Ukrainian Surgeon Operates On Wounded Russian Soldiers

The devastation Russia’s war has wrought is not lost on Vitaliy.

“But we do our job because it’s our job and our duty,” he said, referring to the Hippocratic oath by which medical professionals abide. “And, of course, after they recover we can exchange them. So I tell myself that this can help to get Ukrainian soldiers back.”

Both Russia and Ukraine have taken prisoners of war since Putin’s invasion began 12 days ago. The Ukrainian side has captured at least 245 Russian troops, according to a website affiliated with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

Kyiv has also posted an open call to the mothers of captured Russian soldiers to come retrieve them and take them home. According to the Ukraine Ministry of Defense Facebook page, Russian prisoners of war will be released to their mothers if the women personally travel to Kyiv to meet their sons in person.

“We, Ukrainian people, in contrast to Putin’s fascists, do not make war with mothers and their captured sons,” the ministry said.

But Ukraine has also published several ghastly videos of captured Russian troops that experts in international humanitarian law said might violate the Geneva Conventions.

In one video, a Russian soldier with tape wrapped around his head to cover his eyes is forced to call his parents to tell them he had been captured. “Nobody knows anything. They just ordered us to invade Ukraine,” he tells them.

Another video shows two heavily wounded Russian servicemen

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Clearview AI Is Facing A $23 Million Fine Over Facial Recognition In The UK

The UK’s national privacy watchdog on Monday warned Clearview AI that the controversial facial recognition company faces a potential fine of £17 million, or $23 million, for “alleged serious breaches” of the country’s data protection laws. The regulator also demanded the company delete the personal information of people in the UK.

Photos in Clearview AI’s database “are likely to include the data of a substantial number of people from the UK and may have been gathered without people’s knowledge from publicly available information online, including social media platforms,” the Information Commissioner’s Office said in a statement on Monday.

In February 2020, BuzzFeed News first reported that individuals at the National Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police, and a number of other police forces across England were listed as having access to Clearview’s facial recognition technology, according to internal data. The company has built its business by scraping people’s photos from the web and social media and indexing them in a vast facial recognition database.

In March, a BuzzFeed News investigation based on Clearview AI’s own internal data revealed how the New York–based startup marketed its facial recognition tool — by offering free trials for its mobile app or desktop software — to thousands of officers and employees at more than 1,800 US taxpayer-funded entities, according to data that runs up until February 2020. In August, another BuzzFeed News investigation showed how police departments, prosecutors’ offices, and interior ministries from around the world ran nearly 14,000 searches over the same period with

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China-Owned TikTok Is Racing To Move User Data To The US

So far, Project Texas appears to be primarily an exercise in geography, one that seems well-positioned to address concerns about the Chinese government accessing Americans’ personal information. But it does not address other ways that China could weaponize the platform, like tweaking TikTok algorithms to increase exposure to divisive content, or adjusting the platform to seed or encourage disinformation campaigns.

Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told BuzzFeed News that the Chinese government’s influence on TikTok’s algorithms is a more pressing concern than data exfiltration. “I’ve never seen a particularly good argument about what the Chinese could get from TikTok data that they can’t get from hundreds of other sources,” he said. But he did point to examples of the Chinese Communist Party using technology to warp digital discourse, including TikTok’s previous censorship of speech harmful to China’s “national honor,” and a 2020 attempt by a China-based Zoom employee to disrupt video meetings commemorating the Tiananmen Square massage.

TikTok vehemently denies accusations that it censors speech critical of China today. And members of TikTok’s Trust & Safety team, which makes and enforces content policies for the company, portrayed it as comparatively well insulated from ByteDance influence. Employees described Trust & Safety workers as having less frequent contact with Beijing, and clearer lines of reporting, than other employees that BuzzFeed News spoke to — and described TikTok’s Trust & Safety practices as similar to those adopted by US-based tech giants. Nonetheless,

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