What’s next for our privacy?

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What’s next for our privacy?

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here. Every day, we are tracked hundreds or even thousands of times across the digital world. Cookies and web trackers capture every website link that we click, while code installed in mobile apps tracks every physical location that our devices—and, by extension, we—have visited. All of this is collected, packaged together with other details (compiled from public records, supermarket member programs, utility companies, and more), and used to create highly personalized profiles that are then shared or sold, often without our explicit knowledge or consent. A consensus is growing that Americans need better privacy protections—and that the best way to deliver them would be for Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation. While the latest iteration of such a bill, the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024, gained more momentum than previously proposed laws, it became so watered down that it lost support from both Republicans and Democrats before it even came to a vote. There have been some privacy wins in the form of limits on what data brokers—third-party companies that buy and sell consumers’ personal information for targeted advertisements, messaging, and other purposes—can do with geolocation data. These are still small steps, though—and they are happening as increasingly pervasive and powerful technologies collect more data than ever. And at the same time, Washington is preparing for a new presidential administration that has attacked the press and other critics, promised to target immigrants for mass deportation, threatened to seek retribution against perceived enemies, and supported restrictive state abortion laws. This is not even to mention the increased collection of our biometric data, especially for facial recognition, and the normalization of its use in all kinds of ways. In this light, it’s no stretch to say our personal data has arguably never been more vulnerable, and the imperative for privacy has never felt more urgent. So what can Americans expect for their personal data in 2025? We spoke to privacy experts and advocates about (some of) what’s on their mind regarding how our digital data might be traded or protected moving forward. Reining in a problematic industry In early December, the Federal Trade Commission announced separate settlement agreements with the data brokers Mobilewalla and Gravy Analytics (and its subsidiary Venntel). Finding that the companies had tracked and sold geolocation data from users at sensitive locations like churches, hospitals, and military installations without explicit consent, the FTC banned the companies from selling such data except in specific circumstances. This follows something of a busy year in regulation of data brokers, including multiple FTC enforcement actions against other companies for similar use and sale of geolocation data, as well as a proposed rule from the Justice Department that would prohibit the sale of bulk data to foreign entities. And on the same day that the FTC announced these settlements in December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a new rule that would designate data brokers as consumer reporting agencies, which would trigger stringent reporting requirements and consumer privacy protections. The rule would prohibit the collection and sharing of people’s sensitive information, such as their salaries and Social Security numbers, without “legitimate purposes.” While the rule will still need to undergo a 90-day public comment period, and it’s unclear whether it will move forward under the Trump administration, if it’s finalized it has the power to fundamentally limit how data brokers do business. Right now, there just aren’t many limits on how these companies operate—nor, for that matter, clear information on how many data brokerages even exist. Industry watchers estimate there may be 4,000 to 5,000 data brokers around the world, many of which we’ve never heard of—and whose names constantly shift. In California alone, the state’s 2024 Data Broker Registry lists 527 such businesses that have voluntarily registered there, nearly 90 of which also self-reported that they collect geolocation data. All this data is widely available for purchase by anyone who will pay. Marketers buy data to create highly targeted advertisements, and banks and insurance companies do the same to verify identity, prevent fraud, and conduct risk assessments. Law enforcement buys geolocation data to track people’s whereabouts without getting traditional search warrants. Foreign entities can also currently buy sensitive information on members of the military and other government officials. And on people-finder websites, basically anyone can pay for anyone else’s contact details and personal history. Data brokers and their clients defend these transactions by saying that most of this data is anonymized—though it’s questionable whether that can truly be done in the case of geolocation data. Besides, anonymous data can be easily reidentified, especially when it’s combined with other personal information. Digital-rights advocates have spent years sounding the alarm on this secretive industry, especially the ways in which it can harm already marginalized communities, though various types of data collection have sparked consternation across the political spectrum. