In Tokyo Mitsubishi is deploying "an innovative new battery swap network for electric cars" in a multi-year test program reports the EV news site Electrek.

But it's not just for electric cars. Along with the 14 modular battery swapping stations, Mitsubishi is also deploying "more than 150 battery-swappable commercial electric vehicles" from truck maker Fuso: A truck like the Mitsubishi eCanter typically requires a full night of AC charging to top off its batteries, and at least an hour or two on DC charging in Japan, according to Fuso. This joint pilot by Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks, and [EV battery swap specialist] Ample aims to circumvent this issue of forced downtime with its swappable batteries, supporting vehicle uptime by delivering a full charge within minutes.

The move is meant to encourage the transport industry's EV shift while creating a depository of stored energy that can be deployed to the grid in the event of a natural disaster — something Mitsubishi in Japan has been working on for years.
The article's author also adds their own opinion about battery-swapping technology. "When you see how simple it is to add hundreds of miles of driving in just 100 seconds — quicker, in many cases, than pumping a tank of liquid fuel into an ICE-powered car — you might come around, yourself."

"Cooper Taylor is only 17 years old, but he's already trying to revolutionize the drone industry," writes Business Insider: His design makes the drone more efficient, customizable, and less expensive to construct, he says. He's built six prototypes, 3D printing every piece of hardware, programming the software, and even soldering the control circuit board. He says building his drone cost one-fifth of the price of buying a comparable machine, which sells for several thousand dollars. Taylor told Business Insider he hopes that "if you're a first responder or a researcher or an everyday problem solver, you can have access to this type of drone."

His innovation won him an $8,000 scholarship in April at the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, funded by the Defense Department. Then, on May 16, he received an even bigger scholarship of $15,000 from the US Navy, which he won after presenting his research at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair...

It all started when Taylor's little sister got a drone, and he was disappointed to see that it could fly for only about 30 minutes before running out of power. He did some research and found that a vertical take-off and landing, or VTOL, drone would last longer. This type of drone combines the multi-rotor helicopter style with the fixed wings of an airplane, making it extremely versatile. It lifts off as a helicopter, then transitions into plane mode. That way, it can fly farther than rotors alone could take it, which was the drawback to Taylor's sister's drone. Unlike a plane-style drone, though, it doesn't need a runway, and it can hover with its helicopter rotors.
Taylor designed a motor "that could start out helicopter-style for liftoff, then tilt back to become an airplane-style motor," according to the article.

And now this summer he'll be "working on a different drone project through a program with the Reliable Autonomous Systems Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Agnapot for sharing the news.

Will an expansion of biofuels increase greenhouse gas emissions, despite their purported climate benefits? That's the claim of a new report from the World Resources Institute, which has been critical of US biofuel policy in the past.

Ars Technica has republished an article from the nonprofit, non-partisan news organization Inside Climate News, which investigates the claim. Drawing from 100 academic studies on biofuel impacts, the Institute's new report "concludes that [U.S.] ethanol policy has been largely a failure and ought to be reconsidered, especially as the world needs more land to produce food to meet growing demand." "Multiple studies show that U.S. biofuel policies have reshaped crop production, displacing food crops and driving up emissions from land conversion, tillage, and fertilizer use," said the report's lead author, Haley Leslie-Bole. "Corn-based ethanol, in particular, has contributed to nutrient runoff, degraded water quality and harmed wildlife habitat. As climate pressures grow, increasing irrigation and refining for first-gen biofuels could deepen water scarcity in already drought-prone parts of the Midwest...."

It may, in fact, produce more greenhouse gases than the fossil fuels it was intended to replace. Recent research says that biofuel refiners also emit significant amounts of carcinogenic and dangerous substances, including hexane and formaldehyde, in greater amounts than petroleum refineries. The new report points to research saying that increased production of biofuels from corn and soy could actually raise greenhouse gas emissions, largely from carbon emissions linked to clearing land in other countries to compensate for the use of land in the Midwest.

