Raymond Amumpaire

Honoured to share my 2 cents on the Regulation of #ArtificialIntelligence #AI in today's Daily Monitor. Notice the overt #MissionImpossible movie reference in the introduction 🫡

Special appreciation to all participants and particularly @RayAmplifies who delivered a presentation on the Role of Civil Society Shadow Reports.

A Microsoft worker has quit and sent a mass email detailing Microsoft's complicity in surveillance tech Israel uses to hunt Palestinians thecanary.co/global/world-a…

AI data centres are hungry for land, water & power. I’m calling on every major AI company to publicly disclose the full environmental impact of its systems – as a matter of transparency No more hidden costs. No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it. It is time to come clean.

1/3 Today, I will present my new report to the UN Human Rights Council. Its message: digital surveillance is silencing activists and civil society worldwide, and it has to stop. 🧵 #UnmaskingSurveillance #HumanRights ohchr.org/en/documents/t…

Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school reut.rs/4w1hi29 reut.rs/4w1hi29

SZA denounces AI music after discovering 238 of her songs were used to train artificial intelligence: “If you’re a musician and you support this degenerate sh*t? You’re disgusting and there’s NOTHING YOU COULD EVER SAY TO ME TO MAKE THIS OKAY”

“If you take the deal, you’re going to be exploited. If you don’t take it, you’re going to die,” said attorney Frank Ssekamwa about the U.S. demand to access the health data of millions of Ugandans. “It’s the essence of digital colonialism.” propublica.org/article/trump-…

Big Tech Is a Thief and a Liar, Says New York Times Publisher trib.al/MjXL6C0

‼️ A fully AI-enabled hacker was caught, revealing his full system prompts, which included his resume and his IP address. He had Claude and Codex agents locally and was using them remotely to carry out reconnaissance, exploitation, and data exfiltration activities.

99 authors just sued Anthropic, accusing them of pirating their books for AI training. The lawsuit also names two Anthropic founders as defendants, Dario Amodei & Ben Mann. (It is an established fact that Anthropic downloaded millions of pirated books, and that Ben Mann personally did some of this.) The lawsuits keep coming.

"The space for freedom of expression is shrinking dangerously as many States, aided & abetted by new technologies are suppressing dissent, and the corporate digital giants are manipulating online spaces to enrich themselves," @Irenekhan told the @UN Human Rights Council. #HRC62

The United Kingdom is going to announce additional restrictions in July on VPN usage. This is ON TOP OF the social media restrictions and mandated online identity verifications. It's over, UK. You sold out your own society. Absolute tragedy. Very sad.

👁️A social media ban = digital ID checks for all Children have been let down for years by tech companies, by previous governments, and now by this Labour Government. They’re using that failure as an excuse to rush in mass surveillance | #No2DigitalID

Signal threatens to pull out of UK over Starmer's new "mass surveillance" phone screening plans Clip - @business @mer__edith

📱There's no such thing as a social media ban for under-16s It means we will ALL face a “papers, please” demand to get online. Holding platforms to account and giving parents the tools they need are the answer for child safety - not government-issued bans and digital ID checks for all.

