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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan

@cobun.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.1K following 140 posts

Privacy, data protection, AI governance. Translating policy to practice. Some friction is good friction. D.C. policy lawyer by day, Colorado forest creature by night. (he / him)

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Reposted by Cobun Zweifel-Keegan
Kate Ruane @kateruane.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
The new version of the House KIDS Act is overall *better* than the last version and *definitely better* than what the Senate seems to be considering, but concerns remain. I’ll try to break some of that down in this thread.🧵 democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/sites/evo-su...
democrats-energycommerce.house.gov
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Ramin Skibba @raminskibba.bsky.social · 20/08/2025
Finally looks like the AI bubble is reaching its limit. Most AI companies are not profitable, and according to a new MIT report, 95% of companies investing in generative AI are getting zero returns on all that money. www.ft.com/content/3391...
ft.com
US tech stocks hit by concerns over future of AI boom
Warning from OpenAI’s Sam Altman and MIT paper puncture Wall Street’s enthusiasm
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Attorney General Keith Ellison @ag.state.mn.us · 01/08/2025
Great news Minnesota: today, we have more rights than we did yesterday. Today, July 31, the Consumer Data Privacy Act (MCDPA) goes into effect to safeguard your personal data and your right to privacy. To learn more and get started, visit privacymn.com.
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Megan Gray @megangray.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
looks to me that FTC and Meta are having settlement discussions to end case over FTC's attempt to unilaterally modify the Facebook privacy consent order cc @jason_kint
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Stephan Geering @stephangeering.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Beautifully written and fascinating column by @cobun.bsky.social on how coded language has been used to preserve privacy in queer history #Pride iapp.org/news/a/a-vie...
iapp.org
IAPP
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Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
@cobun.bsky.social reported that the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee marked up and advanced COPPA 2.0 today. Clarisse Girot published an OECD's report on age assurance practices of 50 online services used by children (www.oecd.org/en/publicati...).
oecd.org
Age assurance practices of 50 online services used by children
Age assurance refers to approaches for determining the age of online users, and as a result, ensuring that children are offered safe and age-appropriate experiences. Governments, technology companies ...
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
"What does a human slowly going insane look like to a corporation?... It looks like an additional monthly user." The latest from @kashhill.bsky.social, on patterns of magical thinking among some chatbot users, is essential reading. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t...
nytimes.com
They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
We can finally settle the debate: "crypto" means cryptozoology! Greetings from Portland, Maine with @nullset.bsky.social
Cobun and Eric in front of a Sasquatch at the international cryptozoology museum.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Update: the Trump administration has proposed cutting the National Park System by $900 million, about one third of its budget.
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Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
As @cobun.bsky.social has written before, the data security rule is a narrow but significant departure from the U.S.'s historically inviolable approach to the free flow of data. See iapp.org/news/a/a-vie...
iapp.org
IAPP
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
And save your energy for the next night when everyone will be gathered at the LGBTQ + Allies After Party for a Cause www.lgbtqprivacy.org
lgbtqprivacy.org
HOME | Lgbtq Privacy
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Megan Gray @megangray.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Next week, are you in town for the Meta antitrust trial, the Google Search Remedy trial, or the IAPP privacy conference? Lucky you, all the DC tech policy peeps will be gathered Tues eve at CDT Spring Fling - join us! cdt.org/event/2025-s...
cdt.org
2025 Spring Fling
CDT is pleased to announce our 2025 Spring Fling, a celebration during IAPP’s Global Privacy Summit. Join us on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, 8:00–10:30 PM at Dirty Habit in Washington, D.C.—you won’t want...
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
"Librarians warned us" is 🔥🔥🔥
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Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die. Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.
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Andrew Selbst @aselbst.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
This is a great video in the tariffs impacts on a small business. Grounded, direct, and informative.
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Bezos take the wheel www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/b...
Amazon Said to Make a Bid to Buy TikTok in the U.S.
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Rachel Maddow @maddow.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Wall Street Journal editorial board: "Our worst fears about Mr. Kennedy are coming true..." www.wsj.com/opinion/rfk-...
wsj.com
Opinion | RFK Jr. Is Already Vindicating His Critics
Shrinking HHS makes sense, but giving power to antivaccine crusader David Geier doesn’t.
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404 Media @404media.co · 19/03/2025
Facial recognition company Clearview attempted to buy Social Security numbers and mugshots for its database. 🔗 www.404media.co/facial-recog...
404media.co
Facial Recognition Company Clearview Attempted to Buy Social Security Numbers and Mugshots for its Database