On top of that, corn is an especially fertilizer-hungry crop requiring large amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer, which releases huge amounts of nitrous oxide when it interacts with the soil. American farming is, by far, the largest source of domestic nitrous oxide emissions already — about 50 percent. If biofuel policies lead to expanded production, emissions of this enormously powerful greenhouse gas will likely increase, too.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Do you remember the Pirelli Cyber Tire? No, it's not an angular nightmare clad in stainless steel. Rather, it's a sensor-equipped tire that can inform the car it's fitted to what's happening, both with the tire itself and the road it's passing over. The technology has slowly been making its way into the real world, starting with rarified stuff like the McLaren Artura. Now, Pirelli is going to put some Cyber Tires to work for everybody, not just supercar drivers, in a new pilot program with the regional government of Apulia in Italy.

The Cyber Tire has a sensor to monitor temperature and pressure, using Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate with the car. The electronics are able to withstand more than 3,500 G as part of life on the road, and a 0.3-oz (10 g) battery keeps everything running for the life of the tire. The idea was to develop a better tire pressure monitoring system, one that could tell the car exactly what kind of tire -- summer, winter, all-season, and so on -- was fitted, and even its state of wear, allowing the car to adapt its settings appropriately. But other applications suggested themselves -- at a recent CES, Pirelli showed how a Cyber Tire could warn other road users about aquaplaning. Then again, we've been waiting more than a decade for vehicle-to-vehicle communication to make a difference in daily driving to no avail.

Apulia's program does not rely on crowdsourcing data from Cyber Tires fitted to private vehicles. Regardless of the privacy implications, the rubber isn't nearly in widespread enough use for there to be a sufficient population of Cyber Tire-shod cars in the region. Instead, Pirelli will fit the tires to a fleet of vehicles supplied by the fleet management and rental company Ayvens. Driving around, the sensors in the tires will be able to infer how rough or irregular the asphalt is, via some clever algorithms. That's only one part of it, however. Pirelli and Apulia are also combining input from the tires with data from a network of road cameras and some technology from the Swedish startup Univrses. As you might expect, this data is combined in the cloud, and dashboards are available to enable end users to explore the data.

Flying to London, a Boeing 787 aircraft operated by Air India "crashed shortly after taking off..." reports Bloomberg, "in what stands to be the worst accident involving the U.S. planemaker's most advanced widebody airliner." Flight AI171 was carrying 242 passengers and crew. Video footage shared on social media showed a giant plume of smoke engulfing the crash site, with no reports of survivors. [UPDATE: Reuters reports one passenger jumped out of the emergency exit and survived, with a senior police officer saying "chances are that there might be more survivors among the injured who are being treated in the hospital."]

The aircraft entered a slow descent shortly after taking off, with its landing gear still extended before exploding into a huge fireball upon impact. The crash took place in a residential area, which could mean a higher death toll... The pilots in command issued a mayday call immediately after take-off to air traffic controllers, according to India's civil aviation regulator.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: The head of the Federal Aviation Administration just outlined an ambitious goal to upgrade the U.S.'s air traffic control (ATC) system and bring it into the 21st century. According to NPR, most ATC towers and other facilities today feel like they're stuck in the 20th century, with controllers using paper strips and floppy disks to transfer data, while their computers run Windows 95. While this likely saved them from the disastrous CrowdStrike outage that had a massive global impact, their age is a major risk to the nation's critical infrastructure, with the FAA itself saying that the current state of its hardware is unsustainable.

"The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips," acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee last Wednesday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said earlier this week," This is the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades. Everyone agrees -- this is non-partisan. Everyone knows we have to do it." The aviation industry put up a coalition pushing for ATC modernization called Modern Skies, and it even ran an ad telling us that ATC is still using floppy disks and several older technologies to keep our skies safe. [...]

