By this logic, no constitutional right that annoys the executive is ever worth exercising, which makes the right nonexistent. Recording police in public is a settled protected activity in most circuits, it's not really a gray area. It's an example of the government building files on people for doing something courts have explicitly said they may do.
Whether the protestor's politics make her a political enemy of the administration's voting base is irrelevant. The government tracking citizens because their lawful speech opposes the administration is the textbook definition of retaliation based on viewpoint, the thing the First Amendment firmly prohibits.
The story is that ICE apparently denied maintaining a database whose existence a letter to Congress suggests is real, not that the protester is surprised that activism has consequences.
"In tests involving 197 participants, the researchers said the system identified individuals with nearly 100% accuracy. The recognition remained effective regardless of viewing angle or how the participants walked."
These things always have carefully controlled setups. If you read the article, the participants had to wear non-baggy clothes and walk past the routers in a prescribed way (although they did at least have them do a couple of different walk styles, e.g. carrying some water).
Perhaps more importantly, they train the model on known people doing the same normal walk past the routers 16 times.
It's definitely impressively accurate but still quite far from the real world (and the authors acknowledge that).
David M. Morens was a senior adviser to the Director of NIAID (the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) 2006 - 2022. House Select Subcommittee investigations released emails showing he had been routing communications about EcoHealth Alliance and the bat coronavirus grant tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through his personal Gmail, explicitly to dodge FOIA.
Prosecutors allege he worked to suppress the lab leak hypothesis and that he received gifts from Peter Daszak, the EcoHealth president.
Even if you don’t care about the environmental angle, a single data center exceeding a state’s entire electricity draw is a notable story on several levels.
Whether the protestor's politics make her a political enemy of the administration's voting base is irrelevant. The government tracking citizens because their lawful speech opposes the administration is the textbook definition of retaliation based on viewpoint, the thing the First Amendment firmly prohibits.
The story is that ICE apparently denied maintaining a database whose existence a letter to Congress suggests is real, not that the protester is surprised that activism has consequences.
reply