Statement : Shutting down Telegram is a band aid solution and is a disproportionate answer to exam fraud The Internet Freedom Foundation objects to the directions announced today in the National Testing Agency's press release on action against the Telegram platform. On the NTA's recommendation, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has, under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, restricted access to the whole of Telegram in India until 22 June 2026, and has separately ordered the platform to switch off message-editing for every Indian user until 30 June 2026. This is a blunt, nationwide measure aimed at the conduct of rampant fraud rackets, and on the Government's own admission is constitutionally incompatible. At the outset it is important to note that Section 69A and the Blocking Rules of 2009 framed under it allow the Government to block access to specific “information” on a computer resource. They do not extend to switching off an entire intermediary, still less to ordering a company to redesign its product by removing a feature for a whole country. In Shreya Singhal v Union of India, the Supreme Court upheld Section 69A because it is narrow and hedged with procedural safeguards. Reading it to authorise shutting down a platform that lakhs use is an overbroad restriction by the NTAs own admission. For the message-editing direction the release identifies no source of power at all. If one exists, the order must say so. The release argues against itself A restriction on access has to be the least intrusive measure that achieves its aim as per the constitutional test of proportionality laid down in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) and applied in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020). The NTA's own narration shows the block fails its nodal agency, the release says, “has secured the prompt take-down of a substantial number of Telegram channels, groups and bots”, and this targeted work “is the reason the harm caused by these rackets has been contained to the extent it has”. If channel level takedown contained the harm, the case for a blanket block collapses and hence the Government has reached for a heavier tool while conceding that a lighter one was working. The collateral cost sits on the record too as noted in the press release. The block, the NTA accepts, “affects lakhs of citizens who use the Telegram platform for legitimate personal, educational, professional and informational purposes”. The release also says there is "no such paper available outside the secured examination chain" and that “the security of the examination is unaffected by the action taken”. If the exam is secure and no leak exists, what is being suppressed is rumour, and rumour cannot justify closing a platform when specific blocking and criminal prosecution remain available. Students use of Telegram The block of telegram is reactive and ineffective and will punish ordinary users instead of addressing the systemic source of exam leaks. This blocking comes in the final days of NEET preparation, when thousands of students depend on Telegram for study groups, doubt-clearing, and shared resources. Also, it is important to consider that the source of exam papers leak will occur from inside the system, among insiders and across the printing and logistics chain, with the platform being the most downstream channel for distribution. Hence, switching off Telegram, is merely a deflection from the repeated failures that will continue while media attention is directed towards this Telegram ban. Lack of transparency At present only a press release from the NTA has been provided, which recommended the block but the reasoned order of MeitY, the authority that issued it, has not been released. The Anuradha Bhasin decision requires that orders restricting access be published so they can be tested in court. Here the order, and the reasoning of the committee behind it, stay out of view, and we do not know whether Telegram was heard at all. An announcement of a block is no substitute for an order the affected party can challenge. Blunt to enforce and very easy to evade Usually, app-level blocks run through IS-level DNS and IP filtering. They are over inclusive, sweeping in lawful use, yet simple to evade as a determined exam leak racket moves to a VPN or a mirror within minutes while ordinary users lose the service for a week. We ask the Government to: 1) Publish the MeitY Section 69A order and the NTA recommendation behind it, with reasons; 2) State the legal basis for the message editing direction, or withdraw it; 3) Confirm whether Telegram was given a hearing under the Blocking Rules, and place the committee's record before any court that hears a challenge; and 4) Lift the platform-wide restriction and rely on the targeted takedowns the NTA itself credits with containing the harm. We emphasise that the NEET (UG) 2026 re-examination is worth protecting and it concerns the future of lakhs of aspirants. It requires securing the entire process of examination rather than reaching for purported band aid solutions that instead cause more harm. The State cannot switch off a service used by lakhs to answer the wrongdoing of a few, and cannot do it through an order no one affected is allowed to read. On its own facts, the Government has done both. New Delhi, 16 June 2026.

It's not an under-16 social media ban, it's digital IDs with better marketing

@WhatsApp Alongside 11 other civil society organizations, we filed an amicus brief supporting efforts to challenge spyware abuse and defend digital rights. Accountability for spyware matters! Read more: accessnow.org/press-release/…

@fred_jaoko @gatere_mark And then decided to turn something as free as a language into a commodity with your "Pro" version?

A “Duolingo for Africa” project I’ve been working on. Inspired by the local language models @gatere_mark has been building, I started exploring what language learning could look like with AI trained on African languages. Feels like a compelling use case for local AI models 🤔

Pope Leo XIV warns that authority is shifting from citizens to machines. Days later, President Trump signed an AI executive order. In his latest op-ed, @vilasdhar asks who gets a voice in the construction site of our time as AI reshapes public life: tinyurl.com/y4jnee4e