Currently, the White House hasn't said what this update will cost. The FAA has already put out a Request For Information to gather data from companies willing to take on the challenge of upgrading the entire system. It also announced several 'Industry Days' so companies can pitch their tech and ideas to the Transportation Department. Duffy said that the Transportation Department aims to complete the project within four years. However, industry experts say this timeline is unrealistic. No matter how long it takes, it's high time that the FAA upgrades the U.S.'s ATC system today after decades of neglect.

Google's self-driving taxi service Waymo has surpassed 10 million total paid rides, marking a significant milestone in the transition of autonomous vehicles from novelty to mainstream transportation option. The company's growth trajectory, WSJ argues, shows clear signs of exponential scaling, with weekly rides jumping from 10,000 in August 2023 to over 250,000 currently. Waymo is on track to hit 20 million rides by the end of 2025. The story adds: This is not just because Waymo is expanding into new markets. It's because of the way existing markets have come to embrace self-driving cars.

In California, the most recent batch of quarterly data reported by the company was the most encouraging yet. It showed that Waymo's number of paid rides inched higher by roughly 2% in both January and February -- and then increased 27% in March. In the nearly two years that people in San Francisco have been paying for robot chauffeurs, it was the first time that Waymo's growth slowed down for several months only to dramatically speed up again. Waymo currently operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with expansion planned for Austin, Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. The service faces incoming competition from Tesla, which plans to launch its own robotaxi service in Austin this month. Waymo remains unprofitable despite raising $5.6 billion in funding last year.

With over 200 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by population. Now it's testing a program that will allow Brazilians "to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint," according to RestOfWorld.org — "the first such nationwide initiative in the world."

The government says it's partnering with California-based data valuation/monetization firm DrumWave to create "data savings account" to "transform data into economic assets, with potential for monetization and participation in the benefits generated by investing in technologies such as AI LLMs." But all based on "conscious and authorized use of personal information." RestOfWorld reports: Today, "people get nothing from the data they share," Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation and board adviser for DrumWave, told Rest of World. "Brazil has decided its citizens should have ownership rights over their data...." After a user accepts a company's offer on their data, payment is cashed in the data wallet, and can be immediately moved to a bank account. The project will be "a correction in the historical imbalance of the digital economy," said Kaiser. Through data monetization, the personal data that companies aggregate, classify, and filter to inform many aspects of their operations will become an asset for those providing the data...

Brazil's project stands out because it brings the private sector and the government together, "so it has a better chance of catching on," said Kaiser. In 2023, Brazil's Congress drafted a bill that classifies data as personal property. The country's current data protection law classifies data as a personal, inalienable right. The new legislation gives people full rights over their personal data — especially data created "through use and access of online platforms, apps, marketplaces, sites and devices of any kind connected to the web." The bill seeks to ensure companies offer their clients benefits and financial rewards, including payment as "compensation for the collecting, processing or sharing of data." It has garnered bipartisan support, and is currently being evaluated in Congress...

If approved, the bill will allow companies to collect data more quickly and precisely, while giving users more clarity over how their data will be used, according to Antonielle Freitas, data protection officer at Viseu Advogados, a law firm that specializes in digital and consumer laws. As data collection becomes centralized through regulated data brokers, the government can benefit by paying the public to gather anonymized, large-scale data, Freitas told Rest of World. These databases are the basis for more personalized public services, especially in sectors such as health care, urban transportation, public security, and education, she said.
This first pilot program involves "a small group of Brazilians who will use data wallets for payroll loans," according to the article — although Pedro Bastos, a researcher at Data Privacy Brazil, sees downsides. "Once you treat data as an economic asset, you are subverting the logic behind the protection of personal data," he told RestOfWorld. The data ecosystem "will no longer be defined by who can create more trust and integrity in their relationships, but instead, it will be defined by who's the richest."

Thanks to Slashdot reader applique for sharing the news.

sinij shares a report from the BBC: France's National Assembly has voted to abolish low-emission zones, a key measure introduced during President Emmanuel Macron's first term to reduce city pollution. So-called ZFEs (zones a faibles emissions) have been criticized for hitting those who cannot afford less-polluting vehicles the hardest. A handful of MPs from Macron's party joined opposition parties from the right and far right in voting 98-51 to scrap the zones, which have gradually been extended across French cities since 2019. [...]

