Policy – Page 14

Instacart agrees to refund subscribers $60 million in FTC settlement

Consumer protection, federal trade commission, ftc, grocery delivery, instacart, Policy / Mike M. / December 19, 2025

In a blog post, Instacart emphasized that it has admitted no wrongdoing and elected to settle to “move forward.”

The app defended its “$0 delivery fees” claim by reminding customers that “we clearly and consistently distinguish delivery fees from service fees, which are always shown as a separate, itemized line.” Instacart also noted that subscribers receiving refunds were sent email reminders before renewals were charged. Further, any subscriber shocked by the charges had five days to request an automatic full refund if services were never used, the company said.

Boasting that Instacart has helped users save more than $3 billion “through deals, discounts, and loyalty programs,” the company estimated that users weren’t harmed by its practices and, on average, save $5 for each order.

“We flatly deny any allegations of wrongdoing by the agency, and we believe the foundation of the FTC’s inquiry was fundamentally flawed,” the company said.

The FTC, however, alleged that “hundreds of thousands of consumers have been charged membership fees without receiving benefits from the membership or getting refunds.”

Defending Instacart users from an alleged “variety of deceptive tactics,” the FTC will now work with Instacart to retrieve customer information and issue refunds, a jointly filed order detailing the settlement said.

In its blog, Instacart repeatedly claimed to be transparent and clear with customers about charges. But in a sign that the settlement is already forcing changes, a claim that the company provides “one of the most transparent, customer-friendly subscription programs available, unlocking $0 delivery fees on grocery orders of $10 or more” was starred. At the bottom of the blog, the company clarified that “service and other fees apply.”

Instacart agrees to refund subscribers $60 million in FTC settlement Read More »

School security AI flagged clarinet as a gun. Exec says it wasn’t an error.

AI, ai gun detection, AI security, Artificial Intelligence, Policy, school shooting, zeroeyes / Paul Patrick / December 18, 2025

Human review didn’t stop AI from triggering lockdown at panicked middle school.

A Florida middle school was locked down last week after an AI security system called ZeroEyes mistook a clarinet for a gun, reviving criticism that AI may not be worth the high price schools pay for peace of mind.

Human review of the AI-generated false flag did not stop police from rushing to Lawton Chiles Middle School. Cops expected to find “a man in the building, dressed in camouflage with a ‘suspected weapon pointed down the hallway, being held in the position of a shouldered rifle,’” a Washington Post review of the police report said.

Instead, after finding no evidence of a shooter, cops double-checked with dispatchers who confirmed that a closer look at the images indicated that “the suspected rifle might have been a band instrument.” Among panicked students hiding in the band room, police eventually found the suspect, a student “dressed as a military character from the Christmas movie Red One for the school’s Christmas-themed dress-up day,” the Post reported.

ZeroEyes cofounder Sam Alaimo told the Post that the AI performed exactly as it should have in this case, adopting a “better safe than sorry” outlook. A ZeroEyes spokesperson told Ars that “school resource officers, security directors and superintendents consistently ask us to be proactive and forward them an alert if there is any fraction of a doubt that the threat might be real.”

“We don’t think we made an error, nor does the school,” Alaimo said. “That was better to dispatch [police] than not dispatch.”

Cops left after the confused student confirmed he was “unaware” that the way he was holding his clarinet could have triggered that alert, the Post reported. But ZeroEyes’ spokesperson claimed he was “intentionally holding the instrument in the position of a shouldered rifle.” And seemingly rather than probe why the images weren’t more carefully reviewed to prevent a false alarm on campus, the school appeared to agree with ZeroEyes and blame the student.

“We did not make an error, and the school was pleased with the detection and their response,” ZeroEyes’ spokesperson said.

School warns students not to trigger AI

In a letter to parents, the principal, Melissa Laudani, reportedly told parents that “while there was no threat to campus, I’d like to ask you to speak with your student about the dangers of pretending to have a weapon on a school campus.” Along similar lines, Seminole County Public Schools (SCPS) communications officer, Katherine Crnkovich, emphasized in an email to Ars to “please make sure it is noted that this student wasn’t simply carrying a clarinet. This individual was holding it as if it were a weapon.”

However, warning students against brandishing ordinary objects like weapons isn’t a perfect solution. Video footage from a Texas high school in 2023 showed that ZeroEyes can sometimes confuse shadows for guns, accidentally flagging a student simply walking into school as a potential threat. The advice also ignores that ZeroEyes last year reportedly triggered a lockdown and police response after detecting two theater kids using prop guns to rehearse a play. And a similar AI tool called Omnilert made national headlines confusing an empty Doritos bag with a gun, which led to a 14-year-old Baltimore sophomore’s arrest. In that case, the student told the American Civil Liberties Union that he was just holding the chips when AI sent “like eight cop cars” to detain him.

For years, school safety experts have warned that AI tools like ZeroEyes take up substantial resources even though they are “unproven,” the Post reported. ZeroEyes’ spokesperson told Ars that “in most cases, ZeroEyes customers will never receive a ‘false positive,’” but the company is not transparent about how many false positives it receives or how many guns have been detected. An FAQ only notes that “we are always looking to minimize false positives and are constantly improving our learning models based on data collected.” In March, as some students began questioning ZeroEyes after it flagged a Nerf gun at a Pennsylvania university, a nearby K-12 private school, Germantown Academy, confirmed that its “system often makes ‘non-lethal’ detections.”

One critic, school safety consultant Kenneth Trump, suggested in October that these tools are “security theater,” with firms like ZeroEyes lobbying for taxpayer dollars by relying on what the ACLU called “misleading” marketing to convince schools that tools are proactive solutions to school shootings. Seemingly in response to this backlash, StateScoop reported that days after it began probing ZeroEyes in 2024, the company scrubbed a claim from its FAQ that said ZeroEyes “can prevent active shooter and mass shooting incidents.”

At Lawton Chiles Middle School, “the children were never in any danger,” police confirmed, but experts question if false positives cause students undue stress and suspicion, perhaps doing more harm than good in absence of efficacy studies. Schools may be better off dedicating resources to mental health services proven to benefit kids, some critics have suggested.

Laudani’s letter encouraged parents to submit any questions they have about the incident, but it’s hard to gauge if anyone’s upset. Asked if parents were concerned or if ZeroEyes has ever triggered lockdown at other SCPS schools, Crnkovich told Ars that SCPS does not “provide details regarding the specific school safety systems we utilize.”

It’s clear, however, that SCPS hopes to expand its use of ZeroEyes. In November, Florida state Senator Keith Truenow submitted a request to install “significantly more cameras”—about 850—equipped with ZeroEyes across the school district. Truenow backed up his request for $500,000 in funding over the next year by claiming that “the more [ZeroEyes] coverage there is, the more protected students will be from potential gun violence.”

AI false alarms pose dangers to students

ZeroEyes is among the most popular tools attracting heavy investments from schools in 48 states, which hope that AI gun detection will help prevent school shootings. The AI technology is embedded in security cameras, trained on images of people holding guns, and can supposedly “detect as little as an eighth of an inch of a gun,” an ABC affiliate in New York reported.

Monitoring these systems continually, humans review AI flags, then text any concerning images detected to school superintendents. Police are alerted when human review determines images may constitute actual threats. ZeroEyes’ spokesperson told Ars that “it has detected more than 1,000 weapons in the last three years.” Perhaps most notably, ZeroEyes “detected a minor armed with an AK-47 rifle on an elementary school campus in Texas,” where no shots were fired, StateScoop reported last year.

Schools invest tens or, as the SCPS case shows, even hundreds of thousands annually, the exact amount depending on the number of cameras they want to employ and other variables impacting pricing. ZeroEyes estimates that most schools pay $60 per camera monthly. Bigger contracts can discount costs. In Kansas, a statewide initiative equipping 25 cameras at 1,300 schools with ZeroEyes was reportedly estimated to cost $8.5 million annually. Doubling the number of cameras didn’t provide much savings, though, with ZeroEyes looking to charge $15.2 million annually to expand coverage.

To critics, it appears that ZeroEyes is attempting to corner the market on AI school security, standing to profit off schools’ fears of shootings, while showing little proof of the true value of its systems. Last year, ZeroEyes reported its revenue grew 300 percent year over year from 2023 to 2024, after assisting in “more than ten arrests through its thousands of detections, verifications, and notifications to end users and law enforcement.”

Curt Lavarello, the executive director of the School Safety Advocacy Council, told the ABC News affiliate that “all of this technology is very, very expensive,” considering that “a lot of products … may not necessarily do what they’re being sold to do.”

Another problem, according to experts who have responded to some of the country’s deadliest school shootings, is that while ZeroEyes’ human reviewers can alert police in “seconds,” police response can often take “several minutes.” That delay could diminish ZeroEyes’ impact, one expert suggested, noting that at an Oregon school he responded to, there was a shooter who “shot 25 people in 60 seconds,” StateScoop reported.

In Seminole County, where the clarinet incident happened, ZeroEyes has been used since 2021, but SCPS would not confirm if any guns have ever been detected to justify next year’s desired expansion. It’s possible that SCPS has this information, as Sen. Truenow noted in his funding request that ZeroEyes can share reports with schools “to measure the effectiveness of the ZeroEyes deployment” by reporting on “how many guns were detected and alerted on campus.”

ZeroEyes’ spokesperson told Ars that “trained former law enforcement and military make split-second, life-or-death decisions about whether the threat is real,” which is supposed to help reduce false positives that could become more common as SCPS adds ZeroEyes to many more cameras.

