Here’s a fun one, coming to us via MLive, which at least let us know this exists, even if it couldn’t be bothered to post the freely available decision posted at the Michigan Supreme Court’s website.

I can only imagine the amount of cop whining this will provoke. When cops don’t have a legitimate reason to stop and question someone, they tend to fall back on other criminal charges if that person decides they have no real reason to stick around and deal with whatever bullshit the cops have planned.

The usual suspects are criminal charges like obstruction and resisting arrest. The first only applies if someone interferes with lawful operations. The latter only applies if the officers “reasonably” believe they have probable cause to effect an arrest.

When none of that applies, the cops usually still win out, especially in civil cases where qualified immunity is routinely applied, no matter how egregious the rights violation. But this is a criminal case, so qualified immunity isn’t an option. The good faith exception might be, but there wasn’t much good faith here. Instead, as the state’s top court points out in its decision [PDF], there was no justifiable reason for cops to attempt to detain and question Douglas Prude, who proved his point not long after this far-from-consensual encounter began by driving away in his car as quickly as he could.

On May 30, 2019, Officer Nicholas Deleeuw saw defendant sitting alone in a parked vehicle, with the engine off, in an area of the parking lot where criminal activity was common; no one else was in the area. Officer Deleeuw approached defendant’s car, asked defendant for identification, and inquired whether defendant was a resident of the complex. Although defendant declined to identify himself, he answered that he was not a resident but that he stayed at the complex with his girlfriend, who was a resident. Officer Nathan Belen arrived around that time and approached defendant’s car; Officer Belen was familiar with defendant and provided his name to Officer Deleeuw. Officer Deleeuw informed defendant that he needed to be with a resident while on the property and then returned to his car to verify defendant’s tenant status through the Law Enforcement Information Network and to check the complex’s internal database to see if defendant had previously received a trespass warning from the complex. When asked, Officer Belen informed defendant that he was being detained and that he was not free to leave, after which defendant started the car, rolled up his window, and drove away at a high rate of speed; defendant was later arrested and charged.

That is the sort of thing that normally doesn’t lead to rulings like this one. Usually, testifying cops who claim an area (and I love this part: “area of the parking lot where criminal activity was common”) is frequented by criminals are given the judicial benefit of a doubt and any “suspicion” assumed to be “reasonable.”

That Prude responded to be told he was being detained by driving away “at a high rate of speed” probably convinced the cops and the prosecutor that the “resisting an officer” and “second-degree fleeing” charges would stick. And they did, at least as far as the trial court was concerned. But Prude challenged his conviction, asserting the claim the cops had no reason to question him, much less tell him he was not free to leave.

It didn’t work on appeal, though. The state’s top court says suspicion needs to be far more “reasonable” than the shaky “but muh high crime area” assertions made by the officers. And for good reason:

An individual’s presence in a high-crime area provides no particular reasonable basis for suspicion as to the activity of that person. Thus, an individual’s presence in an area of expected criminal activity, standing alone, is not sufficient to support a reasonable, particularized suspicion that the person is committing a crime. While presence in a high-crime area may support the existence of reasonable suspicion, this is so only if the suspect engages in suspicious behavior.

Further, a refusal to cooperate with police officers, without more, does not furnish the minimal level of objective justification needed for a detention or seizure. To hold otherwise would effectively mean that any person who is approached by an officer in a high-crime area must fully cooperate with that officer or else be subject to a Terry seizure.

That means the initial interaction had no legitimate law enforcement purpose. That didn’t change throughout the course of what someone (perhaps a police union rep) might call an “investigation.” Everything Prude was doing was fully permitted by the law. The only thing the cops didn’t like is that he was doing it in a location they considered to be a “high crime area” — a phrase that usually only means a cop is desperately trying to salvage an unlawful stop or arrest. It’s not like there’s a clearly defined legal standard for “high crime.”

The court sees this and won’t be a part of it.

