Matt Contursi
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amiinthegoodplace.bsky.social
Matt Contursi
@amiinthegoodplace.bsky.social
98 followers 200 following 5 posts
tech+law+privacy | JD / MS / BS | Currently: @UCDavis.bsky.social Legal Fellow | Previously: @futureofprivacy.bsky.social @EPIC.org @AZDHS.gov
Opinions mine own!
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Reposted by Matt Contursi
kylegriffin1.bsky.social
The White House has now confirmed the second boat strike on Sept. 2.
December 1, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
jane.theneedlenews.com
The KOSA hearing is tomorrow. I will be covering it live starting at 10:15 EST
fightforthefuture.org Fight for the Future @fightforthefuture.org · Oct 24
🚨‼️As of yesterday KOSA is at 64 cosponsors with @vanhollen.senate.gov + @kim.senate.gov - who claim to support LGTBQ+ rights but are clearly okay with supporting legislation that’ll censor us off the internet- newly signed on.

You know what to do: www.stopkosa.com
December 1, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
techpolicypress.bsky.social
As cloud outages rise, dependence on the concentrated market that provides these services creates systemic fragility, argues Rhea Siers. It’s time for institutions to rethink these digital dependencies and build resilience through accountability, transparency, and an honest assessment of the risk.
How Better Governance Can Mitigate Future Digital Outages | TechPolicy.Press
Rhea Siers examines the risks of concentration in cloud services, and approaches to governance and resilience.
buff.ly
November 29, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
ruha9.bsky.social
Sooo many folks I’m excited to work with on Mamdani’s technology transition committee. All hands on deck to bring the Affordability Agenda to life: childcare, housing, transportation.

While its easy to get swept up in personality, this is a group focused on peoples real needs. LETS KEEP THE FOCUS.
Committee on Technology Sarah Aoun Ruha Benjamin, Ida B Wells Just Data Lab at Princeton Myaisha Hayes, MediaJustice Noel Hidalgo, BetaNYC Sam Jacobs, Food Fight Lab Katherine Jin, Democratic Socialists of America Amba Kak, AI Now Institute Huge Ma, Turbovax Matt Mitchell ReNika Moore, ACLU Alondra Nelson, Institute for Advanced Study Martha Norrick, Backbone Strategies Julie Samuels, Tech NYC Garfield Swaby, New York Public Library Julie Swoope Democratic Socialists of America Haley Van Dyck Elyse Voegeli, 18F Maia Woluchem, Data & Society The Mamdani administration’s 17 transition committees: Housing Youth & Education Transportation, Climate & Infrastructure Arts & Culture Community Organizing Community Safety Economic Development & Workforce Development Emergency Response Government Operations Health Immigrant Justice Criminal Legal System Legal Affairs Small Businesses & MWBEs Social Services Technology Worker Justice Photo of a colorful keffiyeh with a name tag on it that says “Ruha Benjamin, Technology, A NEW ERA for New York City”
November 25, 2025 at 9:15 PM
amiinthegoodplace.bsky.social
Very excited about Mamdani’s picks on his transition team
alondra.bsky.social Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 7d
Honored to serve on Mayor-elect @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social Transition Committee on Technology. For too long, too many New Yorkers have been left behind. NYC deserves governance that centers affordability, equity, and the public good-looking forward to the work ahead. www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...
NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announces transition committees
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani​ announced Monday the creation of 17 transition advisory committees made up of more than 400 people.
www.cbsnews.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
reckless.bsky.social
I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
chanda.blacksky.app
May she rest in power 🙏🏽

www.cnn.com/2025/11/24/u...
Oldest living survivor of Tulsa Race Massacre dies at 111 years old | CNN
Viola Ford Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, died at 111 years old Monday, her grandson Ike Howard confirmed.
www.cnn.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
adambonin.bsky.social
Wanna know how bad the Arizona legislator's petition forgeries were? Here's the examples from the Austin Smith indictment.

