BBB Blog

There has been a great deal of discussion and controversy over the last few years about artificial intelligence and the potential impacts on the American workforce. While there are the obvious professions that are already feeling the hit of AI replacement in the fields of writing, graphic design, and tech...

Zach and Elizabeth dig into the wave of Americans cutting down, vandalizing, and outright destroying flock cameras across the country, from an Air Force engineer facing charges to a man who replaced a downed cameras with American flags. They break down why jury nullification could matter for anyone charged in...

Jake Green of Peaceful Sea Productions joins Zach and Elizabeth for a wide-ranging tour through the surveillance state’s latest toys. They start with a throwback: the 2013-era panic over Bitcoin’s energy use, and why nobody in the media seems bothered that AI data centers now consume vastly more power with...

A Texas town council member throws a public tantrum after his city votes to cancel its Flock contract, and the resulting “Bandera Declaration of Digital Independence” is as unhinged as it sounds. Zach and Elizabeth break down the logical fallacies packed into one man’s attempt to equate mass license plate...

The surveillance state isn’t coming. It’s already here, it’s expanding fast, and apparently if you have a problem with that, China put you up to it. In this episode, Zach and Elizabeth dig into the sudden explosion of data centers across the country, why governments at every level are pushing...

Has modern brain wave technology made the Thought Police of George Orwell’s fictional novel, 1984, a possible reality? One may find the idea extraordinary but Nita Farahany, in her presentation at the 2023 World Economic Forum, demonstrated that using AI-powered technologies for brain transparency is not only possible, it is...

Governments have been making the same pitch for centuries. We’ll take a little of your liberty, and in return we’ll give you safety. It’s not a new argument. It just has better branding and more antennas now. Systems like Flock cameras are sold as the latest version of that old...

The pitch for Flock is always the same: “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide.” Then a court says the footage is public record, and suddenly cities start unplugging the cameras. In this episode, Zach Varnell and Elizabeth Melton walk through the public records rulings that are...

Recent announcements that the federal government is enlisting the services of data-integration and analytics company, Palantir, are raising eyebrows across the political spectrum. Depicted as a tool through which to fulfill Donald Trump’s executive order entitled “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,” the partnership would realize this...

Zach and Elizabeth break down the surreal case of a Missouri county commissioner facing felony charges for removing a license plate reader — even though the county had already banned them. That sparks a deeper conversation about public surveillance, Flock cameras, inflated government tech contracts, and the illusion of “safety.”...

Montana is on the verge of enacting the strongest brain privacy law in the nation. Senate Bill 163 — which has now passed both chambers of the state legislature — expands Montana’s Genetic Information Privacy Act to include protections for neurotechnology data. That means your brainwaves, mental states, nervous system...

Georgia lawmakers are debating two bills right now that offer radically different futures when it comes to automated surveillance in school zones. One bill — HB 225 — would eventually ban the use of speed cameras in school zones. The other — HB 651 — would expand them, empower prosecutors...