now a federal court agrees with us.

EFF argued for over a decade that this is unconstitutional, and now a federal court agrees with us.

Hasbajrami involves a U.S. resident who was arrested at New York JFK airport in 2011 on his way to Pakistan and charged with providing material support to terrorists. Only after his original conviction did the government explain that its case was premised in part on emails between Mr. Hasbajrami and an unnamed foreigner associated with terrorist groups, emails collected warrantless using Section 702 programs, placed in a database, then searched, again without a warrant, using terms related to Mr. Hasbajrami himself.

The district court found that regardless of whether the government can lawfully warrantlessly collect communications between foreigners and Americans using Section 702, it cannot ordinarily rely on a “foreign intelligence exception” to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant clause when searching these communications, as is the FBI’s routine practice. And, even if such an exception did apply, the court found that the intrusion on privacy caused by reading our most sensitive communications rendered these searches “unreasonable” under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of US person’s 702 data.

In light of this ruling, we ask Congress to uphold its responsibility to protect civil rights and civil liberties by refusing to renew Section 702 absent a number of necessary reforms, including an official warrant requirement for querying US persons data and increased transparency. On April 15, 2026, Section 702 is set to expire. We expect any lawmaker worthy of that title to listen to what this federal court is saying and create a legislative warrant requirement so that the intelligence community does not continue to trample on the constitutionally protected rights to private communications. More immediately, the FISC should amend its rules for backdoor searches and require the FBI to seek a warrant before conducting them.

The White House executive order “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship,” published Monday, misses the mark on truly protecting Americans’ First Amendment rights. 

The order calls for an investigation of efforts under the Biden administration to “moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech,” especially on social media companies. It goes on to order an Attorney General investigation of any government activities “over the last 4 years” that are inconsistent with the First Amendment. The order states in part: 

Under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.

But noticeably absent from the Executive Order is any commitment to government transparency. In the Santa Clara Principles, a guideline for online content moderation authored by EFF and other civil society groups, we state that “governments and other state actors should themselves report their involvement in content moderation decisions, including data on demands or requests for content to be actioned or an account suspended, broken down by the legal basis for the request." This Executive Order doesn’t come close to embracing such a principle. 

The order is also misguided in its time-limited targeting. Informal government efforts to persuade, cajole, or strong-arm private media platforms, also called “jawboning,” have been an aspect of every U.S. government since at least 2011. Any good-faith inquiry into such pressures would not be limited to a single administration. It’s misleading to suggest the previous administration was the only, or even the primary, source of such pressures. This time limit reeks of political vindictiveness, not a true effort to limit improper government actions. 

To be clear, a look back at past government involvement in online content moderation is a good thing. But an honest inquiry would not be time-limited to the actions of a political opponent, nor limited to only past actions. The public would also be better served by a report that had a clear deadline, and a requirement that the results be made public, rather than sent only to the President’s office. Finally, the investigation would be better placed with an inspector general, not the U.S. Attorney General, which implies possible prosecutions. 

As we have written before, the First Amendment forbids the government from coercing private entities to censor speech. This principle has countered efforts to pressure intermediaries like bookstores and credit card processors to limit others’ speech. But not every communication about user speech is unconstitutional; some are beneficial, like platforms when platforms reach out to government agencies as authoritative sources of information. 

For anyone who may have been excited to see a first-day executive order truly focused on free expression, President Trump’s Jan. 20 order is a disappointment, at best. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is writing law today. This has required no changes in legislative procedure or the rules of legislative bodies—all it takes is one legislator, or legislative assistant, to use generative AI in the process of drafting a bill.

In fact, the use of AI by legislators is only likely to become more prevalent. There are currently projects in the US House, US Senate, and legislatures around the world to trial the use of AI in various ways: searching databases, drafting text, summarizing meetings, performing policy research and analysis, and more. A Brazilian municipality ...

Some of the biggest Biden-era regulations did not appear in the wave of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump. It might not matter.

An executive order the president signed Monday revoked CEQ's rulemaking power, further embedding a shocking decision last year by a federal appeals court.

Federal agencies spent four years expanding their climate work. Now, they will pivot to helping boost fossil fuels.

Withdrawing from the Paris climate accord aims to cut U.S. funding to help other countries cut carbon emissions and build resilience.

Tech giants are backing the massive effort to add data centers across the United States.

The oil giant joined Mitsubishi in financially supporting a tech startup that plans to pull climate pollution from the sky above Louisiana.

It would be the second time President Donald Trump has attempted to withdraw the state’s unique ability to exceed Clean Air Act standards.

The bill comes a day after President Donald Trump directed agencies to pause and redirect federal clean energy credits.