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, was concerned about how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought location data to evaluate the effectiveness of pandemic lockdowns. Then a study from last year showed how easy (and cheap) it was to buy sensitive data about members of the US military; Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, called out the national security risks of data brokers in a statement to MIT Technology Review, and Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, later said he was “shocked” when he read about the practice in our story. But it was the 2022 Supreme Court decision ending the constitutional guarantee of legal abortion that spurred much of the federal action last year. Shortly after the Dobbs ruling, President Biden issued an executive order to protect access to reproductive health care; it included instructions for the FTC to take steps preventing information about visits to doctor’s offices or abortion clinics from being sold to law enforcement agencies or state prosecutors. The new enforcers With Donald Trump taking office in January, and Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress, the fate of the CFPB’s proposed rule—and the CFPB itself—is uncertain. Republicans, the people behind Project 2025, and Elon Musk (who will lead the newly created advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency) have long been interested in seeing the bureau “deleted,” as Musk put it on X. That would take an act of Congress, making it unlikely, but there are other ways that the administration could severely curtail its powers. Trump is likely to fire the current director and install a Republican who could rescind existing CFPB rules and stop any proposed rules from moving forward. Meanwhile, the FTC’s enforcement actions are only as good as the enforcers. FTC decisions do not set legal precedent in quite the same way that court cases do, says Ben Winters, a former Department of Justice official and the director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, a network of organizations and agencies focused on consumer protection. Instead, they “require consistent [and] additional enforcement to make the whole industry scared of not having an FTC enforcement action against them.” (It’s also worth noting that these FTC settlements are specifically focused on geolocation data, which is just one of the many types of sensitive data that we regularly give up in order to participate in the digital world.) Looking ahead, Tiffany Li, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who focuses on AI and privacy law, is worried about “a defanged FTC” that she says would be “less aggressive in taking action against companies.” Lina Khan, the current FTC chair, has been the leader of privacy protection action in the US, notes Li, and she’ll soon be leaving. Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s recently named pick to be the next FTC chair, has come out in strong opposition to data brokers: “This type of data—records of a person’s precise physical locations—is inherently intrusive and revealing of people’s most private affairs,” he wrote in a statement on the Mobilewalla decision, indicating that he is likely to continue action against them. (Ferguson has been serving as a commissioner on the FTC since April 20214.) On the other hand, he has spoken out against using FTC actions as an alternative to privacy legislation passed by Congress. And, of course, this brings us right back around to that other major roadblock: Congress has so far failed to pass such laws—and it’s unclear if the next Congress will either. Movement in the states Without federal legislative action, many US states are taking privacy matters into their own hands. In 2025, eight new state privacy laws will take effect, making a total of 25 around the country. A number of other states—like Vermont and Massachusetts—are considering passing their own privacy bills next year, and such laws could, in theory, force national legislation, says Woodrow Hartzog, a technology law scholar at Boston University School of Law. “Right now, the statutes are all similar enough that the compliance cost is perhaps expensive but manageable,” he explains. But if one state passed a law that was different enough from the others, a national law could be the only way to resolve the conflict. Additionally, four states—California, Texas, Vermont, and Oregon—already have specific laws regulating data brokers, including the requirement that they register with the state. Along with new laws, says Justin Brookman, the director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, comes the possibility that “we can put some more teeth on these laws.” Brookman points to Texas, where some of the most aggressive enforcement action at the state level has taken place under its Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. Even before the state’s new consumer privacy bill went into effect in July, Paxton announced the creation of a special task force focused on enforcing the state’s privacy laws. He has since targeted a number of data brokers—including National Public Data, which exposed millions of sensitive customer records in a data breach in August, as well as companies that sell to them, like Sirius XM. At the same time, though, Paxton has moved to enforce the state’s strict abortion laws in ways that threaten individual privacy. In December, he sued a New York doctor for sending abortion pills to a Texas woman through the mail. While the doctor is theoretically protected by New York’s shield laws, which provide a safeguard from out-of-state prosecution, Paxton’s aggressive action makes it even more crucial that states enshrine data privacy protections into their laws, says Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, an advocacy group. “There is an urgent need for states,” he says, “to lock down our resident’s’ data, barring companies from collecting and sharing information in ways that can be weaponized against them by out-of-state prosecutors.” Data collection in the name of “security” While privacy has become a bipartisan issue, Republicans, in