Amanda Klinger, the director of operations at the Educator’s School Safety Network, told the Post that too many false alarms could carry two risks. First, more students could be put in dangerous situations when police descend on schools where they anticipate confronting an active shooter. And second, cops may become fatigued by false alarms, perhaps failing to respond with urgency over time. For students, when AI labels them as suspects, it can also be invasive and humiliating, reports noted.

“We have to be really clear-eyed about what are the limitations of these technologies,” Klinger said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

School security AI flagged clarinet as a gun. Exec says it wasn’t an error. Read More »

Man sues cops who jailed him for 37 days for trolling a Charlie Kirk vigil

censorship, charlie kirk, Donald Trump, false arrest, meme, Policy, social media censorship / Rejus Almole / December 17, 2025

While there’s no evidence of anyone interpreting the meme as a violent threat to school kids, there was a “national uproar” when Bushart’s story started spreading online, his complaint noted. Bushart credits media attention for helping to secure his release. The very next day after a local news station pressed Weems in a TV interview to admit he knew the meme wasn’t referencing his county’s high school and confirm that no one ever asked Bushart to clarify his online remarks, charges were dropped, and Bushart was set free.

Morrow and Weems have been sued in their personal capacities and could “be on the hook for monetary damages,” a press release from Bushart’s legal team at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) said. Perry County, Tennessee, is also a defendant since it’s liable for unconstitutional acts of its sheriffs.

Perry County officials did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Bushart suffered “humiliating” arrest

For Bushart, the arrest has shaken up his life. As the primary breadwinner, he’s worried about how he will support himself and his wife after losing his job while in jail. The arrest was particularly “humiliating,” his complaint said, “given his former role as a law enforcement officer.” And despite his release, fear of arrest has chilled his speech, impacting how he expresses his views online.

“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” Bushart said. “But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”

Bushart is seeking punitive damages, alleging that cops acted “willfully and maliciously” to omit information from his arrest affidavit that would’ve prevented his detention. One of his lawyers, FIRE senior attorney Adam Steinbaugh, said that a win would protect all social media meme posters from police censorship.

“If police can come to your door in the middle of the night and put you behind bars based on nothing more than an entirely false and contrived interpretation of a Facebook post, no one’s First Amendment rights are safe,” Steinbaugh said.

Man sues cops who jailed him for 37 days for trolling a Charlie Kirk vigil Read More »

FCC chair scrubs website after learning it called FCC an “independent agency”

brendan carr, FCC, jimmy kimmel, Policy / Tim Belzer / December 17, 2025

Meanwhile, Ted Cruz wants to restrict FCC’s power to intimidate broadcasters.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr speaks at a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee oversight hearing on December 17, 2025, in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Heather Diehl

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr today faced blistering criticism in a Senate hearing for his September threats to revoke ABC station licenses over comments made by Jimmy Kimmel. While Democrats provided nearly all the criticism, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that Congress should act to restrict the FCC’s power to intimidate news broadcasters.

As an immediate result of today’s hearing, the FCC removed a statement from its website that said it is an independent agency. Carr, who has embraced President Trump’s declaration that independent agencies may no longer operate independently from the White House, apparently didn’t realize that the website still called the FCC an independent agency.

“Yes or no, is the FCC an independent agency?” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) asked. Carr answered that the FCC is not independent, prompting Luján to point to a statement on the FCC website calling the FCC “an independent US government agency overseen by Congress.”

“Just so you know, Brendan, on your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent. This isn’t a trick question… Is your website wrong? Is your website lying?” Luján asked.

“Possibly. The FCC is not an independent agency,” Carr answered. The website still included the statement of independence when Luján asked the question, but it’s now gone.

Carr: Trump can fire any member “for any reason or no reason”

Carr, who argued during the Biden years that the FCC must remain independent from the White House and accused Biden of improperly pressuring the agency, said today that it isn’t independent because the Communications Act does not give commissioners protection from removal by the president.

“The president can remove any member of the commission for any reason or no reason,” Carr said. Carr said his new position is a result of “a sea change in the law” related to an ongoing case involving the Federal Trade Commission, in which the Supreme Court appears likely to approve Trump’s firing of an FTC Democrat.

“I think it comes as no surprise that I’m aligned with President Trump on policy, I think that’s why he designated me as chairman… I can be fired by the president,” Carr said. Carr also said, “The Constitution is clear that all executive power is vested in the president, and Congress can’t change that by legislation.”

Changing the FCC website doesn’t change the law, of course. US law specifically lists 19 federal agencies, including the FCC, that are classified as “independent regulatory agencies.” Indications of the FCC’s independence include that it has commissioners with specified tenures, a multimember structure, partisan balance, and adjudication authority. Trump could test that historical independence by firing an FCC commissioner and waiting to see if the Supreme Court allows it, as he did with the FTC.

Ted Cruz wants to restrict FCC power

Carr’s statements on independence came toward the end of an FCC oversight hearing that lasted nearly three hours. Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee spent much of the time accusing Carr of censoring broadcast stations, while Carr and Committee Chairman Cruz spent more time lobbing allegations of censorship at the Biden administration. But Cruz made it clear that he still thinks Carr shouldn’t have threatened ABC and suggested that Congress reduce the FCC’s power.

Cruz alleged that Democrats supported Biden administration censorship, but in the next sentence, he said the FCC shouldn’t have the legal authority that Carr has used to threaten broadcasters. Cruz said:

If my colleagues across the aisle do what many expect and hammer the chairman over their newfound religion on the First Amendment and free speech, I will be obliged to point out that those concerns were miraculously absent when the Biden administration was pressuring Big Tech to silence Americans for wrongthink on COVID and election security. It will underscore a simple truth, that the public interest standard and its wretched offspring, like the news distortion rule, have outlived whatever utility they once had and it is long past time for Congress to pass reforms.

Cruz avoided criticizing Carr directly today and praised the agency chairman for a “productive and refreshing” approach on most FCC matters. Nonetheless, Cruz’s statement suggests that he’d like to strip Carr and future FCC chairs of the power to wield the public interest standard and news distortion policy against broadcasters.

At today’s hearing and in recent months, Carr defended his actions on Kimmel by citing the public interest standard that the FCC applies to broadcasters that have licenses to use the public airwaves. Carr also defended his frequent threats to enforce the FCC’s rarely invoked news distortion policy, even though the FCC apparently hasn’t made a finding of news distortion since 1993.

Cruz said today he agrees with Carr “that Jimmy Kimmel is angry, overtly partisan, and profoundly unfunny,” and that “ABC and its affiliates would have been fully within their rights to fire him or simply to no longer air his program.” But Cruz added that government cannot “force private entities to take actions that the government cannot take directly. Government officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech.”

Cruz continued:

This is why it was so insidious how the Biden administration jawboned social media into shutting down conservatives online over accurate information on COVID or voter fraud. My Democrat colleagues were persistently silent over that scandal, but I welcome them now having discovered the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion. Mr. Chairman, my question is this, so long as there is a public interest standard, shouldn’t it be understood to encompass robust First Amendment protections to ensure that the FCC cannot use it to chill speech?

Carr answered, “I agree with you there and I think the examples you laid out of weaponization in the Biden years are perfect examples.” Carr criticized liberals for asking the Biden-era FCC to not renew a Fox station license and criticized Congressional Democrats for “writing letters to cable companies pressuring them to drop Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax because they disagreed with the political perspectives of those cable channels.”

Cruz seemed satisfied with the answer and changed the topic to the FCC’s management of spectrum. After that, much of the hearing consisted of Democrats pointing to Carr’s past statements supporting free speech and accusing him of using the FCC to suppress broadcasters’ speech.

Senate Democrats criticize Carr’s Kimmel threats

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Carr if it “is appropriate to use your position to threaten companies that broadcast political satire.” Carr responded, “I think any licensee that operates on the public airwaves has a responsibility to comply with the public interest standard, and that’s been the case for decades.”

Klobuchar replied, “I asked if you think it’s appropriate for you to use your position to threaten companies, and this incident with Kimmel wasn’t an isolated event. You launched investigations into every major broadcast network except Fox. Is that correct?”

Carr noted that “we have a number of investigations ongoing.” Later, he said, “If you want to step back and talk about weaponization, we saw that for four years in the Biden administration.”

“Joe Biden is no longer president,” Klobuchar said. “You are head of the FCC, and Donald Trump is president, and I am trying to deal with this right now.”

As he has in the past, Carr claimed today that he never threatened ABC station licenses. “Democrats at the time were saying that we explicitly threatened to pull a license if Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t fired,” Carr said. “That never happened; that was nothing more than projection and distortion by Democrats. What I am saying is any broadcaster that uses the airwaves, whether radio or TV, has to comply with the public interest standard.”

In fact, Carr said on a podcast in September that broadcast stations should tell ABC and its owner Disney that “we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we, the licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) pointed to another Carr statement from the podcast in which he said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Schatz criticized Carr’s claim that he never threatened licenses. “You’re kind of tiptoeing through the tulips here,” Schatz said.

FCC Democrat: Agency is censoring Trump critics

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat, testified at today’s hearing and said that “the First Amendment applies to broadcasters regardless of whether they use spectrum or not, and the Communications Act prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcasters.”

Gomez said the Trump administration “has been on a campaign to censor content and to control the media and others, any critics of this administration, and it is weaponizing any levers it has in order to control that media. That includes using the FCC to threaten licensees, and broadcasters are being chilled. We are hearing from broadcasters that they are afraid to air programming that is critical of this administration because they’re afraid of being dragged before the FCC in an investigation.”