The low-emission zones began with 15 of France's most polluted cities in 2019 and by the start of this year had been extended to every urban area with a population of more than 150,000, with a ban on cars registered before 1997. Those produced after 1997 need a round "Crit'Air" sticker to drive in low-emission zones, and there are six categories that correspond to various types of vehicle. The biggest restrictions have been applied in the most polluted cities, Paris and Lyon, as well as Montpellier and Grenoble. The BBC notes that while the abolition is expected to pass France's Senate, it must still be included in a broader bill approved by the lower house in June and cleared by the Constitutional Council, which isn't guaranteed.

An anonymous reader shares a report: China's Ministry of Commerce is meeting with some of the country's biggest automakers to discuss whether the industry is using a loophole to mask weakening sales. Reuters adds: It comes after Great Wall Motor's Chairman Wei Jianjun said in an interview with Sina Finance last week that a phenomenon called "secondhand cars with zero mileage" had emerged in the Chinese market as a result of the industry's years-long price war.

The phenomenon, he said, involved cars that had been registered and had licence plates -- marking them as sold -- but had never been driven being sold in the secondhand market. Wei said that at least 3,000 to 4,000 vendors on Chinese used car platforms were selling such cars. The source said the tactic was seen as a potential method within the industry for automakers and dealers to support new car sales as they try to meet aggressive sales targets.

A German court has sentenced two former Volkswagen executives to prison and handed suspended sentences to two others for their roles in the Dieselgate emissions scandal, marking the conclusion of a nearly four-year fraud trial. Politico reports: The former head of diesel development was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, and the head of drive train electronics to two years and seven months by the court in Braunschweig, German news agency dpa reported. Two others received suspended sentences of 15 months and 10 months. The scandal began in September 2015 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of violation. saying that the company had rigged engine control software that let the cars pass emissions tests while they emitted far more pollution in actual driving.

The company has paid more than $33 billion in fines and compensation to vehicle owners. Two VW managers received prison sentence in the U.S. The former head of the company's Audi division, Rupert Stadler, was given a suspended sentence of 21 months and a fine of 1.1 million euros ($1.25 million). The sentence is still subject to appeal. Missing from the trial, which lasted almost four years, was former CEO Martin Winterkorn. Proceedings against him have been suspended because of health issues, and it's not clear when he might go on trial. Winterkorn has denied wrongdoing. Further proceedings are open against 31 other suspects in Germany.

Newark Liberty International Airport has suffered six radar and radio outages in nine months, with the most recent occurring May 9th when controllers told pilots "our scopes just went black again" before handing off flights to other facilities. The outages have forced flight cancellations, diversions, and delays lasting over a week as airlines repositioned aircraft and crews.

The Federal Aviation Administration created the problem by relocating Newark's air traffic control operations from the understaffed N90 facility on Long Island to Philadelphia in 2024. Only 17 of 33 controllers accepted the move despite $100,000 relocation bonuses, leaving operations short-staffed. Rather than build new STARS servers in Philadelphia, the FAA opted to send radar data over 130 miles of commercial copper telephone lines.

The remote feeds have experienced approximately 10 minutes of downtime over 10 months -- exceeding the agency's reliability standards and occurring 200 times more frequently than the FAA's internal analysis predicted. The agency simultaneously laid off over 100 maintenance technicians and telecommunications specialists in February, further straining an air traffic control system that suffers around 700 outages weekly nationwide while managing 16.8 million annual flights with 1990s-era technology.

Whether General Motors survives "depends in part on whether its bets on battery technology pay off," writes the Wall Street Journal.