particular, are interested in “addressing data brokers in the context of national security,” such as protecting the data of military members or other government officials, says Winters. But in his view, it’s the effects on reproductive rights and immigrants that are potentially the “most dangerous” threats to privacy. Indeed, data brokers (including Venntel, the Gravy Analytics subsidiary named in the recent FTC settlement) have sold cell-phone data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as to Customs and Border Protection. That data has then been used to track individuals for deportation proceedings—allowing the agencies to bypass local and state sanctuary laws that ban local law enforcement from sharing information for immigration enforcement. “The more data that corporations collect, the more data that’s available to governments for surveillance,” warns Ashley Gorski, a senior attorney who works on national security and privacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is among a number of organizations that have been pushing for the passage of another federal law related to privacy: the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. It would close the so-called “data-broker loophole” that allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to buy personal information from data brokers without a search warrant. The bill would “dramatically limit the ability of the government to buy Americans’ private data,” Gorski says. It was first introduced in 2021 and passed the House in April 2024, with the support of 123 Republicans and 93 Democrats, before stalling in the Senate. While Gorski is hopeful that the bill will move forward in the next Congress, others are less sanguine about these prospects—and alarmed about other ways that the incoming administration might “co-opt private systems for surveillance purposes,” as Hartzog puts it. So much of our personal information that is “collected for one purpose,” he says, could “easily be used by the government … to track us.” This is especially concerning, adds Winters, given that the next administration has been “very explicit” about wanting to use every tool at its disposal to carry out policies like mass deportations and to exact revenge on perceived enemies. And one possible change, he says, is as simple as loosening the government’s procurement processes to make them more open to emerging technologies, which may have fewer privacy protections. “Right now, it’s annoying to procure anything as a federal agency,” he says, but he expects a more “fast and loose use of commercial tools.” “That’s something we’ve [already] seen a lot,” he adds, pointing to “federal, state, and local agencies using the Clearviews of the world”—a reference to the controversial facial recognition company. The AI wild card Underlying all of these debates on potential legislation is the fact that technology companies—especially AI companies—continue to require reams and reams of data, including personal data, to train their machine-learning models. And they’re quickly running out of it. This is something of a wild card in any predictions about personal data. Ideally, says Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, the shortage would lead to ways for consumers to directly benefit, perhaps financially, from the value of their own data. But it’s more likely that “there will be more industry resistance against some of the proposed comprehensive federal privacy legislation bills,” she says. “Companies benefit from the status quo.” The hunt for more and more data may also push companies to change their own privacy policies, says Whitney Merrill, a former FTC official who works on data privacy at Asana. Speaking in a personal capacity, she says that companies “have felt the squeeze in the tech recession that we’re in, with the high interest rates,” and that under those circumstances, “we’ve seen people turn around, change their policies, and try to monetize their data in an AI world”—even if it’s at the expense of user privacy. She points to the $60-million-per-year deal that Reddit struck last year to license its content to Google to help train the company’s AI. Earlier this year, the FTC warned companies that it would be “unfair and deceptive” to “surreptitiously” change their privacy policies to allow for the use of user data to train AI. But again, whether or not officials follow up on this depends on those in charge. So what will privacy look like in 2025? While the recent FTC settlements and the CFPB’s proposed rule represent important steps forward in privacy protection—at least when it comes to geolocation data—Americans’ personal information still remains widely available and vulnerable. Rebecca Williams, a senior strategist at the ACLU for privacy and data governance, argues that all of us, as individuals and communities, should take it upon ourselves to do more to protect ourselves and “resist … by opting out” of as much data collection as possible. That means checking privacy settings on accounts and apps, and using encrypted messaging services. Cahn, meanwhile, says he’ll “be striving to protect [his] local community, working to enact safeguards to ensure that we live up to our principles and stated commitments.” One example of such safeguards is a proposed New York City ordinance that would ban the sharing of any location data originating from within the city limits. Hartzog says that kind of local activism has already been effective in pushing for city bans on facial recognition. “Privacy rights are at risk, but they’re not gone, and it’s not helpful to take an overly pessimistic look right now,” says Li, the USF law professor. “We definitely still have privacy rights, and the more that we continue to fight for these rights, the more we’re going to be able to protect our rights.”