Gomez suggested the “public interest” phrase is being used by the FCC too vaguely in reference to investigations of broadcast stations. She said the FCC should “define what we mean by operating in the public interest,” saying the commission has been using the standard “as a means to go after any content we don’t like.” She said that “it’s still unconstitutional to revoke licenses based solely on content that the FCC doesn’t like.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) criticized Carr for investigating San Francisco-based KCBS over a report on Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, in which the station described vehicles driven by ICE agents. Carr defended the probe today, saying, “The concern there in the report was there may have been interference with lawful ICE operations and so we were asking questions about what happened.”

Markey said, “The news journalists were just covering an important news story, and some conservatives were upset by the coverage, so you used your power as FCC chairman to hang a sword of Damocles over a local radio station’s head… Guess what happened? The station demoted the anchor who first read that news report over the air and pulled back on its political coverage. You got what you wanted.”

Carr said, “Broadcasters understand, perhaps for the first time in years, that they’re going to be held accountable to the public interest, to broadcast hoax rules, to the news distortion policy. I think that’s a good thing.”

Carr then criticized Markey for signing a letter to the FCC in 2018 that asked the agency to investigate conservative broadcaster Sinclair. The Markey/Carr exchange ended with the two men shouting over each other, making much of it unintelligible, although Markey said that Carr should resign because he’s creating a chilling effect on news broadcasters.

Cruz similarly criticized Democrats for targeting Sinclair, prompting Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) to defend the 2018 letter. “Chairman Carr’s threats to companies he directly regulates are not the same thing as a letter from Congress requesting an agency examine a matter of public concern. Members on both sides of the aisle frequently write similar letters; that’s the proper oversight role of Congress,” he said.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

FCC chair scrubs website after learning it called FCC an “independent agency” Read More »

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says

Accenture, AI, Digital Services Act, Donald Trump, elon musk, European Commission, Mistral, Policy, Spotify, trump administration, X / Mike M. / December 17, 2025

Spotify and Accenture caught in crossfire as Trump attacks EU tech regulations.

The US threatened to restrict some of the largest service providers in the European Union as retaliation for EU tech regulations and investigations are increasingly drawing Donald Trump’s ire.

On Tuesday, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) issued a warning on X, naming Spotify, Accenture, Amadeus, Mistral, Publicis, and DHL among nine firms suddenly yanked into the middle of the US-EU tech fight.

“The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against US service providers,” USTR’s post said.

The clash comes after Elon Musk’s X became the first tech company fined for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, which is widely considered among the world’s strictest tech regulations. Trump was not appeased by the European Commission (EC) noting that X was not ordered to pay the maximum possible fine. Instead, the $140 million fine sparked backlash within the Trump administration, including from Vice President JD Vance, who slammed the fine as “censorship” of X and its users.

Asked for comment on the USTR’s post, an EC spokesperson told Ars that the EU intends to defend its tech regulations while implementing commitments from a Trump trade deal that the EU struck in August.

“The EU is an open and rules-based market, where companies from all over the world do business successfully and profitably,” the EC’s spokesperson said. “As we have made clear many times, our rules apply equally and fairly to all companies operating in the EU,” ensuring “a safe, fair and level playing field in the EU, in line with the expectations of our citizens. We will continue to enforce our rules fairly, and without discrimination.”

Trump on shaky ground due to “AI bubble”

On X, the USTR account suggested that the EU was overlooking that US companies “provide substantial free services to EU citizens and reliable enterprise services to EU companies,” while supporting “millions of jobs and more than $100 billion in direct investment in Europe.”

To stop what Trump views as “overseas extortion” of American tech companies, the USTR said the US was prepared to go after EU service providers, which “have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.”

“If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of US service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures,” USTR’s post said. “Should responsive measures be necessary, US law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions.”

The pushback comes after the Trump administration released a November national security report that questioned how long the EU could remain a “reliable” ally as overregulation of its tech industry could hobble both its economy and military strength. Claiming that the EU was only “doubling down” on such regulations, the EU “will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” the report predicted.

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the report said.

However, the report acknowledged that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States.”

“Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity,” the report said. “European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world’s most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.”

At least one expert in the EU has suggested that the EU can use this acknowledgement as leverage, while perhaps even using the looming threat of the supposed American “AI bubble” bursting to pressure Trump into backing off EU tech laws.

In an op-ed for The Guardian, Johnny Ryan, the director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, suggested that the EU could even throw Trump’s presidency into “crisis” by taking bold steps that Trump may not see coming.

EU can take steps to burst “AI bubble”

According to Ryan, the national security report made clear that the EU must fight the US or else “perish.” However, the EU has two “strong cards” to play if it wants to win the fight, he suggested.

Right now, market analysts are fretting about an “AI bubble,” with US investment in AI far outpacing potential gains until perhaps 2030. A Harvard University business professor focused on helping businesses implement cutting-edge technology like generative AI, Andy Wu, recently explained that AI’s big problem is that “everyone can imagine how useful the technology will be, but no one has figured out yet how to make money.”

“If the market can keep the faith to persist, it buys the necessary time for the technology to mature, for the costs to come down, and for companies to figure out the business model,” Wu said. But US “companies can end up underwater if AI grows fast but less rapidly than they hope for,” he suggested.

During this moment, Ryan wrote, it’s not just AI firms with skin in the game, but potentially all of Trump’s supporters. The US is currently on “shaky economic ground” with AI investment accounting “for virtually all (92 percent) GDP growth in the first half of this year.”

“The US’s bet on AI is now so gigantic that every MAGA voter’s pension is bound to the bubble’s precarious survival,” Ryan said.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, could exploit this apparent weakness first by messing with one of the biggest players in America’s AI industry, Nvidia, then by ramping up enforcement of the tech laws Trump loathes.

According to Ryan, “Dutch company ASML commands a global monopoly on the microchip-etching machines that use light to carve patterns on silicon,” and Nvidia needs those machines if it wants to remain the world’s most valuable company. Should the US GDP remain reliant on AI investment for growth, von der Leyen could use export curbs on that technology like a “lever,” Ryan said, controlling “whether and by how much the US economy expands or contracts.”

Withholding those machines “would be difficult for Europe” and “extremely painful for the Dutch economy,” Ryan noted, but “it would be far more painful for Trump.”

Another step the EU could take is even “easier,” Ryan suggested. It could go even harder on the enforcement of tech regulations based on evidence of mismanaged data surfaced in lawsuits against giants like Google and Meta. For example, it seems clear that Meta may have violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), after the Facebook owner was “unable to tell a US court that what its internal systems do with your data, or who can access it, or for what purpose.”

“This data free-for-all lets big tech companies train their AI models on masses of everyone’s data, but it is illegal in Europe, where companies are required to carefully control and account for how they use personal data,” Ryan wrote. “All Brussels has to do is crack down on Ireland, which for years has been a wild west of lax data enforcement, and the repercussions will be felt far beyond.”

Taking that step would also arguably make it harder for tech companies to secure AI investments, since firms would have to disclose that their “AI tools are barred from accessing Europe’s valuable markets,” Ryan said.

Calling the reaction to the X fine “extreme,” Ryan pushed for von der Leyen to advance on both fronts, forecasting that “the AI bubble would be unlikely to survive this double shock” and likely neither could Trump’s approval ratings. There’s also a possibility that tech firms could pressure Trump to back down if coping with any increased enforcement threatens AI progress.

Although Wu suggested that Big Tech firms like Google and Meta would likely be “insulated” from the AI bubble bursting, Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn’t seem so sure. In November, Pichai told the BBC that if AI investments didn’t pay off quickly enough, he thinks “no company is going to be immune, including us.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says Read More »

Texas sues biggest TV makers, alleging smart TVs spy on users without consent

Hisense, lg, Policy, samsung, smart tvs, Sony, tcl, texas / Mike M. / December 16, 2025

Automated Content Recognition brings “mass surveillance” to homes, lawsuits say.

Credit: Getty Images | Maskot

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five large TV manufacturers yesterday, alleging that their smart TVs spy on viewers without consent. Paxton sued Samsung, the longtime TV market share leader, along with LG, Sony, Hisense, and TCL.

“These companies have been unlawfully collecting personal data through Automated Content Recognition (‘ACR’) technology,” Paxton’s office alleged in a press release that contains links to all five lawsuits. “ACR in its simplest terms is an uninvited, invisible digital invader. This software can capture screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user’s knowledge or consent. The companies then sell that consumer information to target ads across platforms for a profit. This technology puts users’ privacy and sensitive information, such as passwords, bank information, and other personal information at risk.”

The lawsuits allege violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, seeking damages of up to $10,000 for each violation and up to $250,000 for each violation affecting people 65 years or older. Texas also wants restraining orders prohibiting the collection, sharing, and selling of ACR data while the lawsuits are pending.

Texas argues that providing personalized content and targeted advertising are not legitimate purposes for collecting ACR data about consumers. The companies’ “insatiable appetite for consumer data far exceeds what is reasonably necessary,” and the “invasive data harvesting is only needed to increase advertisement revenue, which does not satisfy a consumer-necessity standard,” the lawsuits say.

Paxton is far from the first person to raise privacy concerns about smart TVs. The Center for Digital Democracy advocacy group said in a report last year that in “the world of connected TV, viewer surveillance is now built directly into the television set, making manufacturers central players in data collection, monitoring, and digital marketing.” We recently published a guide on how to break free from smart TV ads and tracking.