At $33,600 the company's Chevy Equinox is one of the cheapest EVs in America (only $5,000 more than the gas-powered model). "But it also recently announced a novel type of battery that promises to be significantly cheaper, while still providing long range, due to be rolled out in 2028..." Like many of its competitors, GM has made huge investments in EV battery factories, and in production lines for the vehicles themselves, and it faces challenges in generating a return on investment in the short term... In the long run, however, GM's focus on creating a North American supply chain for batteries could prove savvy, says David Whiston, U.S. auto equities analyst at Morningstar. The company is investing $625 million to mine lithium in Nevada. It is working on sourcing every material and every part in its batteries domestically, down to the copper and aluminum foils that go into its cells, says [battery and sustainability lead Kurt] Kelty...

GM recently unveiled a new type of battery the company has been working on for a decade called lithium manganese-rich batteries, or LMR. These batteries combine the low cost of LFP batteries with the longer range of conventional, expensive lithium-ion batteries. What makes LMR batteries more affordable is that they use far less nickel, cobalt and other minerals that have become increasingly expensive. Instead, they use more manganese, a common element... The company's next initiative, says Kelty, is to further drive down the cost of its batteries by putting more of another common element, silicon, into them.
"If GM can continue to grow demand for its EVs, in a few years the rollout of its latest tech could give it a price and performance advantage..." the article points out. While the EV transition is happening more slowly than projected in the U.S., GM hiring Kelty is a bet that the country's current EV struggles are temporary, and that technologists like Kelty will help GM get past them. "When we reach cost parity with [internal combustion engine] vehicles, I think that's one big milestone," says Kelty. "When you get there, then you're really going to see the transition happen very quickly — and we're not that far away from it."

In early 2025, U.S. solar power production jumped 44% compared to the previous year, driven by end-of-year construction to capture tax incentives and long-term cost advantages. "The bad news is that, in contrast to China, solar's growth hasn't been enough to offset rising demand," notes Ars Technica. "Instead, the US also saw significant growth in coal use, which rose by 23 percent compared to the year prior, after years of steady decline." From the report: Short-term fluctuations in demand are normal, generally driven by weather-induced demand for heating or cooling. Despite those changes, demand for electricity in the US has been largely flat for over a decade, largely thanks to gains in efficiency. But 2024 saw demand go up by nearly 3 percent, and the first quarter of 2025 saw another rise, this time of nearly 5 percent. It's a bit too early to say that we're seeing a shift to a period of rising demand, but one has been predicted for some time due to rising data center use and the increased electrification of transportation and appliances.

Under those circumstances, the rest of the difference will be made up for with fossil fuels. Running counter to recent trends, the use of natural gas dropped during the first three months of 2025. This means that the use of coal rose nearly as quickly as demand, up by 23 percent compared to the same time period in 2024. Despite the rise in coal use, the fraction of carbon-free electricity held steady year over year, with wind/solar/hydro/nuclear accounting for 43 percent of all power put on the US grid. That occurred despite small drops in nuclear and hydro production.

Kraken is launching tokenized versions of U.S. equities for 24/7 trading outside the U.S., giving global investors blockchain-based access to major companies like Apple and Tesla. Reuters reports: Tokenization refers to the process of issuing digital representations of publicly-traded securities. Instead of holding the securities directly, investors hold tokens that represent ownership of the securities. The tokens' launch outside the U.S. comes amid growing interest in blending traditional finance with blockchain infrastructure. While tokenized securities have yet to gain widespread adoption, proponents say they hold the potential to significantly reshape how people access and invest in financial markets.

In a January opinion piece for the Washington Post, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said tokenization could also allow retail investors to access private companies' stocks. Kraken's tokens, called xStocks, will be available in select markets outside the United States, it said, without naming the markets. The move was earlier reported by the Wall Street Journal. The offering is currently not available for U.S. customers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As electric vehicles reduce car exhaust as a source of particulate emissions, people are increasingly focusing on other vehicular sources of pollution that won't go away with electrification. Tires are one of them, particularly as we grapple with overweight EVs with tire-shredding torque. And brakes are another -- even an EV with regenerative braking will occasionally need to use its friction brakes, after all. Over in Europe, the people responsible for writing regulations have taken this into consideration with the upcoming Euro 7 standard, which sets new limits on 10- and 2.5-micron particulate emissions on all new vehicles -- including EVs -- starting next year. And to help OEMs achieve that target, Brembo has developed a new brake and pad set called Greentell that it says cuts brake dust emissions by 90 percent, improving durability in the process.