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.

Every day, we are tracked hundreds or even thousands of times across the digital world. Cookies and web trackers capture every website link that we click, while code installed in mobile apps tracks every physical location that our devices—and, by extension, we—have visited. All of this is collected, packaged together with other details (compiled from public records, supermarket member programs, utility companies, and more), and used to create highly personalized profiles that are then shared or sold, often without our explicit knowledge or consent.

A consensus is growing that Americans need better privacy protections—and that the best way to deliver them would be for Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation. While the latest iteration of such a bill, the American Privacy Rights Act of 2024, gained more momentum than previously proposed laws, it became so watered down that it lost support from both Republicans and Democrats before it even came to a vote.

There have been some privacy wins in the form of limits on what data brokers—third-party companies that buy and sell consumers’ personal information for targeted advertisements, messaging, and other purposes—can do with geolocation data.

These are still small steps, though—and they are happening as increasingly pervasive and powerful technologies collect more data than ever. And at the same time, Washington is preparing for a new presidential administration that has attacked the press and other critics, promised to target immigrants for mass deportation, threatened to seek retribution against perceived enemies, and supported restrictive state abortion laws. This is not even to mention the increased collection of our biometric data, especially for facial recognition, and the normalization of its use in all kinds of ways. In this light, it’s no stretch to say our personal data has arguably never been more vulnerable, and the imperative for privacy has never felt more urgent.

So what can Americans expect for their personal data in 2025? We spoke to privacy experts and advocates about (some of) what’s on their mind regarding how our digital data might be traded or protected moving forward.

Reining in a problematic industry

In early December, the Federal Trade Commission announced separate settlement agreements with the data brokers Mobilewalla and Gravy Analytics (and its subsidiary Venntel). Finding that the companies had tracked and sold geolocation data from users at sensitive locations like churches, hospitals, and military installations without explicit consent, the FTC banned the companies from selling such data except in specific circumstances. This follows something of a busy year in regulation of data brokers, including multiple FTC enforcement actions against other companies for similar use and sale of geolocation data, as well as a proposed rule from the Justice Department that would prohibit the sale of bulk data to foreign entities.

And on the same day that the FTC announced these settlements in December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a new rule that would designate data brokers as consumer reporting agencies, which would trigger stringent reporting requirements and consumer privacy protections. The rule would prohibit the collection and sharing of people’s sensitive information, such as their salaries and Social Security numbers, without “legitimate purposes.” While the rule will still need to undergo a 90-day public comment period, and it’s unclear whether it will move forward under the Trump administration, if it’s finalized it has the power to fundamentally limit how data brokers do business.

Right now, there just aren’t many limits on how these companies operate—nor, for that matter, clear information on how many data brokerages even exist. Industry watchers estimate there may be 4,000 to 5,000 data brokers around the world, many of which we’ve never heard of—and whose names constantly shift. In California alone, the state’s 2024 Data Broker Registry lists 527 such businesses that have voluntarily registered there, nearly 90 of which also self-reported that they collect geolocation data.

All this data is widely available for purchase by anyone who will pay. Marketers buy data to create highly targeted advertisements, and banks and insurance companies do the same to verify identity, prevent fraud, and conduct risk assessments. Law enforcement buys geolocation data to track people’s whereabouts without getting traditional search warrants. Foreign entities can also currently buy sensitive information on members of the military and other government officials. And on people-finder websites, basically anyone can pay for anyone else’s contact details and personal history.

Data brokers and their clients defend these transactions by saying that most of this data is anonymized—though it’s questionable whether that can truly be done in the case of geolocation data. Besides, anonymous data can be easily reidentified, especially when it’s combined with other personal information.