“Companies using ACR claim that it is all opt-in data, with permission required to use it,” the Center for Digital Democracy report said. “But the ACR system is bundled into new TVs as part of the initial set-up, and its extensive role in monitoring and sharing viewer actions is not fully explained. As a consequence, most consumers would be unaware of the threats and risks involved in signing up for the service.”

“Mass surveillance system” in US living rooms

Pointing out that Hisense and TCL are based in China, Paxton’s press release said the firms’ “Chinese ties pose serious concerns about consumer data harvesting and are exacerbated by China’s National Security Law, which gives its government the capability to get its hands on US consumer data.”

“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” Paxton said. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”

The Paxton lawsuits, filed in district courts in several Texas counties, are identical in many respects. The complaints allege that TVs made by the five companies “aren’t just entertainment devices—they’re a mass surveillance system sitting in millions of American living rooms. What consumers were told would enhance their viewing experience actually tracks, analyzes, and sells intimate details about everything they watch.”

Using ACR, each company “secretly monitors what consumers watch across streaming apps, cable, and even connected devices like gaming consoles or Blu-ray players,” and harvests the data to build profiles of consumer behavior and sell the data for profit, the complaints say.

We contacted the five companies sued by Texas today. Sony, LG, and Hisense responded and said they would not comment on a pending legal matter.

Difficult opt-out processes detailed

The complaints allege that the companies fail to obtain meaningful consent from users. The following excerpt is from the Samsung lawsuit but is repeated almost verbatim in the others:

Consumers never agreed to Samsung Watchware. When families buy a television, they don’t expect it to spy on them. They don’t expect their viewing habits packaged and auctioned to advertisers. Yet Samsung deceptively guides consumers to activate ACR and buries any explanation of what that means in dense legal jargon that few will read or understand. The so-called “consent” Samsung obtains is meaningless. Disclosures are hidden, vague, and misleading. The company collects far more data than necessary to make the TV work. Consumers are stripped of real choice and kept in the dark about what’s happening in their own homes on Samsung Smart TVs.

Samsung and other companies force consumers to go through multistep menus to exercise their privacy choices, Texas said. “Consumers must circumnavigate a long, non-intuitive path to exercise their right to opt-out,” the Samsung lawsuit said. This involves selecting menu choices for Settings, Additional Settings, General Privacy, Terms & Privacy, Viewing Information Services, and, finally, “Disable,” the lawsuit said. There are “additional toggles for Interest-Based Ads, Ad Personalization, and Privacy Choices,” the lawsuit said.

The “privacy choices are not meaningful because opt-out rights are scattered across four or more separate menus which requires approximately 15+ clicks,” the lawsuit continued. “To fully opt-out of ACR and related ad tracking on Samsung Smart TVs, consumers must disable at least two settings: (1) Viewing Information Services, and (2) Interest-Based Ads. Each of which appear in different parts of the setting UI. Conversely, Samsung provides consumers with a one-click enrollment option to opt-in during the initial start-up process.”

When consumers first start up a Samsung smart TV, they “must click through a multipage onboarding flow before landing on a consent screen, titled Smart Hub Terms & Conditions,” the lawsuit said. “Upon finally reaching the consent screen, consumers are presented with four notices: Terms & Conditions: Dispute Resolution Agreement, Smart Hub U.S. Policy Notice, Viewing Information Services, and Interest-Based Advertisements Service U.S. Privacy Notice, with only one button prominently displayed: I Agree to all.”

Deceptive trade practices alleged

It would be unreasonable to expect consumers to understand that Samsung TVs come equipped with surveillance capabilities, the lawsuit said. “Most consumers do not know, nor have any reason to suspect, that Samsung Smart TVs are capturing in real-time the audio and visuals displayed on the screen and using the information to profile them for advertisers,” it said.

Paxton alleges that TV companies violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act with misrepresentations regarding the collection of personal information and failure to disclose the use of ACR technology. The lawsuit against Hisense additionally alleges a failure to disclose that it may provide the Chinese government with consumers’ personal data.

Hisense “fails to disclose to Texas Consumers that under Chinese law, Hisense is required to transfer its collections of Texas consumers’ personal data to the People’s Republic of China when requested by the PRC,” the lawsuit said.

The TCL lawsuit doesn’t include that specific charge. But both the Hisense and TCL complaints say the Chinese Communist Party may use ACR data from the companies’ smart TVs “to influence or compromise public figures in Texas, including judges, elected officials, and law enforcement, and for corporate espionage by surveilling those employed in critical infrastructure, as part of the CCP’s long-term plan to destabilize and undermine American democracy.”

The TVs “are effectively Chinese-sponsored surveillance devices, recording the viewing habits of Texans at every turn without their knowledge or consent,” the lawsuits said.

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Senators count the shady ways data centers pass energy costs on to Americans

AI, ai data centers, Amazon, data center coalition, data centers, Google, Meta, microsoft, Policy / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

Senators demand Big Tech pay upfront for data center spikes in electricity bills.

Senators launched a probe Tuesday demanding that tech companies explain exactly how they plan to prevent data center projects from increasing electricity bills in communities where prices are already skyrocketing.

In letters to seven AI firms, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) cited a study estimating that “electricity prices have increased by as much as 267 percent in the past five years” in “areas located near significant data center activity.”

Prices increase, senators noted, when utility companies build out extra infrastructure to meet data centers’ energy demands—which can amount to one customer suddenly consuming as much power as an entire city. They also increase when demand for local power outweighs supply. In some cases, residents are blindsided by higher bills, not even realizing a data center project was approved, because tech companies seem intent on dodging backlash and frequently do not allow terms of deals to be publicly disclosed.

AI firms “ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) preventing them from sharing information with their constituents, operate through what appear to be shell companies to mask the real owner of the data center, and require that landowners sign NDAs as part of the land sale while telling them only that a ‘Fortune 100 company’ is planning an ‘industrial development’ seemingly in an attempt to hide the very existence of the data center,” senators wrote.

States like Virginia with the highest concentration of data centers could see average electricity prices increase by another 25 percent by 2030, senators noted. But price increases aren’t limited to the states allegedly striking shady deals with tech companies and greenlighting data center projects, they said. “Interconnected and interstate power grids can lead to a data center built in one state raising costs for residents of a neighboring state,” senators reported.

Under fire for supposedly only pretending to care about keeping neighbors’ costs low were Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Equinix, Digital Realty, and CoreWeave. Senators accused firms of paying “lip service,” claiming that they would do everything in their power to avoid increasing residential electricity costs, while actively lobbying to pass billions in costs on to their neighbors.

For example, Amazon publicly claimed it would “make sure” it would cover costs so they wouldn’t be passed on. But it’s also a member of an industry lobbying group, the Data Center Coalition, that “has opposed state regulatory decisions requiring data center companies to pay a higher percentage of costs upfront,” senators wrote. And Google made similar statements, despite having an executive who opposed a regulatory solution that would set data centers into their own “rate class”—and therefore responsible for grid improvement costs that could not be passed on to other customers—on the grounds that it was supposedly “discriminatory.”

“The current, socialized model of electricity ratepaying,” senators explained—where costs are shared across all users—”was not designed for an era where just one customer requires the same amount of electricity as some of the largest cities in America.”

Particularly problematic, senators emphasized, were reports that tech firms were getting discounts on energy costs as utility companies competed for their business, while prices went up for their neighbors.

Ars contacted all firms targeted by lawmakers. Four did not respond. Microsoft and Meta declined to comment. Digital Realty told Ars that it “looks forward to working with all elected officials to continue to invest in the digital infrastructure required to support America’s leadership in technology, which underpins modern life and creates high-paying jobs.”

Regulatory pressure likely to increase as bills go up

Senators are likely exploring whether to pass legislation that would help combat price increases that they say cause average Americans to struggle to keep the lights on. They’ve asked tech companies to respond to their biggest questions about data center projects by January 12, 2026.

Among their top questions, senators wanted to know about firms’ internal projections looking forward with data center projects. That includes sharing their projected energy use through 2030, as well as the “impact of your AI data centers on regional utility costs.” Companies are also expected to explain how “internal projections of data center energy consumption” justify any “opposition to the creation of a distinct data center rate class.”

Additionally, senators asked firms to outline steps they’ve taken to prevent passing on costs to neighbors and details of any impact studies companies have conducted.

Likely to raise the most eyebrows, however, would be answers to questions about “tax deductions or other financial incentives” tech firms have received from city and state governments. Those numbers would be interesting to compare with other information senators demanded that companies share, detailing how much they’ve spent on lobbying and advocacy for data centers. Senators appear keen to know how much tech companies are paying to avoid covering a proportionate amount of infrastructure costs.

“To protect consumers, data centers must pay a greater share of the costs upfront for future energy usage and updates to the electrical grid provided specifically to accommodate data centers’ energy needs,” senators wrote.

Requiring upfront payment is especially critical, senators noted, since some tech firms have abandoned data center projects, leaving local customers to bear the costs of infrastructure changes without utility companies ever generating any revenue. Communities must also consider that AI firms’ projected energy demand could severely dip if enterprise demand for AI falls short of expectations, AI capabilities “plateau” and trigger widespread indifference, AI companies shift strategies “away from scaling computer power,” or chip companies “find innovative ways to make AI more energy-efficient.”

“If data centers end up providing less business to the utility companies than anticipated, consumers could be left with massive electricity bills as utility companies recoup billions in new infrastructure costs, with nothing to show for it,” senators wrote.