In this case, the officers were not acting lawfully in the performances of their duties when they detained defendant, a required element for both offenses for which he was convicted. The relevant facts included that (1) defendant was alone and parked legally with the engine off during daylight hours in an area of the parking lot where nonresidents frequently committed crimes, (2) defendant declined to identify himself at Officer Deleeuw’s request, and (3) defendant admitted that he was not a resident of the apartment complex but that he was visiting his girlfriend, who was a resident. These facts did not amount to an objectively reasonable, particularized suspicion that defendant was trespassing. The fact that defendant refused to identify himself and was in an area where other nonresidents had frequently committed crimes did not provide reasonable suspicion that defendant himself was engaged in criminal activity when the officers approached him. Indeed, there was nothing suspicious about defendant being parked in the apartment complex’s parking lot in the early evening while visiting a resident of that complex.

If there was nothing supporting a detention of Prude (no matter how briefly), the best the cops could hope for was a speeding ticket after he decided to end the conversation by driving away from the officers. The officers decided to try to punish him for not respecting their unlawful insistence he wasn’t free to go.

It’s just one incident and it may seem like a minor victory. But it isn’t. This affirms some very basic rights, including the one that says you don’t have to hang around and deal with cop bullshit just because the cops say you’re not free to leave. Of course, that probably means you’ll end up facing criminal charges, but maybe this decision might make a few cops a bit more hesitant to detain people when they don’t have anything more to work with than but the fact that someone happens to exist, live in, or passes through an area they’ve unilaterally decided has higher crime than other areas they patrol.

Google on Monday abandoned plans to phase out third-party tracking cookies in its Chrome web browser more than four years after it introduced the option as part of a larger set of a controversial proposal called the Privacy Sandbox. "Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web

It's not used by any governments, but we'd spend money on it if we could.

The inevitable is upon us: a police officer has been caught using Clearview AI for non-law enforcement purposes. That wouldn’t mean anything if the officer had private access to the most ethically dubious player in the facial recognition tech market. But he didn’t. He was using access purchased by his employer, so it wasn’t only a violation of department policy, but a clear, non-law enforcement-related violation of the privacy of those on the other end of these searches.

An officer with the Evansville Police Department has resigned following an investigation of misusing the department’s A.I. technology.

Evansville Police Chief Philip Smith said Tuesday that Officer Michael Dockery, a five-year member of the police department, resigned before the Police Merit Commission could make a final determination for termination.

The fact that Officer Dockery decided to resign rather than be disciplined (further) or fired is equally unsurprising. If you can get out before the hammer falls, you can just go ply your wares at another law enforcement agency since you won’t have anything on your permanent record. (And that’s if the new employer cares to look at your permanent record. Most law enforcement either don’t bother to check incoming officers’ pasts, or just don’t consider causes for concern to be cause for concern.)

The more surprising aspect of this incident was how it was discovered. The chief was performing an audit of the software prior to the PD’s renewal of its contract. And that’s when he came across the improper searches. He suspended Officer Dockery for 21 days, at which point Dockery decided to call it quits.

This is more of the same bullshit we’ve come to expect from cops who have access to other people’s personal information. Officers have been caught running personal searches on drivers license databases and other repositories of personal data collected by government agencies.

Dockery didn’t play by the rules established by his employer. But he was pretty much completely aligned with Clearview’s ethically dubious marketing tactics in which it encouraged potential customers (including law enforcement agencies) to run personal searches utilizing its AI and millions (now more than 30 billion) of images it had scraped from the web.

[I]n a November email to a police lieutenant in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a company representative encouraged a police officer to use the software on himself and his acquaintances.

“Have you tried taking a selfie with Clearview yet?” the email read. “It’s the best way to quickly see the power of Clearview in real time. Try your friends or family. Or a celebrity like Joe Montana or George Clooney.

“Your Clearview account has unlimited searches. So feel free to run wild with your searches,” the email continued.