Digital-rights advocates have spent years sounding the alarm on this secretive industry, especially the ways in which it can harm already marginalized communities, though various types of data collection have sparked consternation across the political spectrum. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, was concerned about how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought location data to evaluate the effectiveness of pandemic lockdowns. Then a study from last year showed how easy (and cheap) it was to buy sensitive data about members of the US military; Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, called out the national security risks of data brokers in a statement to MIT Technology Review, and Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, later said he was “shocked” when he read about the practice in our story.

But it was the 2022 Supreme Court decision ending the constitutional guarantee of legal abortion that spurred much of the federal action last year. Shortly after the Dobbs ruling, President Biden issued an executive order to protect access to reproductive health care; it included instructions for the FTC to take steps preventing information about visits to doctor’s offices or abortion clinics from being sold to law enforcement agencies or state prosecutors.

The new enforcers

With Donald Trump taking office in January, and Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress, the fate of the CFPB’s proposed rule—and the CFPB itself—is uncertain. Republicans, the people behind Project 2025, and Elon Musk (who will lead the newly created advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency) have long been interested in seeing the bureau “deleted,” as Musk put it on X. That would take an act of Congress, making it unlikely, but there are other ways that the administration could severely curtail its powers. Trump is likely to fire the current director and install a Republican who could rescind existing CFPB rules and stop any proposed rules from moving forward.

Meanwhile, the FTC’s enforcement actions are only as good as the enforcers. FTC decisions do not set legal precedent in quite the same way that court cases do, says Ben Winters, a former Department of Justice official and the director of AI and privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, a network of organizations and agencies focused on consumer protection. Instead, they “require consistent [and] additional enforcement to make the whole industry scared of not having an FTC enforcement action against them.” (It’s also worth noting that these FTC settlements are specifically focused on geolocation data, which is just one of the many types of sensitive data that we regularly give up in order to participate in the digital world.)

Looking ahead, Tiffany Li, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who focuses on AI and privacy law, is worried about “a defanged FTC” that she says would be “less aggressive in taking action against companies.”

Lina Khan, the current FTC chair, has been the leader of privacy protection action in the US, notes Li, and she’ll soon be leaving. Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s recently named pick to be the next FTC chair, has come out in strong opposition to data brokers: “This type of data—records of a person’s precise physical locations—is inherently intrusive and revealing of people’s most private affairs,” he wrote in a statement on the Mobilewalla decision, indicating that he is likely to continue action against them. (Ferguson has been serving as a commissioner on the FTC since April 20214.) On the other hand, he has spoken out against using FTC actions as an alternative to privacy legislation passed by Congress. And, of course, this brings us right back around to that other major roadblock: Congress has so far failed to pass such laws—and it’s unclear if the next Congress will either.

Movement in the states

Without federal legislative action, many US states are taking privacy matters into their own hands.

In 2025, eight new state privacy laws will take effect, making a total of 25 around the country. A number of other states—like Vermont and Massachusetts—are considering passing their own privacy bills next year, and such laws could, in theory, force national legislation, says Woodrow Hartzog, a technology law scholar at Boston University School of Law. “Right now, the statutes are all similar enough that the compliance cost is perhaps expensive but manageable,” he explains. But if one state passed a law that was different enough from the others, a national law could be the only way to resolve the conflict. Additionally, four states—California, Texas, Vermont, and Oregon—already have specific laws regulating data brokers, including the requirement that they register with the state.

Along with new laws, says Justin Brookman, the director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, comes the possibility that “we can put some more teeth on these laws.”

Brookman points to Texas, where some of the most aggressive enforcement action at the state level has taken place under its Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. Even before the state’s new consumer privacy bill went into effect in July, Paxton announced the creation of a special task force focused on enforcing the state’s privacy laws. He has since targeted a number of data brokers—including National Public Data, which exposed millions of sensitive customer records in a data breach in August, as well as companies that sell to them, like Sirius XM.

At the same time, though, Paxton has moved to enforce the state’s strict abortion laws in ways that threaten individual privacy. In December, he sued a New York doctor for sending abortion pills to a Texas woman through the mail. While the doctor is theoretically protected by New York’s shield laws, which provide a safeguard from out-of-state prosecution, Paxton’s aggressive action makes it even more crucial that states enshrine data privacy protections into their laws, says Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, an advocacy group. “There is an urgent need for states,” he says, “to lock down our resident’s’ data, barring companies from collecting and sharing information in ways that can be weaponized against them by out-of-state prosecutors.”