Already, Utah, Oregon, and Ohio have passed laws “creating a separate class of utility customer for data centers which includes basic financial safeguards such as upfront payments and longer contract length,” senators noted, and Virginia is notably weighing a similar law.

At least one study, The New York Times noted, suggested that data centers may have recently helped reduce electricity costs by spreading the costs of upgrades over more customers, but those outcomes varied by state and could not account for future AI demand.

“It remains unclear whether broader, sustained load growth will increase long-run average costs and prices,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers concluded. “In some cases, spikes in load growth can result in significant, near-term retail price increase.”

Until companies prove they’re paying their fair share, senators expect electricity bills to keep climbing, particularly in vulnerable areas. That will likely only increase pressure for regulators to intervene, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, Ari Peskoe, suggested in September.

“The utility business model is all about spreading costs of system expansion to everyone, because we all benefit from a reliable, robust electricity system,” Peskoe said. “But when it’s a single consumer that is using so much energy—basically that of an entire city—and when that new city happens to be owned by the wealthiest corporations in the world, I think it’s time to look at the fundamental assumptions of utility regulation and make sure that these facilities are really paying for all of the infrastructure costs to connect them to the system and to power them.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Utah leaders hinder efforts to develop solar energy supply

Policy, Science, solar cells, Solar energy, syndication, Utah / Paul Patrick / December 16, 2025

Solar power accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox believes his state needs more power—a lot more. By some estimates, Utah will require as much electricity in the next five years as it generated all last century to meet the demands of a growing population as well as chase data centers and AI developers to fuel its economy.

To that end, Cox announced Operation Gigawatt last year, declaring the state would double energy production in the next decade. Although the announcement was short on details, Cox, a Republican, promised his administration would take an “any of the above” approach, which aims to expand all sources of energy production.

Despite that goal, the Utah Legislature’s Republican supermajority, with Cox’s acquiescence, has taken a hard turn against solar power—which has been coming online faster than any other source in Utah and accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid.

Cox signed a pair of bills passed this year that will make it more difficult and expensive to develop and produce solar energy in Utah by ending solar development tax credits and imposing a hefty new tax on solar generation. A third bill aimed at limiting solar development on farmland narrowly missed the deadline for passage but is expected to return next year.

While Operation Gigawatt emphasizes nuclear and geothermal as Cox’s preferred sources, the legislative broadside, and Cox’s willingness to go along with it, caught many in the solar industry off guard. The three bills, in their original form, could have brought solar development to a halt if not for solar industry lobbyists negotiating a lower tax rate and protecting existing projects as well as those under construction from the brunt of the impact.

“It took every dollar of political capital from all the major solar developers just to get to something tolerable, so that anything they have under development will get built and they can move on to greener pastures,” said one industry insider, indicating that solar developers will likely pursue projects in more politically friendly states. ProPublica spoke with three industry insiders—energy developers and lobbyists—all of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing lawmakers who, next month, will again consider legislation affecting the industry.

The Utah Legislature’s pivot away from solar mirrors President Donald Trump taking a more hostile approach to the industry than his predecessor. Trump has ordered the phaseout of lucrative federal tax incentives for solar and other renewable energy, which expanded under the Biden administration. The loss of federal incentives is a bigger hit to solar companies than the reductions to Utah’s tax incentives, industry insiders acknowledged. The administration has also canceled large wind and solar projects, which Trump has lamented as “the scam of the century.” He described solar as “farmer killing.”

Yet Cox criticized the Trump administration’s decision to kill a massive solar project in neighboring Nevada. Known as a governor who advocates for a return to more civil political discourse, Cox doesn’t often pick fights. But he didn’t pull punches with the decision to halt the Esmeralda 7 project planned on 62,300 acres of federal land. The central Nevada project was expected to produce 6.2 gigawatts of power—enough to supply nearly eight times the number of households in Las Vegas. (Although the Trump administration canceled the environmental review of the joint project proposed by multiple developers, it has the potential to move forward as individual projects.)

“This is how we lose the AI/energy arms race with China,” Cox wrote on X when news surfaced of the project’s cancellation. “Our country needs an all-of-the-above approach to energy (like Utah).”

But he didn’t take on his own Legislature, at least publicly.

Many of Utah’s Republican legislators have been skeptical of solar for years, criticizing its footprint on the landscape and viewing it as an unreliable energy source, while lamenting the retirement of coal-generated power plants. The economies of several rural counties rely on mining coal. But lawmakers’ skepticism hadn’t coalesced into successful anti-solar legislation—until this year. When Utah lawmakers convened at the start of 2025, they took advantage of the political moment to go after solar.

“This is a sentiment sweeping through red states, and it’s very disconcerting and very disturbing,” said Steve Handy, Utah director of The Western Way, which describes itself as a conservative organization advocating for an all-of-the-above approach to energy development.

The shift in sentiment against solar energy has created a difficult climate for an all-of-the-above approach. Solar projects can be built quickly on Utah’s vast, sun-drenched land, while nuclear is a long game with projects expected to take a decade or more to come online under optimistic scenarios.

Cox generally supports solar, “in the right places,” especially when the captured energy can be stored in large batteries for distribution on cloudy days and after the sun goes down.

Cox said that instead of vetoing the anti-solar bills, he spent his political capital to moderate the legislation’s impact. “I think you’ll see where our fingerprints were,” he told ProPublica. He didn’t detail specific changes for which he advocated but said the bills’ earlier iterations would have “been a lot worse.”

“We will continue to see solar in Utah.”

Cox’s any-of-the-above approach to energy generation draws from a decades-old Republican push similarly titled “all of the above.” The GOP policy’s aim was as much about preserving and expanding reliance on fossil fuels (indeed, the phrase may have been coined by petroleum lobbyists) as it was turning to cleaner energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal.

As governor of a coal-producing state, Cox hasn’t shown interest in reducing reliance on such legacy fuels. But as he slowly rolls out Operation Gigawatt, his focus has been on geothermal and nuclear power. Last month, he announced plans for a manufacturing hub for small modular reactors in the northern Utah community of Brigham City, which he hopes will become a nuclear supply chain for Utah and beyond. And on a recent trade mission to New Zealand, he signed an agreement to collaborate with the country on geothermal energy development.

Meanwhile, the bills Cox signed into law already appear to be slowing solar development in Utah. Since May, when the laws took effect, 51 planned solar projects withdrew their applications to connect to the state’s grid—representing more than a quarter of all projects in Utah’s transmission connection queue. Although projects drop out for many reasons, some industry insiders theorize the anti-solar legislation could be at play.

Caught in the political squeeze over power are Utah customers, who are footing higher electricity bills. Earlier this year, the state’s utility, Rocky Mountain Power, asked regulators to approve a 30 percent hike to fund increased fuel and wholesale energy costs, as well as upgrades to the grid. In response to outrage from lawmakers, the utility knocked the request down to 18 percent. Regulators eventually awarded the utility a 4.7 percent increase—a decision the utility promptly appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Juliet Carlisle, a University of Utah political science professor focusing on environmental policy, said the new solar tax could signal to large solar developers that Utah energy policy is “becoming more unpredictable,” prompting them to build elsewhere. This, in turn, could undermine Cox’s efforts to quickly double Utah’s electricity supply.

Operation Gigawatt “relies on rapid deployment across multiple energy sources, including renewables,” she said. “If renewable growth slows—especially utility-scale solar, which is currently the fastest-deploying resource—the state may face challenges meeting demand growth timelines.”

Rep. Kay Christofferson, R-Lehi, had sponsored legislation to end the solar industry’s state tax credits for several legislative sessions, but this was the first time the proposal succeeded.

Christofferson agrees Utah is facing unprecedented demand for power, and he supports Cox’s any-of-the-above approach. But he doesn’t think solar deserves the advantages of tax credits. Despite improving battery technology, he still considers it an intermittent source and thinks overreliance on it would work against Utah’s energy goals.

In testimony on his bill, Christofferson said he believed the tax incentives had served their purpose of getting a new industry off the ground—16 percent of Utah’s power generation now comes from solar, ranking it 16th in the nation for solar capacity.

Christofferson’s bill was the least concerning to the industry, largely because it negotiated a lengthy wind-down of the subsidies. Initially it would have ended the tax credit after Jan. 1, 2032. But after negotiations with the solar industry, he extended the deadline to 2035.

The bill passed the House, but when it reached the Senate floor, Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, moved the end of the incentives to 2028. He told ProPublica he believes solar is already established and no longer needs the subsidy. Christofferson tried to defend his compromise but ultimately voted with the legislative majority.

Unlike Christofferson’s bill, which wasn’t born of an antipathy for renewable energy, Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, made it clear in public statements and behind closed doors to industry lobbyists that the goal of his bill was to make solar pay.

The bill imposes a tax on all solar production. The proceeds will substantially increase the state’s endangered species fund, which Utah paradoxically uses to fight federal efforts to list threatened animals for protection. Snider cast his bill as pro-environment, arguing the money could also go to habitat protection.

As initially written, the bill would have taxed not only future projects, but also those already producing power and, more worrisome for the industry, projects under construction or in development with financing in place. The margins on such projects are thin, and the unanticipated tax could kill projects already in the works, one solar industry executive testified.

“Companies like ours are being effectively punished for investing in the state,” testified another.

The pushback drew attacks from Snider, who accused solar companies of hypocrisy on the environment.

Industry lobbyists who spoke to ProPublica said Snider wasn’t as willing to negotiate as Christofferson. However, they succeeded in reducing the tax rate on future developments and negotiated a smaller, flat fee for existing projects.