Clearview AI spent nearly a million dollars in a bid to purchase “690 million arrest records and 390 million arrest photos” from all 50 states, court records reveal.
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in unredacted files related to the assassination of JFK. Many of these people are still alive and therefore now vulnerable to privacy theft and doxing
washingtonpost.com
Social Security numbers and other private information unmasked in JFK files
The data belongs to more than 200 former congressional staffers and others with connections to decades-old investigations.
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Congresswoman Lori Trahan @trahan.house.gov · 18/03/2025
Earlier today, I announced an effort to reform the Privacy Act, the 51-year-old law that protects Americans’ privacy from government abuse. But I’ll need your help. We’re going to protect our privacy, together. Let me explain why this effort is so important.
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jon rosenberg @jonrosenberg.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
I never use baby talk with the dog. He's not a baby, I talk to him like an adult, with full sentences. If he ever learns to talk I don't want him sounding like a baby, that would be so weird and uncomfortable
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
1 big thing: Cyber council's demise shakes public-private sector trust www.axios.com/2025/03/18/c... #axiosfutureofcybersecurity
axios.com
DHS terminated a council that oversaw key cyber discussions with companies
CIPAC provided legal cover to discuss sensitive threat information and cyber planning.
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Anton Barbashin @abarbashin.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Trump is eliminating Wilson Center, a stellar US foreign policy study establishment. Along with it goes the Kennan Institute - one of the best Russia study institutions. I was fortunate to be a Kennan Fellow in 2017. Such a loss
whitehouse.gov
Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Congrats,Tom! Looking forward to seeing the next chapter for the CPPA! @tomkemp00.bsky.social
Press release: California Privacy Protection Agency names Tom Kemp as Executive Director (March 14, 2025)
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Another insightful edition of Privacy Papers for Policymakers is underway. Thanks for bringing us together, @futureofprivacy.bsky.social!
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
NEWS: A federal judge has ordered the urgent release of DOGE records, citing the office's "unprecedented" power and "unusual secrecy." Judge Cooper wants "rolling" productions of records to begin within weeks. Details TK ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...
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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, arrived at headquarters on Monday to a crowd of supporters after being reinstated by a federal judge.
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Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Attorney General Bonta Announces Investigative Sweep of Location Data Industry, Compliance with California Consumer Privacy Act | State of California - Department of Justice - Office of the Attorney General oag.ca.gov/news/press-r...
oag.ca.gov
Attorney General Bonta Announces Investigative Sweep of Location Data Industry, Compliance with California Consumer Privacy Act
Location data can be used to track people’s precise movements — without them realizing OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced an ongoing investigative sweep into the location ...
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Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
U.S. Senators Ed Markey and Bill Cassidy have reintroduced the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0).
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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 01/03/2025
I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F. 18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it. We made this website to tell our story: 18f.org
18f.org
We're not done yet | 18F
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Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 01/03/2025
18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was demolished by Musk’s team shortly after midnight. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 billion.
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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Gift link! A kind person offered up a gift link! 🙏🏼 wapo.st/4bkToWk
wapo.st
They dedicated years to USAID. They had minutes to pack up their desks.
As Trump dismantles USAID, staff returned to their office to retrieve their belongs and for a final, tearful goodbye with colleagues.
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Philip Gourevitch @pgourevitch.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Musk’s hackers burglarized "a vast trove of information about the entire federal workforce” on OPM computers even as Trump was being sworn in — that is "hours before Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was officially created by an executive order.” www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
wsj.com
Inside DOGE’s Clash With the Federal Workforce
With a surprise incursion in the first minutes of the Trump presidency, Elon Musk’s programmers seized control of a key personnel agency; ‘rogue bureaucrats’ fight back.
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Luis Alberto Montezuma 路易斯·阿尔贝托·蒙特祖玛 @montezumachavez.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Both the California Attorney General's Office (OAG) and now CPPA consider inferences to be personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Full CPPA's decision: @cobun.bsky.social's post: www.linkedin.com/posts/cobun_...
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Private rights of action for privacy laws? Yes! says Senator Hawley, R-Mo., on NPR this morning ... www.npr.org/2025/02/27/n...
Leila Fadel: Senator, I want to start with a longtime issue for you. Big Tech's access to private data of American citizens. Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, Google, X. Are you pushing for more specific regulations on these companies?

