Center for Democracy & Technology

In a new resource, former CDT intern Grace Jin + CDT’s Quinn Anex-Ries map opportunities & risks for AI across the benefits navigation lifecycle, from awareness to renewal. They examine risks incl. AI failure, privacy violations, inaccurate info, & loss of trust. Read more:

“Critically, the court order halting the DHS door-knocking initiative highlights the significant likelihood that such investigations would result in errors /7 the misidentification of citizens as non-citizens, potentially preventing them from voting, according to [CDT's] Elizabeth Laird.”

CDT’s Laird: “This decision continues to establish the legal basis that it is not only unethical but illegal to weaponize personal data in ways that lead to irreparable harm to individuals who are wrongly targeted.”

“Misinformation produced by AI ‘can sway voters’ political views, so the stakes are real,’ says Isabel Linzer, policy and elections analyst at CDT.” https://

“Political actors are … producing content that’s intentionally flattering to one candidate or misleading about another to get cited favorably in AI answers. This is sometimes called ‘poisoning’ the search results, Linzer says.”

“Misinformation produced by AI ‘can sway voters’ political views, so the stakes are real,’ says Isabel Linzer, policy and elections analyst at CDT.” https://

AI could help local govts cut housing permit wait times, reduce admin backlogs, and speed up rebuilding after disasters. But faster decisions aren’t always fairer decisions. Former CDT Intern Kiran Yeh examines the benefits and risks of using AI to review building permits.

Encrypting web browsing protects users not only from government surveillance but also from malicious tampering by hackers, but it works best when it’s used all the time.

That said, implementing nudges and fixes for these remaining unencrypted connections will be challenging and require trade-offs – for instance, there are issues with backward compatibility and information access, low-power IoT devices, and local networks.

Encrypting web browsing protects users not only from government surveillance but also from malicious tampering by hackers, but it works best when it’s used all the time.

“Canadians seem to understand this instinctively. Earlier this year, the Center for Democracy and Technology commissioned a poll to ask Canadians how they feel about encryption and government surveillance.”

“And the findings are striking. Most Canadians either oppose access orders like those in C-22, or they want meaningful limits on them because they believe that the security risks of giving law enforcement access to encrypted messages outweigh the benefits.”

CDT, along with Consumer Reports, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Groundwork Collaborative, and TechEquity Action, sent a letter to New York Governor Hochul urging her to sign The One Fair Pricing Act.

This bill will prohibit the practice of surveillance pricing, a seller using consumers’ personal data amassed and analyzed on them to “size them up” for their susceptibility to paying a higher price.

CDT’s Kate Ruane in CNET: “The public is clearly primed to suspect that platforms’ high-profile content moderation decisions are politically motivated.”

“Ruane noted that the automated moderation tools Meta blamed for the removal of the account have ‘important limitations including poor performance when making context-dependent decisions, especially for real-time and fast-moving events,’ she said.”

CDT’s Eric Null in the Record: "The message from these state actions is evident: companies must be accurate and clear about how they process and treat data.”

For #GED2026, CDT released new polling reports on public attitudes toward encryption and government surveillance in France, Poland, Ireland, and Sweden.

Who’s behind the political content influencers share online? In a new report, CDT map the political influencer industry. The research draws on years of study and 30+ interviews with industry insiders. cdt.org/insights/pai... Authors: Isabel Linzer, Zoe Tzanis, and Samuel Woolley.

Political creators can receive anywhere from a few dollars to more than $30,000 per post. Behind the scenes, campaigns, consultants, and marketing agencies may shape messaging, coordinate posts, and boost engagement, while partnerships and payments often remain hidden from the public.

“‘‘It betrayed the trust of all partners who were willing to share information at the time,’ said Geoff Hale, who worked on CISA’s elections team from the agency’s inception until last year. Now he specializes in election security at CDT [].”

Kids are finding ways around social media bans. But as CDT’s @aliyabhatia.bsky.social & @mluria.bsky.social, alongside @zephoria.bsky.social, write in MIT Tech Review that’s a signal these policies aren’t working, not a reason to tighten restrictions.