[...] Brembo investigated a range of solutions before settling on using laser metal deposition. Physical vapor deposition, as used as a durability coating for wristwatches and firearms, was ruled out due to cost. "So it can be used for some special application or some small pieces, but when you are speaking about 20 kilos of cast iron, PVD is not the right solution. LMD is a technology that [has been] available... [for] years, but [it hasn't yet been] applicable in a high volume application. So the goal is to find the best compromise between performance and process," [Fabiano Carminati, VP of disc technical development at Brembo] told me. Together with the reduction in brake dust, there's an 80 percent reduction in surface corrosion compared to conventional brakes, but they won't last forever. "The thickness of the layer that we apply is not so high -- we apply just 100-120 microns. That means that the disk is not a lifetime disk," he said. That said, Greentell brakes should need replacing less often, and while that's not entirely in Brembo's best financial interests, neither is not being able to offer its customers a Euro 7-compliant product.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Honda said on Tuesday that it was scaling back its investment in electric vehicles given slowing demand and would be focusing on hybrids, now far more in favor, with a slew of revamped models. Japan's second-biggest automaker after Toyota also dropped a target for EV sales to account for 30% of its sales by the 2030 financial year. "It's really hard to read the market, but at the moment we see EVs accounting for about a fifth by then," CEO Toshihiro Mibe told a press conference.

Honda has slashed its planned investment in electrification and software by that year by 30% to 7 trillion yen ($48.4 billion). It's one of a number of global car brands dialing back EV investment due to the shift in demand in favor of hybrids and as governments around the world ease timelines to meet emission rules and EV sales targets. Honda plans to launch 13 next-generation hybrid models globally in the four years from 2027. At the moment it sells more than a dozen hybrid models worldwide, though just three in the U.S. -- the Civic, which comes in hatchback and sedan versions, the Accord and the CR-V. It will also develop a hybrid system for large-size models that it plans to launch in the second half of the decade.

The automaker is aiming to sell 2.2 million to 2.3 million hybrid vehicles by 2030, a huge jump from 868,000 sold last year. That also compares with a total of 3.8 million vehicles sold overall last year. Earlier this month, Honda announced it had put on hold for about two years a $10.7 billion plan to build an EV production base in Ontario, Canada, due to slowing demand for electric cars. Honda said, however, that it still plans to have battery-powered and fuel-cell vehicles make up all of its new car sales by 2040.

While Amazon won FAA approval to fly beyond an operators' visual line of sight, "the program remains a work in progress," reports Bloomberg: A pair of Amazon.com Inc. package delivery drones were flying through a light rain in mid-December when, within minutes of one another, they both committed robot suicide... [S]ome 217 feet (66 meters) in the air [at a drone testing facility], the aircraft cut power to its six propellers, fell to the ground and was destroyed. Four minutes later and 183 feet over the taxiway, a second Prime Air drone did the same thing.

Not long after the incidents, Amazon paused its experimental drone flights to tweak the aircraft software but said the crashes weren't the "primary reason" for halting the program. Now, five months after the twin crashes, a more detailed explanation of what happened is starting to emerge. Faulty readings from lidar sensors made the drones think they had landed, prompting the software to shut down the propellers, according to National Transportation Safety Board documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The sensors failed after a software update made them more susceptible to being confused by rain, the NTSB said.
Amazon also removed a backup sensor present that had been present on earlier iterations, according to the article — though an Amazon spokesperson said the company had found ways to replicate the removed sensors.