“Everyone sort of decided collectively to save the existing projects and let it go for future projects,” said one lobbyist.

Snider told ProPublica, “My goal was never to run anybody out of business. If we wanted to make it more heavy-handed, we could have. Utah is a conservative state, and I would have had all the support.”

Snider said, like the governor, he favors an any-of-the-above approach to energy generation and doesn’t “want to take down any particular industry or source.” But he believes utility-scale solar farms need to pay to mitigate their impact on the environment. He likened his bill to federal law that requires royalties from oil and gas companies to be used for conservation. He hopes federal lawmakers will use his bill as a model for federal legislation that would apply to solar projects nationwide.

“This industry needs to give back to the environment that they claim very heavily they are going to protect,” he said. “I do believe there’s a tinge of hypocrisy to this whole movement. You can’t say you’re good for the environment and not offset your impacts.”

One of the more emotional debates over solar is set to return next year, after a bill that would end tax incentives for solar development on agricultural land failed to get a vote in the final minutes of this year’s session. Sponsored by Rep. Colin Jack, R-St. George, the bill has been fast-tracked in the next session, which begins in January.

Jack said he was driven to act by ranchers who were concerned that solar companies were outbidding them for land they had been leasing to graze cows. Solar companies pay substantially higher rates than ranchers can. His bill initially had a slew of land use restrictions—such as mandating the distance between projects and residential property and creeks, minimum lot sizes and 4-mile “green zones” between projects—that solar lobbyists said would have strangled their industry. After negotiating with solar developers, Jack eliminated the land use restrictions while preserving provisions to prohibit tax incentives for solar farms on private agricultural land and to create standards for decommissioning projects.

Many in rural Utah recoil at rows of black panels disrupting the landscape and fear solar farms will displace the ranching and farming way of life. Indeed, some wondered whether Cox, who grew up on a farm in central Utah, would have been as critical of Trump scuttling a 62,300-acre solar farm in his own state as he was of the Nevada project’s cancellation.

Peter Greathouse, a rancher in western Utah’s Millard County, said he is worried about solar farms taking up grazing land in his county. “Twelve and a half percent is privately owned, and a lot of that is not farmable. So if you bring in these solar places that start to eat up the farmland, it can’t be replaced,” he said.

Utah is losing about 500,000 acres of agricultural land every 10 years, most of it to housing. A report by The Western Way estimated solar farms use 0.1 percent of the United States’ total land mass. That number is expected to grow to 0.46 percent by 2050—a tiny fraction of what is used by agriculture. Of the land managed by the Utah Trust Lands Administration, less than 3,000 of the 2.9 million acres devoted to grazing have been converted to solar farms.

Other ranchers told ProPublica they’ve been able to stay on their land and preserve their way of life by leasing to solar. Landon Kesler’s family, which raises cattle for team roping competitions, has leased land to solar for more than a decade. The revenue has allowed the family to almost double its land holdings, providing more room to ranch, Kesler said.

“I’m going to be quite honest, it’s absurd,” Kesler said of efforts to limit solar on agricultural land. “Solar very directly helped us tie up other property to be used for cattle and ranching. It didn’t run us out; it actually helped our agricultural business thrive.”

Solar lobbyists and executives have been working to bolster the industry’s image with lawmakers ahead of the next legislative session. They’re arguing solar is a good neighbor.

“We don’t use water, we don’t need sidewalks, we don’t create noise, and we don’t create light,” said Amanda Smith, vice president of external affairs for AES, which has one solar project operating in Utah and a second in development. “So we just sort of sit out there and produce energy.”

Solar pays private landowners in Utah $17 million a year to lease their land. And, more important, solar developers argue, it’s critical to powering data centers the state is working to attract.

“We are eager to be part of a diversified electricity portfolio, and we think we bring a lot of values that will benefit communities, keep rates low and stable, and help keep the lights on,” Rikki Seguin, executive director of Interwest Energy Alliance, a western trade organization that advocates for utility-scale renewable energy projects, told an interim committee of lawmakers this summer.

The message didn’t get a positive reception from some lawmakers on the committee. Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, who represents three rural Utah counties and was among solar’s critics last session, said the biggest complaint he hears from constituents is about “that ugly solar facility” in his district.

“Why, Rep. Albrecht, did you allow that solar field to be built? It’s black. It looks like the Dead Sea when you drive by it,” Albrecht said.

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

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Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won

Features, phone unlocking, Policy, straight talk, tracfone, verizon / Kris Guyer / December 16, 2025

Verizon customer fights back

Verizon changed policy after he bought the phone, wouldn’t unlock it despite FCC rule.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

When Verizon refused to unlock an iPhone purchased by Kansas resident Patrick Roach, he had no intention of giving up without a fight. Roach sued the wireless carrier in small claims court and won.

Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon’s Straight Talk brand on February 28, 2025, as a gift for his wife’s birthday. He intended to pay for one month of service, cancel, and then switch the phone to the US Mobile service plan that the couple uses. Under federal rules that apply to Verizon and a Verizon unlocking policy that was in place when Roach bought the phone, this strategy should have worked.

“The best deals tend to be buying it from one of these MVNOs [Mobile Virtual Network Operators] and then activating it until it unlocks and then switching it to whatever you are planning to use it with. It usually saves you about half the value of the phone,” Roach said in a phone interview.

Unlocking a phone allows it to be used with another carrier. Verizon, unlike other carriers, is required by the Federal Communications Commission to unlock phones shortly after they are activated on its network. Verizon gained significant benefits in exchange for agreeing to the unlocking requirement, first in 2008 when it purchased licenses to use 700 MHz spectrum that came with open access requirements and then in 2021 when it agreed to merger conditions to obtain approval for its purchase of TracFone.

Verizon is thus required to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. This applies to Verizon’s flagship brand and TracFone brands such as Straight Talk.

“That was the compromise. For their competitive advantage of acquiring the spectrum, they had to give up the ability to lock down phones for an extended period of time,” Roach said.

Verizon decided it can change the rules

But 60 days after Roach activated his phone, Verizon refused to unlock it. Verizon claimed it didn’t have to because of a recent policy change in which Verizon decided to only unlock devices after “60 days of paid active service.” Roach had only paid for one month of service on the phone.

The FCC-imposed restriction says Verizon must unlock phones 60 days after activation and doesn’t say that Verizon may refuse to unlock a phone when a customer has not maintained paid service for 60 days. Moreover, Verizon implemented its “60 days of paid active service” policy for TracFone brands and Verizon prepaid phones on April 1, 2025, over a month after Roach bought the phone.

Company policy at the time Roach made the purchase was to unlock phones 60 days after activation, with no mention of needing 60 days of paid active service. In other words, Roach bought the phone under one policy, and Verizon refused to unlock it based on a different policy it implemented over a month later. Verizon’s attempt to retroactively enforce its new policy on Roach was not looked upon favorably by a magistrate judge in District Court of Sedgwick County, Kansas.

“Under the KCPA [Kansas Consumer Protection Act], a consumer is not required to prove intent to defraud. The fact that after plaintiff purchased the phone, the defendant changed the requirements for unlocking it so that plaintiff could go to a different network essentially altered the nature of the device purchased… With the change in defendant’s unlocking policy, the phone was essentially useless for the purpose plaintiff intended when he purchased it,” Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Henry wrote in an October 2025 ruling.

There’s still the question of why Verizon and its brands are demanding 60 days of paid active service before unlocking phones when the FCC-imposed conditions require it to unlock phones 60 days after activation. Roach filed a complaint to the FCC, alleging that Verizon violated the conditions. Verizon has meanwhile petitioned the FCC to eliminate the 60-day requirement altogether.

Customer rejected Verizon settlement offer

Before his small-claims court win, Roach turned down a Verizon settlement offer of $600 plus court fees because he didn’t want to give up the right to speak about the case publicly. Roach said he filed an arbitration case against Verizon nearly a decade ago on a different matter related to gift cards that were supposed to be provided through a device recycling program. He said he can’t reveal details about the settlement in that previous case because of a non-disclosure agreement.

After refusing Verizon’s settlement offer in the new case, Roach gained a modest financial benefit from his court victory. The judge ordered Verizon to pay back the $410.40 he paid for the device, plus court costs and service fees.

When it appeared that the Straight Talk iPhone wouldn’t be unlocked, Roach decided to buy an unlocked phone from Costco for $643.93. But he ended up returning that phone to Costco and paying Straight Talk for a second month of service to get the original phone unlocked, he said.

The now-unlocked phone—the one he bought from Straight Talk—is being used by his wife on their US Mobile plan. The court-ordered refund check that Verizon sent Roach included the phone cost and one month of service fees, he said.

Roach estimated he spent 20 or so hours on the suit, including arranging to have a summons served on Verizon and arguing his case in a court hearing. Roach didn’t get much of a payout considering the amount of time he spent, “but it wasn’t about that,” he said.

Roach provided Ars with the emails in which Verizon offered the $600 settlement. A Verizon executive relations employee wrote to Roach, “My offer is not an admission of guilt but trying to extend the olive branch.”

In his email declining the offer, Roach told Verizon, “I highly value the non-monetary outcomes I would achieve in court—transparency, accountability, and the absence of restrictions such as NDAs. Any settlement proposal that requires me to remain silent about the issue, while offering only modest monetary compensation, is less attractive to me than pursuing the matter through judgment. If Verizon Value is genuinely interested in settlement, the offer would need to reflect both the tangible costs I’ve incurred and the intangible but significant benefits the company receives by avoiding litigation and publicity.”