Data collection in the name of “security”

While privacy has become a bipartisan issue, Republicans, in particular, are interested in “addressing data brokers in the context of national security,” such as protecting the data of military members or other government officials, says Winters. But in his view, it’s the effects on reproductive rights and immigrants that are potentially the “most dangerous” threats to privacy.

Indeed, data brokers (including Venntel, the Gravy Analytics subsidiary named in the recent FTC settlement) have sold cell-phone data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as to Customs and Border Protection. That data has then been used to track individuals for deportation proceedings—allowing the agencies to bypass local and state sanctuary laws that ban local law enforcement from sharing information for immigration enforcement.

“The more data that corporations collect, the more data that’s available to governments for surveillance,” warns Ashley Gorski, a senior attorney who works on national security and privacy at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU is among a number of organizations that have been pushing for the passage of another federal law related to privacy: the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. It would close the so-called “data-broker loophole” that allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies to buy personal information from data brokers without a search warrant. The bill would “dramatically limit the ability of the government to buy Americans’ private data,” Gorski says. It was first introduced in 2021 and passed the House in April 2024, with the support of 123 Republicans and 93 Democrats, before stalling in the Senate.

While Gorski is hopeful that the bill will move forward in the next Congress, others are less sanguine about these prospects—and alarmed about other ways that the incoming administration might “co-opt private systems for surveillance purposes,” as Hartzog puts it. So much of our personal information that is “collected for one purpose,” he says, could “easily be used by the government … to track us.”

This is especially concerning, adds Winters, given that the next administration has been “very explicit” about wanting to use every tool at its disposal to carry out policies like mass deportations and to exact revenge on perceived enemies. And one possible change, he says, is as simple as loosening the government’s procurement processes to make them more open to emerging technologies, which may have fewer privacy protections. “Right now, it’s annoying to procure anything as a federal agency,” he says, but he expects a more “fast and loose use of commercial tools.”

“That’s something we’ve [already] seen a lot,” he adds, pointing to “federal, state, and local agencies using the Clearviews of the world”—a reference to the controversial facial recognition company.

The AI wild card

Underlying all of these debates on potential legislation is the fact that technology companies—especially AI companies—continue to require reams and reams of data, including personal data, to train their machine-learning models. And they’re quickly running out of it.

This is something of a wild card in any predictions about personal data. Ideally, says Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, the shortage would lead to ways for consumers to directly benefit, perhaps financially, from the value of their own data. But it’s more likely that “there will be more industry resistance against some of the proposed comprehensive federal privacy legislation bills,” she says. “Companies benefit from the status quo.”

The hunt for more and more data may also push companies to change their own privacy policies, says Whitney Merrill, a former FTC official who works on data privacy at Asana. Speaking in a personal capacity, she says that companies “have felt the squeeze in the tech recession that we’re in, with the high interest rates,” and that under those circumstances, “we’ve seen people turn around, change their policies, and try to monetize their data in an AI world”—even if it’s at the expense of user privacy. She points to the $60-million-per-year deal that Reddit struck last year to license its content to Google to help train the company’s AI.

Earlier this year, the FTC warned companies that it would be “unfair and deceptive” to “surreptitiously” change their privacy policies to allow for the use of user data to train AI. But again, whether or not officials follow up on this depends on those in charge.

So what will privacy look like in 2025?

While the recent FTC settlements and the CFPB’s proposed rule represent important steps forward in privacy protection—at least when it comes to geolocation data—Americans’ personal information still remains widely available and vulnerable.

Rebecca Williams, a senior strategist at the ACLU for privacy and data governance, argues that all of us, as individuals and communities, should take it upon ourselves to do more to protect ourselves and “resist … by opting out” of as much data collection as possible. That means checking privacy settings on accounts and apps, and using encrypted messaging services.