s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24...
November 24, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
wolter.bsky.social
Look, there are plenty of scientists that are individually arrogant and narrow minded, but have enough journalistic responsibility to realize “scientific orthodoxy” in this case is a euphemism for “evidence based treatments that have been proven effective in numerous test cases over decades.”
nytimes.com The New York Times @nytimes.com · 10d
Breaking News: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he personally instructed the CDC to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism. The move underscores his determination to challenge scientific orthodoxy — in this case, that vaccines save lives — and bend the health department to his will.
RFK Jr. Says He Instructed CDC to Change Vaccines and Autism Language on Website
In an interview, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cited gaps in vaccine safety research. His critics say he is ignoring a larger point: Vaccines save lives.
nyti.ms
November 22, 2025 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
Absolutely incredible; after shooting Marimar Martinez 5 times and arresting her on claims that she rammed them and pulled a gun, prosecutors have now moved to dismiss ALL criminal charges against her and her codefendant.
djbyrnes1.bsky.social Dave Byrnes @djbyrnes1.bsky.social · 12d
New: the govt has moved to dismiss its assault case against Marimar Martinez and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, two people accused of "box[ing] in" a Border Patrol vehicle in Chicago on Oct. 4.

One agent shot Martinez, with evidence presented to the court that he later bragged about in text messages.
November 20, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
mjsdc.bsky.social
5th Circuit MAGA Judge Andrew Oldham says Erie was wrongly decided, federal judges should resume "finding" law themselves rather than applying state statutes, and appeals courts should stop certifying questions about state law to state supreme courts. www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...
Andrew S. Oldham, Circuit Judge, dissenting: I am troubled by the Fifth Circuit’s standards for certifying questions to state courts. Certification barely existed at all before the Supreme Court’s decision in Clay v. Sun Insurance Office Ltd., 363 U.S. 207 (1960). But today it looms large over our diversity docket. And I worry that overuse of the certified-question procedure contravenes history and tradition, undermines federalism, diminishes the parity of state and federal courts, and patronizes our colleagues in the judicial branches of the several States. Our purported “test” for certifying questions is theoretically bankrupt. And the procedure’s much-celebrated efficiency is overstated. We should reconsider these errors, swear off the drink of overcertification, and bring our practices in line with Article III and the jurisdictional statutes enacted by Congress.
November 20, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
karenattiah.bsky.social
I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered.

He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here :

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo...
Opinion | Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression
The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
nickhidalgo.bsky.social
The San Jose PD regularly conducts warrantless searches through its massive license plate reader database, allowing it to reconstruct detailed maps of a person’s movements through the City going back as far as a year. This poses a serious threat to communities’ privacy and freedom of movement.
November 18, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
elizabethjoh.bsky.social
This is the Gig Surveillance Economy: ssrn.com/abstract=388...
November 18, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
alondra.bsky.social
“Many of the women say that they were pressured to have unwanted or unnecessary gynecological procedures while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement”
November 15, 2025 at 3:11 AM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
ariezra.bsky.social
We are so pleased to share the Call for Submissions for the 2026 Privacy Law Scholars Conference. We are introducing so many new elements this year, including a mentorship-focused pre-conference and discussion sessions in addition to our paper workshop sessions.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...
PLSC 2026 CFP
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2026 www.privacyscholars.org The Program & Planning Committee of the Privacy Law Scholars Conference invites submissions for the 19th annual con...
docs.google.com
November 14, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
epic.org
SB 976 regulates engagement-maximizing algorithms that select and organize media for users by surveilling users’ online behavior. EPIC recommended that the California DOJ prioritize privacy- and speech-protective age assurance methods and standards in the rulemaking.
November 12, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
noaasm.bsky.social
Meta is facing one of the most significant leaves as Meta’s head AI scientist Yann LeCun has announced his departure and is planning to launch his own startup
nypost.com/2025/11/11/b...
Meta’s top AI scientist Yann LeCun to depart as Mark Zuckerberg pushes ‘superintelligence’
Yann LeCun, 65, a Turing Award-winner considered a pioneer in AI development, has told colleagues he will leave Meta in the coming months, according to a report.
nypost.com
November 12, 2025 at 6:09 AM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
lawrencehurley.bsky.social
NEW: Supreme Court rejects long-shot effort to overturn ruling that legalized gay marriage:
www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...
Supreme Court rejects long-shot effort to overturn same-sex marriage ruling
The court turned away an appeal filed by Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who was sued after refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple.
www.nbcnews.com
November 10, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
mozilla.org
Imagination is resistance, @ruha9.bsky.social reminds us that, " we need to reject the gospel that says technology is inevitable, that the train has left the station... In an error of automated bullshit, it’s time to become bullshit detectors,"
#MozFest
November 8, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
kbkarlson.bsky.social
LAST CALL! #Sociology Professorships in Copenhagen, Denmark!

