Category: Business

Ceará, Brazil — December 2025 — TikTok parent company ByteDance has announced a landmark investment of more than 200 billion reais (approximately $37.7 billion) to build its first Latin American data center in Brazil, a move that positions the country as a rising global hub for AI, cloud computing and digital infrastructure. The project was […]

December 2025 – A U.S. federal court in Delaware has granted final approval for the sale of shares in Citgo Petroleum’s parent company, clearing the way for Amber Energy, an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management, to acquire the Venezuelan‑owned refiner for $5.9 billion. The ruling marks the last major legal step in a two‑year court‑supervised […]

December 2025 – Black Friday has once again underscored the strength of global e‑commerce, with online sales soaring to $11.8 billion in the United States and an estimated $79 billion worldwide, according to data from Adobe Analytics and industry trackers monitoring global retail performance. Analysts say the surge was driven by aggressive discounting, early holiday […]

After a years-long battle, the European Commission’s “Chat Control” plan, which would mandate mass scanning and other encryption-breaking measures, at last codifies agreement on a position within the Council of the EU, representing EU States. The good news is that the most controversial part, the forced requirement to scan encrypted messages, is out. The bad […]

Axon Enterprise Inc. is working with a Canadian police department to test the addition of face recognition technology (FRT) to its body-worn cameras (BWCs). This is an alarming development in government surveillance that should put communities everywhere on alert.  As many as 50 officers from the Edmonton Police Department (EPD) will begin using these FRT-enabled […]

EFF intern Alexandra Halbeck contributed to this blog When people talk to a chatbot, they often reveal highly personal information they wouldn’t share with anyone else. Chat logs are digital repositories of our most sensitive and revealing information. They are also tempting targets for law enforcement, to which the U.S. Constitution gives only one answer: […]

EFF has submitted its formal comment to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) opposing a set of proposed rules that would sharply restrict the public’s ability to challenge wrongly granted patents. These rules would make inter partes review (IPR)—the main tool Congress created to fix improperly granted patents—unavailable in most of the situations where […]

Shifts in financial markets now move global trade almost as strongly as actual economic activity, shaping prospects for developing countries in particular. “Trade is not just a chain of suppliers. It is also a chain of credit lines, payment systems, currency markets and capital flows,” said Rebeca Grynspan, UNCTAD Secretary-General. Developing economies face mounting pressures […]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and scores of state and local law enforcement agencies have installed a massive dragnet of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the US-Mexico borderlands.  In many cases, the agencies have gone out of their way to disguise the cameras from public view. And the […]

Just as industrialisation in the 19th century “split the world into a wealthy few and the impoverished”, the AI revolution could do the same. “Countries that invest in skills, computing power and sound governance systems will benefit, others risk being left far behind,” warned Philip Schellekens, Chief Economist for the UN Development Programme for the Asia […]