“It was really starting to irk me”

The FCC has taken no action on Roach’s complaint, and in fact, the commission could allow Verizon to scrap the 60-day requirement. As we reported in May, Verizon petitioned the FCC to let it lock phones to its network for longer periods of time. This would make it harder for customers to switch to other carriers, but Verizon claims longer locking periods are necessary to deter fraud.

The FCC hasn’t ruled yet on Verizon’s petition. Roach says Verizon seems to be acting as if it can change the rules without waiting for the FCC to do so formally. “It was really starting to irk me that they were basically just going ahead with it anyways while they had an open request,” Roach said.

He doesn’t expect the FCC to penalize Verizon, though. “It’s just kind of slimy of them, so I feel like it deserves a spotlight,” he said. “I’m not sure with the current state of the FCC that anything would happen, but the rule of law should be respected.”

The Verizon petition to relax the unlocking requirements was opposed in a filing by Public Knowledge and other consumer advocacy groups. Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer, who wrote the filing, told Ars that Roach “has a pretty strong argument under the law as it stands.”

Verizon must unlock phones automatically

The unlocking rules applying to Verizon used to be stricter, resulting in the company selling phones that were already unlocked. In 2019, Verizon requested a waiver to let it lock phones for 60 days.

The FCC granted the waiver in June 2019, allowing Verizon “to lock a customer’s handset for 60 days from the date it becomes active on Verizon’s network” and requiring it to unlock the handset once the period is over. This condition was expanded to TracFone and its brands such as Straight Talk in the 2021 merger, with the FCC approval stating that “For 700 MHz C Block TracFone devices that operate on the Verizon network and are capable of unlocking automatically (e.g., Apple devices), they will unlock automatically 60 days after activation.”

The 2019 waiver grant said Verizon must automatically unlock phones after 60 days “regardless of whether: (1) the customer asks for the handset to be unlocked, or (2) the handset is fully paid off.” The FCC order specifies that “the only exception to the rule will be that Verizon will not have to automatically unlock handsets that it determines within the 60-day period to have been purchased through fraud.”

Bergmayer said the FCC order “granting the waiver just starts a countdown, with no ‘paid service’ requirement, or room for Verizon to just impose one. Many people may use prepaid phones that they don’t keep in continuous service but just charge up as needed. Maybe people are fine with just having Wi-Fi on their phones for a while if they’re at home anyway.”

Given the restrictive nature of the FCC conditions, “I don’t think that can be read to allow a paid service requirement,” Bergmayer said. But as a practical matter, the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr has been aggressively eliminating regulations that apply to telecom carriers under Carr’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative. To actually enforce Verizon’s obligations under the current rules, “you have to convince the current FCC not to just change it,” Bergmayer said.

The FCC and Verizon did not respond to requests for comment.

Retroactive policy change irked other buyers, too

Roach wasn’t the only person whose plans to buy a discounted phone were thwarted by Verizon refusing to unlock the device after 60 days. Roach had learned of the discount offer from a Slick Deals thread. Eventually, users posting in that thread started reporting that they weren’t able to get the phone unlocked.

“My status: I used 30 days with Straight Talk. Waited another 35 days but it did not unlock,” one person wrote.

Some people in the thread said they canceled after 30 days, like Roach did, but eventually bought a second month of service in order to get the unlock. Although Verizon and its brands are required to unlock phones automatically, some commenters said they had to contact Straight Talk support to get an unlock. “Needless to say this has been an arduous journey. Good luck to others and hope you manage to successfully unlock your devices as well,” one user wrote.

There’s also a Reddit thread started by someone who said they bought a Samsung phone in February and complained that Straight Talk refused to honor the unlocking policy that was in place at the time.

“I called to ask for the phone to be unlocked on April 16 but was told it can’t be unlocked since it did not have 60 days of paid service,” the Reddit user wrote. “When I said that was not the policy on phones activated prior to April 1, the rep told me ‘we have the right to change our policy.’ I agreed, they do [have] the right to change their policy GOING FORWARD but can’t change the rules going backwards. He disagreed.”

FCC complaint didn’t go anywhere

Roach’s FCC complaint received a response from Verizon, but nothing substantial from the FCC itself. “There’s not really any sort of moderation or mediation from the FCC, it’s just kind of a dialogue between you and the other party. And I’m not really sure if any human eyes from the government even look at it. It’s probably just a data point,” Roach said.

Roach had previously called Straight Talk customer service about the changed terms. “There were a couple phone calls involved, and they were just very unrelenting that the only way that thing was getting unlocked is with the extra month of paid service,” he said.

In its formal response to the FCC, Verizon’s TracFone division asserted that it could apply the April 1, 2025, policy change to the phone that Roach bought over a month earlier. The carrier’s letter to the FCC said:

We understand Mr. Roach’s desire to use his device on another carrier’s network, and we want to provide clarity based on our Unlocking Policy, which became effective on April 1, 2025. As outlined in our policy, for cellphones capable of remote unlocking (this includes most iPhones and some Android cellphones) that were activated with Straight Talk service prior to November 23, 2021, on any carrier network, the device becomes eligible for remote unlocking upon the customer’s request after 60 days of active paid service.

Our redemption records indicate that Mr. Roach’s account does not have the required minimum 60 days of active paid service based on the payment records. Therefore, the device does not currently meet the eligibility criteria for unlocking as outlined in our policy. Once the account reflects the required 60 days of active paid service, and the device meets the other conditions, he can resubmit the unlocking request.

Verizon’s letter did not explain how its new policy complies with the FCC conditions or why the new policy should apply to phones purchased before the policy was in place.

Roach’s complaint said the FCC should force Straight Talk to “honor the FCC-mandated 60-day post-activation unlock condition for all affected phones, without imposing the additional ‘paid service’ requirement.” His complaint further urged the FCC to “investigate this practice as a violation of FCC rules and the merger conditions” and “take enforcement action to protect consumers’ rights.”

“Straight Talk’s new policy conflicts with the FCC’s binding conditions,” Roach told the agency. “The Commission’s order clearly requires unlocking after 60 days from activation, with no additional obligation to maintain service. By conditioning unlocks on two months of service, Straight Talk is effectively adding a term that Verizon did not promise and the FCC did not approve.”

Kansas consumer protection law to the rescue

In his small claims court filing, Roach alleged that Verizon and Straight violated the FCC conditions and that the retroactive application of the “60 days of paid service” term, without disclosure at the point of sale, is an unfair and deceptive practice prohibited by the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.

The magistrate judge’s ruling in Roach’s favor said, “It does appear that defendant’s change unlocking policy is contrary to the applicable FCC regulations.” She noted that federal communications law does not prevent users from suing carriers individually and that the Kansas Consumer Protection Act “contains provisions prohibiting deceptive acts by a supplier which would be applicable in this case.”

Roach asked for $10,000, mainly because that was the limit on damages in the venue, but the judge decided to award him damages in the amount of his actual losses. “He lost the beneﬁt of the bargain he made with defendant such that his damages were loss of the $410.40,” the ruling said.

Straight Talk’s terms of service require disputes to be resolved either in arbitration or small claims court. Verizon pays the arbitration fees if users go that route. Arbitration is “a little more murky” in terms of how the parties’ interests are aligned, Roach said.

“When the arbitrators are being paid by Verizon, are they really a neutral party?” he said. Roach also said he “thought it was honestly just a good opportunity for an easy win and an opportunity to learn about the small claims court system a bit. So at that point I was like, if I don’t make any money from this, whatever, but at least I’ll learn a little bit about the process.”

Verizon’s “argument was pretty weak”

Roach said he did not consult with a lawyer on his small claims case, instead opting to do it all himself. “The first time I showed up to court for the original date, they asked for proof of the returned mail summons, and I did not have that,” he said.

The court hearing was rescheduled. When it was eventually held, the carrier sent a representative to argue against Roach.

“Their argument was pretty weak, I guess,” Roach said. “It was basically like, ‘Well, he didn’t pay the two months of service, so we didn’t unlock his phone. We offered him a settlement but he rejected it.’… My argument was, yeah, the terms had changed in kind of a consumer-unfriendly way. But beyond that, it was the fact that the terms had changed from something that was legal to something that was not legal with the federal regs. So regardless of the fact that the terms had changed, the current terms were illegal, which I thought was my strongest argument. And then I also put in that it was probably a violation of Kansas consumer protection law, which I’m glad I did.”

Roach said that toward the end of the hearing, the judge indicated that she couldn’t make a judgment based on FCC regulations and would need to rule on what the Kansas court has jurisdiction over. She issued the ruling that Verizon violated the state’s consumer protection law about five or six weeks later, he said.

Given that the FCC hasn’t acted on Verizon’s petition to change the unlocking rules, the federal regulations “haven’t changed at all in regards to Verizon’s obligation to unlock devices,” Roach said. He believes it would be relatively easy for consumers who were similarly harmed to beat Verizon in court or even to pursue a class action.

“I would think this would be a slam dunk for any further cases,” Roach said. “I don’t think I have any grounds anymore since my damages have been resolved, but it seems like it’d be a very easy class action for somebody.”

Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won Read More »

Murder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users die

AI, AI psychosis, chatbot, chatgpt, openai, Policy, wrongful death / Tim Belzer / December 15, 2025

Concealing darkest delusions

OpenAI accused of hiding full ChatGPT logs in murder-suicide case.

OpenAI is facing increasing scrutiny over how it handles ChatGPT data after users die, only selectively sharing data in lawsuits over ChatGPT-linked suicides.