But Bloomberg notes Amazon's drone efforts has faced "technical challenges and crashes, including one in 2021 that set a field ablaze at the company's testing facility in Pendleton, Oregon." Deliveries are currently limited to College Station, Texas, and greater Phoenix, with plans to expand to Kansas City, Missouri, the Dallas area and San Antonio, as well as the UK and Italy. Starting with a craft that looked like a hobbyist drone — and was vulnerable to even modest gusts of wind — Amazon went through dozens of designs to toughen the vehicle and ultimately make it capable of carting about 5 pounds, giving it the capability to transport items typically ordered from its warehouses. Engineers settled on a six-propeller design that takes off vertically before cruising like a plane. The first model to make regular customer deliveries, the MK27, was succeeded last year by the MK30, which flies at about 67 miles an hour and can deliver packages up to 7.5 miles from its launch point. The craft takes off, flies and lands autonomously.

An anonymous reader shared this repost from the Washington Post: It's becoming standard practice at a growing number of U.S. airports: When you reach the front of the security line, an agent asks you to step up to a machine that scans your face to check whether it matches the face on your identification card. Travelers have the right to opt out of the face scan and have the agent do a visual check instead — but many don't realize that's an option.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana) think it should be the other way around. They plan to introduce a bipartisan bill that would make human ID checks the default, among other restrictions on how the Transportation Security Administration can use facial recognition technology. The Traveler Privacy Protection Act, shared with the Tech Brief on Wednesday ahead of its introduction, is a narrower version of a 2023 bill by the same name that would have banned the TSA's use of facial recognition altogether. This one would allow the agency to continue scanning travelers' faces, but only if they opt in, and would bar the technology's use for any purpose other than verifying people's identities. It would also require the agency to immediately delete the scans of general boarding passengers once the check is complete.

"Facial recognition is incredibly powerful, and it is being used as an instrument of oppression around the world to track dissidents whose opinion governments don't like," Merkley said in a phone interview Wednesday, citing China's use of the technology on the country's Uyghur minority. "It really creates a surveillance state," he went on. "That is a massive threat to freedom and privacy here in America, and I don't think we should trust any government with that power...."

[The TSA] began testing face scans as an option for people enrolled in "trusted traveler" programs, such as TSA PreCheck, in 2021. By 2022, the program quietly began rolling out to general boarding passengers. It is now active in at least 84 airports, according to the TSA's website, with plans to bring it to more than 400 airports in the coming years. The agency says the technology has proved more efficient and accurate than human identity checks. It assures the public that travelers' face scans are not stored or saved once a match has been made, except in limited tests to evaluate the technology's effectiveness.
The bill would also bar the TSA from providing worse treatment to passengers who refuse not to participate, according to FedScoop, and would also forbid the agency from using face-scanning technology to target people or conduct mass surveillance: "Folks don't want a national surveillance state, but that's exactly what the TSA's unchecked expansion of facial recognition technology is leading us to," Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., a co-sponsor of the bill and a longtime critic of the government's facial recognition program, said in a statement...

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general initiated an audit of TSA's facial recognition program. Merkley had previously led a letter from a bipartisan group of senators calling for the watchdog to open an investigation into TSA's facial recognition plans, noting that the technology is not foolproof and effective alternatives were already in use.

schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: Almost immediately after India's government issued this week new tightened regulations for allowing private satellite constellations to sell their services in India, it also apparently completed negotiations with SpaceX to allow it to sell Starlink in India based on these rules. Business Today reports: "According to sources, the DoT [Department of Transportation] granted the LoI [Letter of Intent] after Starlink accepted 29 strict security conditions, including requirements for real-time terminal tracking, mandatory local data processing, legal interception capabilities, and localisation of at least 20% of its ground segment infrastructure within the first few years of operation.

Starlink's nod came amid heightened national security sensitivities, coinciding with India's pre-dawn Operation Sindoor strikes on terror camps across the border in response to the Pahalgam massacre. However, DoT officials clarified that the decision to approve Starlink was independent of these military developments." At the moment SpaceX's chief competitors, OneWeb and Amazon's Kuiper constellation, have not yet obtained the same permissions. This allows SpaceX to grab a large portion of the market share in India before either of these other companies.