Maybe this seems like a one-off. I guarantee this isn’t. This is someone who got caught. Plenty of agencies have access to facial recognition tech. The number of agencies that engage in periodic audits is undoubtedly far less than the number of agencies using the tech.

The only thing anomalous about this is that the agency moved quickly to discipline the officer who violated department policy. Once again, I can guarantee lots of other violations have occurred and at least some of those have been discovered. But a discovery followed by immediate (or any!) discipline is an actual unicorn.

There will be more in the future. And as for (at the moment) former officer Michael Dockery, he’d better hope his next employer is a regression to the mean in terms of police accountability if he wants to keep his job.

Public libraries are supposed to be places for communities to gather and learn, with an important focus on being a place for kids to gain access to information. But thanks to a moral panic in the GOP about “indoctrination” in libraries, it seems that at least one library has decided to shut its door to children.

A public library in a tiny Idaho mountain community announced on Facebook that it is no longer allowing minors to enter its facilities and check out books, citing a new law adopted by the state legislature. Donnelly Public Library, in the roughly 250-person town of Donnelly, Idaho, will still offer after-school and summer learning programs for local youth.

But it’s now an adults-only establishment—literally. 

“Donnelly Public Library was deeply saddened by the passing of [House Bill] 710,” the library posted. “Unfortunately, the ambiguous language in the legislation leaves us no options but to make some very drastic changes. In order to comply with the legislation we will be transitioning our Library to be an adult only library as of July 1.” 

House Bill (HB) 710 allows parents or guardians to sue any school or public library for carrying materials that could be viewed as age-inappropriate and obscene. Libraries have to move books and materials or face lawsuits. Donnelly Public Library is a small facility in a literal log cabin.

“Donnelly [Public] Library is only 1024 [square foot],” said the library. “Our size prohibits us from separating our ‘grown up’ books to be out of the accessible range of children.” 

Idaho’s Republican-controlled state legislature adopted HB 710, and Gov. Brad Little signed it into law in April. The law’s proponents argue it is meant to give parents more oversight of what their children are reading while doubly serving as a law to protect minors from viewing potentially disturbing images. Entering force on July 1, 2024, HB 710 features a definition of obscene materials for minors that critics believe to be broad and, per the library, “ambiguous.” 

“‘Sexual conduct’ means any act of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person be a female, the breast,” reads a portion of the bill. The law provides for broad assumptions regarding material that is potentially “obscene” or “harmful to minors” for simply dealing with the subject matter of sexuality or the human body’s biological reproductive functions. Parents or guardians can arbitrarily apply these definitions against libraries accused of “promoting” material that is supposedly harmful to minors. In the law, “promoting” refers to virtually any act of selling, loaning out, and distributing books, DVDs, CDs, or other media types. The law also prohibits live performances that meet the definition of being harmful to minors. It is pretty encompassing. 

What’s even more nuts is that HB 710 is a bounty law. A “bounty law” allows private parties to bring civil complaints against entities for alleged violations of the law. If a judge determines the law is broken, the private parties are entitled to predetermined sums as compensation. HB 710 creates a civil right of action to sue schools and public libraries for promoting obscene materials to minors. If the parties suing the institutions prevail, they’re given $250 in statutory damages. 

They could be entitled to compensation for the actual, alleged damages of having their child exposed to a book viewed as violating HB 710. For small library systems like Donnelly Public Library, litigation prospects could be financially catastrophic and spatially restrictive. The law also allows county prosecutors and the Idaho state attorney general to bring civil action against schools and public libraries. Due to this, it isn’t that surprising that this public library is now adults-only. Nothing will be accomplished. Here’s why. HB 710 is grossly unconstitutional. 

Proponents will argue the law doesn’t ban books or the ability for adults to access materials.

Instead, they’ll say it gives parents more say in what children can read. That sounds all well and good, but a claim of such a law empowering parental rights is naïve. State lawmakers have essentially deputized pissed-off voters who believe in conspiracy theories about the nation’s youth being indoctrinated in public schools and libraries by leftist educators and librarians. 