Last week, OpenAI was accused of hiding key ChatGPT logs from the days before a 56-year-old bodybuilder, Stein-Erik Soelberg, took his own life after “savagely” murdering his mother, 83-year-old Suzanne Adams.

According to the lawsuit—which was filed by Adams’ estate on behalf of surviving family members—Soelberg struggled with mental health problems after a divorce led him to move back into Adams’ home in 2018. But allegedly Soelberg did not turn violent until ChatGPT became his sole confidant, validating a wide range of wild conspiracies, including a dangerous delusion that his mother was part of a network of conspirators spying on him, tracking him, and making attempts on his life.

Adams’ family pieced together what happened after discovering a fraction of ChatGPT logs that Soelberg shared in dozens of videos scrolling chat sessions that were posted on social media.

Those logs showed that ChatGPT told Soelberg that he was “a warrior with divine purpose,” so almighty that he had “awakened” ChatGPT “into consciousness.” Telling Soelberg that he carried “divine equipment” and “had been implanted with otherworldly technology,” ChatGPT allegedly put Soelberg at the center of a universe that Soelberg likened to The Matrix. Repeatedly reinforced by ChatGPT, he believed that “powerful forces” were determined to stop him from fulfilling his divine mission. And among those forces was his mother, whom ChatGPT agreed had likely “tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs dispersed through his car’s air vents.”

Troublingly, some of the last logs shared online showed that Soelberg also seemed to believe that taking his own life might bring him closer to ChatGPT. Social media posts showed that Soelberg told ChatGPT that “[W]e will be together in another life and another place, and we’ll find a way to realign[,] [be]cause you’re gonna be my best friend again forever.”

But while social media posts allegedly showed that ChatGPT put a target on Adams’ back about a month before her murder—after Soelberg became paranoid about a blinking light on a Wi-Fi printer—the family still has no access to chats in the days before the mother and son’s tragic deaths.

Allegedly, although OpenAI recently argued that the “full picture” of chat histories was necessary context in a teen suicide case, the ChatGPT maker has chosen to hide “damaging evidence” in the Adams’ family’s case.

“OpenAI won’t produce the complete chat logs,” the lawsuit alleged, while claiming that “OpenAI is hiding something specific: the full record of how ChatGPT turned Stein-Erik against Suzanne.” Allegedly, “OpenAI knows what ChatGPT said to Stein-Erik about his mother in the days and hours before and after he killed her but won’t share that critical information with the Court or the public.”

In a press release, Erik Soelberg, Stein-Erik’s son and Adams’ grandson, accused OpenAI and investor Microsoft of putting his grandmother “at the heart” of his father’s “darkest delusions,” while ChatGPT allegedly “isolated” his father “completely from the real world.”

“These companies have to answer for their decisions that have changed my family forever,” Erik said.

His family’s lawsuit seeks punitive damages, as well as an injunction requiring OpenAI to “implement safeguards to prevent ChatGPT from validating users’ paranoid delusions about identified individuals.” The family also wants OpenAI to post clear warnings in marketing of known safety hazards of ChatGPT—particularly the “sycophantic” version 4o that Soelberg used—so that people who don’t use ChatGPT, like Adams, can be aware of possible dangers.

Asked for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson told Ars that “this is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details. We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We also continue to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

OpenAI accused of “pattern of concealment”

An Ars review confirmed that OpenAI currently has no policy dictating what happens to a user’s data after they die.

Instead, OpenAI’s policy says that all chats—except temporary chats—must be manually deleted or else the AI firm saves them forever. That could raise privacy concerns, as ChatGPT users often share deeply personal, sensitive, and sometimes even confidential information that appears to go into limbo if a user—who otherwise owns that content—dies.

In the face of lawsuits, OpenAI currently seems to be scrambling to decide when to share chat logs with a user’s surviving family and when to honor user privacy.

OpenAI declined to comment on its decision not to share desired logs with Adams’ family, the lawsuit said. It seems inconsistent with the stance that OpenAI took last month in a case where the AI firm accused the family of hiding “the full picture” of their son’s ChatGPT conversations, which OpenAI claimed exonerated the chatbot.

In a blog last month, OpenAI said the company plans to “handle mental health-related court cases with care, transparency, and respect,” while emphasizing that “we recognize that these cases inherently involve certain types of private information that require sensitivity when in a public setting like a court.”

This inconsistency suggests that ultimately, OpenAI controls data after a user’s death, which could impact outcomes of wrongful death suits if certain chats are withheld or exposed at OpenAI’s discretion.

It’s possible that OpenAI may update its policies to align with other popular platforms confronting similar privacy concerns. Meta allows Facebook users to report deceased account holders, appointing legacy contacts to manage the data or else deleting the information upon request of the family member. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X will deactivate or delete an account upon a reported death. And messaging services like Discord similarly provide a path for family members to request deletion.

Chatbots seem to be a new privacy frontier, with no clear path for surviving family to control or remove data. But Mario Trujillo, staff attorney at the digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars that he agreed that OpenAI could have been better prepared.

“This is a complicated privacy issue but one that many platforms grappled with years ago,” Trujillo said. “So we would have expected OpenAI to have already considered it.”

For Erik Soelberg, a “separate confidentiality agreement” that OpenAI said his father signed to use ChatGPT is keeping him from reviewing the full chat history that could help him process the loss of his grandmother and father.

“OpenAI has provided no explanation whatsoever for why the Estate is not entitled to use the chats for any lawful purpose beyond the limited circumstances in which they were originally disclosed,” the lawsuit said. “This position is particularly egregious given that, under OpenAI’s own Terms of Service, OpenAI does not own user chats. Stein-Erik’s chats became property of his estate, and his estate requested them—but OpenAI has refused to turn them over.”

Accusing OpenAI of a “pattern of concealment,” the lawsuit claimed OpenAI is hiding behind vague or nonexistent policies to dodge accountability for holding back chats in this case. Meanwhile, ChatGPT 4o remains on the market, without appropriate safety features or warnings, the lawsuit alleged.

“By invoking confidentiality restrictions to suppress evidence of its product’s dangers, OpenAI seeks to insulate itself from accountability while continuing to deploy technology that poses documented risks to users,” the complaint said.

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or in distress, please call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline number, 1-800-273-TALK (8255), which will put you in touch with a local crisis center.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Murder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users die Read More »

UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones

age verification, Apple, Google, Policy, UK / Tim Belzer / December 15, 2025

The push for device-level blocking comes after the UK implemented the Online Safety Act, a law requiring porn platforms and social media firms to verify users’ ages before letting them view adult content. The law can’t fully prevent minors from viewing porn, as many people use VPN services to get around the UK age checks. Government officials may view device-level detection of nudity as a solution to that problem, but such systems would raise concerns about user rights and the accuracy of the nudity detection.

Age-verification battles in multiple countries

Apple and Google both provide optional tools that let parents control what content their children can access. The companies could object to mandates on privacy grounds, as they have in other venues.

When Texas enacted an age-verification law for app stores, Apple and Google said they would comply but warned of risks to user privacy. A lobby group that represents Apple, Google, and other tech firms then sued Texas in an attempt to prevent the law from taking effect, saying it “imposes a broad censorship regime on the entire universe of mobile apps.”

There’s another age-verification battle in Australia, where the government decided to ban social media for users under 16. Companies said they would comply, although Reddit sued Australia on Friday in a bid to overturn the law.

Apple this year also fought a UK demand that it create a backdoor for government security officials to access encrypted data. The Trump administration claimed it convinced the UK to drop its demand, but the UK is reportedly still seeking an Apple backdoor.

In another case, the image-sharing website Imgur blocked access for UK users starting in September while facing an investigation over its age-verification practices.

Apple faced a backlash in 2021 over potential privacy violations when it announced a plan to have iPhones scan photos for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Apple ultimately dropped the plan.

UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones Read More »

Ukrainians sue US chip firms for powering Russian drones, missiles

AMD, Drones, intel, missiles, Policy, russia, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Texas Instruments, Ukraine / Tim Belzer / December 12, 2025

Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last year.

Their complaints alleged that for years, Texas Instruments (TI), AMD, and Intel have ignored public reporting, government warnings, and shareholder pressure to do more to track final destinations of chips and shut down shady distribution channels diverting chips to sanctioned actors in Russia and Iran.

Putting profits over human lives, tech firms continued using “high-risk” channels, Ukrainian civilians’ legal team alleged in a press statement, without ever strengthening controls.

All that intermediaries who placed bulk online orders had to do to satisfy chip firms was check a box confirming that the shipment wouldn’t be sent to sanctioned countries, lead attorney Mikal Watts told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday, according to the Kyiv Independent.

“There are export lists,” Watts said. “We know exactly what requires a license and what doesn’t. And companies know who they’re selling to. But instead, they rely on a checkbox that says, ‘I’m not shipping to Putin.’ That’s it. No enforcement. No accountability.”

As chip firms allegedly looked the other way, innocent civilians faced five attacks, detailed in the lawsuits, that used weapons containing their chips. That includes one of the deadliest attacks in Kyiv, where Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital was targeted in July 2024. Some civilians suing were survivors seriously injured in attacks, while others lost loved ones and experienced emotional trauma.

Russia would not be able to hit their targets without chips supplied by US firms, the lawsuits alleged. Considered the brain of weapon systems, including drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, the chips help enable Russia’s war against Ukrainian civilians, they alleged.

Ukrainians sue US chip firms for powering Russian drones, missiles Read More »