We're hiring 2+ open-rank profs (Asst/Assoc/Full). Any area.

Deadline: this Saturday, Nov 15!

Join a leading European sociology department. Please repost!

jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...
Call for two or more open-rank academic positions in Sociology
jobportal.ku.dk
November 9, 2025 at 8:08 AM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
jaywillis.net
The Supreme Court's decision to let the Trump White House implement its anti-trans passport policy is vile, and I appreciate Jackson going out of her way to include in her dissent, for the record, the administration's language justifying the policy. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
TRUMP v. ORR JACKSON, J., dissenting identity. From 1992 to 2010, passport applicants who wished to obtain passports with sex markers that were dif- ferent from the sex assigned to them at birth had to submit evidence of surgical reassignment. In 2010, the State De- partment began allowing passport applicants to submit a doctor’s certification avowing that they had undergone clin- ical treatment for gender transition. Beginning in 2021, the State Department allowed applicants to self-select the sex marker that matched their gender identity. Through it all, the indisputable point of a passport re- mained: to “attes[t] to the identity and nationality of the bearer.” 22 CFR §51.1 (2024). The State Department’s sex- marker policies have thus long demonstrated that what is important for identification purposes is the bearer’s gender identity today. No matter. On January 22, 2025, the agency overhauled the rules for sex markers on passports, reverting to its pre- 1992 practices. Its Passport Policy now requires that all new passports reflect the holders’ sex assigned at birth. Why? Because two days earlier, on January 20, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14168, characterizing transgender identity as “false” and “corrosive” to American society. 90 Fed. Reg. 8615 (2025). The order asserted that “the policy of the United States” is “to recognize two sexes, male and female,” which it defined based on the sex as- signed “at conception.” Ibid. And the order directed the Secretary of State to require that any new government-is- sued identification documents reflect the holder’s “biologi- cal” sex. Id., at 8615–8616. The State Department re- sponded by rescinding its prior sex-identification policies moving forward; transgender Americans who had previ- ously obtained passports with sex markers reflecting their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth could continue to use those documents until they expire. Several transgender Americans w Cite as: 607 U. S. ____ (2025) 9 JACKSON, J., dissenting President from carrying out these supposedly legitimate ob- jectives. Thus, the Government’s asserted harm from being sub- jected to the injunction—its only asserted harm—is that the President cannot, at least for now, enact his preferred poli- cies regarding sex markers on U. S. passports. Even as- suming, arguendo, that this purported injury counts as ir- reparable harm, it does not suffice to justify the extraordinary equitable remedy of a stay pending appeal.5 What the Government needs (and what it does not have) is an explanation for why it faces harm unless the Presi- dent’s chosen policy is implemented now. It suggests that there is an urgent foreign policy interest in dictating sex markers on passports, but does not elaborate as to what that interest might possibly be. All the Government is able to muster is the statement that “the injunction forces the government to misrepresent the sex of passport holders to foreign nations” and to “contradict . . . biological reality.” Application for Stay of Injunction 34. But how urgent can this interest be when the Passport Policy itself allows transgender Americans who already have passports with sex markers reflecting their current gender identity to con- tinue using those passports until they expire? The Government also insists that gender identity is not a meaningful basis for identification—strangely begging the question why sex markers are required on passports at all.
November 6, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
jcsalterego.bsky.social
a screenshot reads: OPINION INTERESTING TIMES Did Bad Takes Ruin the Newspaper?
November 6, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by Matt Contursi
jonkeegan.com
Over the years I have read A LOT of damning stories about what Meta executives were saying internally about serious harms on their platforms (most of them written by Reuters’ @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social ). His new story is a blockbuster:
www.reuters.com/investigatio...

sherwood.news/tech/meta-pr...
Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports
The report shows that the company was hesitant to crack down harder on scams, due to the billions in revenue that they were generating for Meta....
sherwood.news
November 6, 2025 at 3:49 PM