Individuals ultimately become state actors incentivized by promises of guaranteed monies to challenge books and their locations that probably aren’t even “pornographic” or “obscene.” 

Anything that even remotely deals with sexuality or gender in any capacity could be challenged. Such challenges would violate the First Amendment rights of authors, parents, and children — but, most importantly, librarians, educators, and administrators. I can’t say this would happen exactly in the case of the Donnelly Public Library.

However, the fact that this library is so concerned with the beefed up liabilities under HB 710 that the library district board had to restrict the age of access for its patrons speaks to how unjust laws that significantly restrict and regulate libraries can genuinely be. There is no regard for the unintended consequences, which could have a greater impact on the state than the intent of the law.

A rich body of research shows that a child’s ability to access a school or public library positively impacts their development. 

In some studies, the role of the librarian in rural communities carries as much weight as a teacher or other trusted adult.

While it is true that Donnelly Public School isn’t canceling its after-school and summer reading programs, restricting year-round access to this library to just adults could come at a cost. I believe that having the ability to read is a fundamental human right, especially for teens. I might not be the best voice to discuss the rights of youth, but it’s evident this is a product of fear-mongering to gain power among Republicans is out of political gain. 

It is the Republicans, in the case of HB 710, that are harming the children just so a powerful minority of individuals could appease their political backers. No matter who it is or how they are held, everyone should be able to access the information they want and need. 

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics.

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Tech companies keep finding new ways to bring AI into every facet of our lives. AI has taken over my search engine results, and new virtual assistants from Google and OpenAI announced last week are bringing the world eerily close to the 2013 film Her (in more ways than one).

As AI has become more integrated into our world, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the technology’s rising electricity demand. You may have seen the headlines proclaiming that AI uses as much electricity as small countries, that it’ll usher in a fossil-fuel resurgence, and that it’s already challenging the grid.  

So how worried should we be about AI’s electricity demands? Well, it’s complicated. 

Using AI for certain tasks can come with a significant energy price tag. With some powerful AI models, generating an image can require as much energy as charging up your phone, as my colleague Melissa Heikkilä explained in a story from December. Create 1,000 images with a model like Stable Diffusion XL, and you’ve produced as much carbon dioxide as driving just over four miles in a gas-powered car, according to the researchers Melissa spoke to. 

But while generated images are splashy, there are plenty of AI tasks that don’t use as much energy. For example, creating images is thousands of times more energy-intensive than generating text. And using a smaller model that’s tailored to a specific task, rather than a massive, all-purpose generative model, can be dozens of times more efficient. In any case, generative AI models require energy, and we’re using them a lot. 

Electricity consumption from data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency could reach double 2022 levels by 2026, according to projections from the International Energy Agency. Those technologies together made up roughly 2% of global electricity demand in 2022. Note that these numbers aren’t just for AI—it’s tricky to nail down AI’s specific contribution, so keep that in mind when you see predictions about electricity demand from data centers. 

There’s a wide range of uncertainty in the IEA’s projections, depending on factors like how quickly deployment increases and how efficient computing processes get. On the low end, the sector could require about 160 terawatt-hours of additional electricity by 2026. On the higher end, that number might be 590 TWh. As the report puts it, AI, data centers, and cryptocurrency together are likely adding “at least one Sweden or at most one Germany” to global electricity demand. 

In total, the IEA projects, the world will add about 3,500 TWh of electricity demand over that same period—so while computing is certainly part of the demand crunch, it’s far from the whole story. Electric vehicles and the industrial sector will both be bigger sources of growth in electricity demand than data centers in the European Union, for example. 

Still, some big tech companies are suggesting that AI could get in the way of their climate goals. Microsoft pledged four years ago to bring its greenhouse-gas emissions to zero (or even lower) by the end of the decade. But the company’s recent sustainability report shows that instead, emissions are still ticking up, and some executives point to AI as a reason. “In 2020, we unveiled what we called our carbon moonshot. That was before the explosion in artificial intelligence,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, told Bloomberg Green.