Sen. Josh Hawley: I think the fact that they can take our data without our knowledge, they can sell it without our permission, they can market it without our control — all of these are huge problems. We should give every single American the right to go to court and to sue these companies when they violate our property rights, when they take it from us without our consent and without any form of compensation. And also when they harm our children, when our kids are exposed to sexually exploitative material, we ought to be able to go to court and sue these companies. Right now, we can't. And that needs to change.
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Leah Feiger @leahfeiger.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
New from me: DOGE is already causing chaos in Antarctica. Daily life at US-run Antarctic stations has been disrupted, and scientists don’t know if their research will be able to continue, how US stations will be sustained, or what all of this might mean for the continent’s delicate geopolitics.
wired.com
DOGE’s Chaos Reaches Antarctica
Daily life at US-run Antarctic stations has already been disrupted. Scientists worry that the long-term impacts could upend not only important research but the continent’s delicate geopolitics.
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Brian Fung @brianfung.me · 27/02/2025
US officials knew about, and did not oppose, that secret UK order that tried to force Apple to weaken iCloud encryption, and now DNI Tulsi Gabbard says the UK order would violate Americans’ rights, @joemenn.bsky.social reports www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
“Gabbard on Tuesday wrote to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) saying she had directed a legal review of the order and had not known of it before it was reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by other publications. The legislators had urged her to act just after her confirmation as the top U.S. intelligence leader.

“I share your grave concern about the serious implications of the United Kingdom, or any foreign country, requiring Apple or any company to create a ‘backdoor’ that would allow access to Americans’ personal encrypted data,” she wrote. “This would be a clear and egregious violation of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, and open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors.””
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 27/02/2025
“While some companies have allowed users to choose whether their DNA information may be used to help criminal investigations, the decision by the authorities to skirt those limits could mean that the companies’ privacy assurances are essentially meaningless.”
nytimes.com
To Identify Suspect in Idaho Killings, F.B.I. Used Restricted Consumer DNA Data
New records show that the F.B.I. identified Bryan Kohberger as a potential murder suspect after tapping consumer databases that were supposed to be off limits.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 26/02/2025
When corporations tell you chatbots are efficient it’s an indication of whose time they think isn’t valuable. www.businessinsider.com/how-ai-hirin...
After asking some simple questions about her name, contact information, and availability to work, Ava Cado scheduled an interview for Mendoza at a Chipotle location 35 minutes away in Selma, California.

But the chatbot misled her. "There was pretty much no way to really contact them," Mendoza said of trying to reach the store. Upon arriving, the manager told her there were no open positions and that the AI system had mistakenly scheduled the appointment.

"I was really frustrated at that time because I had that problem with McDonald's and other AI," Mendoza said. "Having this problem be the third or fourth time that I've had issues with AI — it was just getting to me."
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Bulk resignation of USDS experts apnews.com/article/doge...
apnews.com
Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE
Twenty-one civil service employees have resigned from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they're refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle ...
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Steven Rich @datab.ae · 25/02/2025
which brings me to my next piece of ~personal news~: in a couple weeks, i'll be starting a new job as a reporter on the data journalism team at the @nytimes.com working primarily with the National desk. i'm super excited to join this new-ish team to help grow the use of data analysis in stories.
nytco.com
Data Journalism Team Expands | The New York Times Company
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Kate Klonick @klonick.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
So, I made this list of Top 100 Legal Scholars (#8, no less!) by citations in the last 3 years. But perhaps the best part was the quote below, which I wish is all I ever could dream of hearing as I toiled on this paper for 4 years during my PhD 🥹 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 25/02/2025
A version of Microsoft Word with banner ads and surprise video pop-ups that doesn't let you *save files to your computer*. Just the thought of this is painful www.theverge.com/news/618278/...
The ad-supported version of Office includes banners that are permanently visible at the side, as well as 15-second video ads that play every few hours, according to Beebom. Microsoft also forces users of this free version of Office to store documents in OneDrive, with support for local file storage disabled.
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Jerry Chen @jcsalterego.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
no the three staffers left at yosemite aren't yosemite sam, foghorn leghorn, and tasmanian devil. that isn't true
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James Barr @jamesbarr.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Pop Up Appears! It begins, and I quote, “We and our 876 partners care about your privacy…”
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Reuters Legal @legal.reuters.com · 22/02/2025
The American Bar Association will temporarily suspend enforcement of its diversity and inclusion standard for law schools reut.rs/3CZRBJA
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Privacy International @privacyinternational.org · 22/02/2025
🚨 Yesterday Apple responded to a massive secret government power, removing data security options for millions of people. We think. We don't know - because it’s a secret power in law that shouldn’t have ever existed. pvcy.org/2qnMHy
Darth Vader representing the long arm of the British state
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Cobun Zweifel-Keegan @cobun.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Your FTC history lesson for the week iapp.org/news/a/a-vie...
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Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 20/02/2025
Lawfare is tracking over 70 cases of legal challenges to the Trump administration’s executive orders and actions, as well as cases on behalf of the Trump administration to enforce them. Check out the tracker here, updated by @annahickey.bsky.social: www.lawfaremedia.org/projects-ser...
A screenshot of Lawfare's Trump Administration Litigation Tracker page
The page includes a picture of President Trump signed an executive order and the following text:

The table below tracks litigation challenging the Trump administration’s executive orders, as well as cases on behalf of the Trump administration to enforce them. You can sort the table by clicking the column titles and query keywords using the search box. 

For real-time updates on the latest filings, follow @trumplitigation.bots.law on Bluesky or @trumplitigation on X, curated by Anna Hickey and Tyler McBrien and published in collaboration with the Free Law Project.

Last updated Feb. 20, 2025.
Email tips@lawfaremedia.org to submit a case or correction.

Date Filed	Executive Order/Action	Summary	Lawsuit	Status	Docket Number	Initial Jurisdiction
February 19, 2025	Firing of Federal Workers	A coalition of unions which represent federal employees sued the Trump administration over the firing of thousands of probationary federal employees, allegedly for "performance reasons." The suit alleges that OPM does not have the authority to direct these firings and that these terminations were in violation of the Adminstrative Procedures Act.	American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management	Suit filed	3:25-cv-01780	District Court, N.D. California
February 19, 2025	TPS Cancellation	The National TPS Alliance, which represents TPS holders in the U.S., sued the Department of Homeland Security over the decision to cancel temporary protected status protections for Venezuelans living in the United States.	National TPS Alliance v. Noem	Suit filed	3:25-cv-01766	District Court, N.D. California
February 18, 2025	Suspension of Refugee Admissions	The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sued the Trump administration over orders suspending foreign aid and refugee admissions into the United States.	U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops v. U.S. Department of State	Suit filed	1:25-cv-00465…
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