What I found interesting, though, is that it’s not AI’s electricity demand that’s contributing to Microsoft’s rising emissions, at least on paper. The company has agreements in place and buys renewable-energy credits so that electricity needs for all its functions (including AI) are met with renewables. (How much these credits actually help is questionable, but that’s a story for another day.) 

Instead, infrastructure growth could be adding to the uptick in emissions. Microsoft plans to spend $50 billion between July 2023 and June 2024 on expanding data centers to meet demand for AI products, according to the Bloomberg story. Building those data centers requires materials that can be carbon intensive, like steel, cement, and of course chips. 

Some important context to consider in the panic over AI’s energy demand is that while the technology is new, this sort of concern isn’t, as Robinson Meyer laid out in an April story in Heatmap.

Meyer points to estimates from 1999 that information technologies were already accounting for up to 13% of US power demand, and that personal computers and the internet could eat up half the grid’s capacity within the decade. That didn’t end up happening, and even at the time, computing was actually accounting for something like 3% of electricity demand. 

We’ll have to wait and see if doomsday predictions about AI’s energy demand play out. The way I see it, though, AI is probably going to be a small piece of a much bigger story. Ultimately, rising electricity demand from AI is in some ways no different from rising demand from EVs, heat pumps, or factory growth. It’s really how we meet that demand that matters. 

If we build more fossil-fuel plants to meet our growing electricity demand, it’ll come with negative consequences for the climate. But if we use rising electricity demand as a catalyst to lean harder into renewable energy and other low-carbon power sources, and push AI to get more efficient, doing more with less energy, then we can continue to slowly clean up the grid, even as AI continues to expand its reach in our lives. 

---

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

Check out my colleague Melissa’s story on the carbon footprint of AI from December here. 

For a closer look at Microsoft’s new sustainability report and the effects of AI, give this Bloomberg Green story from reporters Akshat Rathi and Dina Bass a read. 

Robinson Meyer at Heatmap dug into the context around the AI energy demand in this April piece. 

Another thing

Missed our event last week on thermal batteries? Good news—the recording is now available for subscribers!

For the latest in our Roundtables series, I spoke with Amy Nordrum, MIT Technology Review executive editor, about how the technology works, who the crucial players are, and what I’m watching for next. Check it out here. 

Keeping up with climate  

Changing how we generate heat in industry will be crucial to cleaning up that sector in China, according to a new report. Thermal batteries and heat pumps could meet most of the demand. (Axios)

Form Energy is known for its iron-air batteries, which could help unlock cheap energy storage on the grid. Now, the company is working on research to produce green iron. (Canary Media)

The NET Power pilot in Texas is working to generate electricity with natural gas while capturing the vast majority of emissions. But carbon capture technology in power plants is far from proven. (Cipher News)

MIT spinoff Electrified Thermal Solutions is working to bring its thermal battery technology to commercial use. The company’s product is roughly the size of an elevator and can reach temperatures up to 1,800 °C. (Inside Climate News)

Mexico City has seen constant struggles over water. Now groundwater is drying up, and a system of dams and canals may soon be unable to provide water to the city. (New York Times)

Sodium-ion batteries could offer cheap energy storage while avoiding material crunches for metals like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. China has a massive head start, leaving other countries scrambling to catch up. (Latitude Media)

→ Here’s how this abundant material could unlock cheaper energy storage. (MIT Technology Review)

Biochar is made by heating up biomass like wood and plants in low-oxygen environments. It’s a simple approach to carbon removal, but it doesn’t always get as much attention as other carbon removal technologies. (Heatmap)

This startup wants ships to capture their own emissions by bubbling exhaust through seawater and limestone and dumping it into the ocean. Experts caution that some components of the exhaust could harm sea life if they’re not handled properly. (New Scientist)