Cahn, meanwhile, says he’ll “be striving to protect [his] local community, working to enact safeguards to ensure that we live up to our principles and stated commitments.” One example of such safeguards is a proposed New York City ordinance that would ban the sharing of any location data originating from within the city limits. Hartzog says that kind of local activism has already been effective in pushing for city bans on facial recognition.

“Privacy rights are at risk, but they’re not gone, and it’s not helpful to take an overly pessimistic look right now,” says Li, the USF law professor. “We definitely still have privacy rights, and the more that we continue to fight for these rights, the more we’re going to be able to protect our rights.”

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Just 2 months after bringing its flagship Atlanta field onstream with the new FPSO Atlanta, Brazil’s independent operator Brava Energia SA is evaluating a potential third development phase that could add roughly 25 million bbl of reserves and help sustain peak production longer than originally planned. The Phase 3 project, still at an early technical and economic evaluation stage, focuses on the Atlanta Nordeste area; a separate, shallower reservoir discovered in 2006 by Shell’s 9-SHEL-19D-RJS well. According to André Fagundes, vice-president of research (Brazil) at Welligence Energy Analytics, Phase 2 has four wells still to be developed: two expected in 2027 and two in 2029. Phase 3 would involve drilling two additional wells in 2031, bringing total development to 12 producing wells. Until recently, full-field development was understood to comprise 10 wells, but Brava has since updated guidance to reflect a 12-well development concept. Atlanta field upside The primary objective is clear. “We believe its main objective is to extend the production plateau,” Fagundes said. Welligence estimates incremental recovery could reach 25 MMbbl, increasing the field’s overall recovery factor by roughly 1.5%. Lying outside Atlanta’s main Cretaceous reservoir, Atlanta Nordeste represents a genuine upside opportunity, Fagundes explained. The field benefits from strong natural aquifer support, and no water or gas injection is anticipated. Water-handling constraints that affected early production using the Petrojarl I—limited to 11,500 b/d of water treatment—are no longer a bottleneck. FPSO Atlanta can process up to 140,000 b/d of water. Reservoir performance to date has been solid, albeit with difficulties. Recurrent electric submersible pump (ESP) failures and processing limits on the previous FPSO complicated full validation of original reservoir models. With the new 50,000-b/d FPSO in operation since late 2024, reservoir deliverability has become the main constraint. Phase 3 wells would also use ESPs and require additional subsea

California Resources eyes ‘measured’ capex ramp on way to 12% production growth thanks to Berry buy

@import url(‘https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:[email protected]&display=swap’); a { color: var(–color-primary-main); } .ebm-page__main h1, .ebm-page__main h2, .ebm-page__main h3, .ebm-page__main h4, .ebm-page__main h5, .ebm-page__main h6 { font-family: Inter; } body { line-height: 150%; letter-spacing: 0.025em; font-family: Inter; } button, .ebm-button-wrapper { font-family: Inter; } .label-style { text-transform: uppercase; color: var(–color-grey); font-weight: 600; font-size: 0.75rem; } .caption-style { font-size: 0.75rem; opacity: .6; } #onetrust-pc-sdk [id*=btn-handler], #onetrust-pc-sdk [class*=btn-handler] { background-color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-policy a, #onetrust-pc-sdk a, #ot-pc-content a { color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-pc-sdk .ot-active-menu { border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-accept-btn-handler, #onetrust-banner-sdk #onetrust-reject-all-handler, #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-pc-btn-handler.cookie-setting-link { background-color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk .onetrust-pc-btn-handler { color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } The leaders of California Resources Corp., Long Beach, plan to have the company’s total production average 152,000-157,000 boe/d in 2026, with each quarter expected to be in that range. That output would equate to an increase of more than 12% from the operator’s 137,000 boe/d during fourth-quarter 2025, due mostly to the mid-December acquisition of Berry Corp. Fourth-quarter results folded in 14 days of Berry production and included 109,000 b/d of oil, with the company’s assets in the San Joaquin and Los Angeles basins accounting for 99,000 b/d of that total. The company dilled 31 new wells during the quarter and 76 in all of 2025—all in the San Joaquin—but that number will grow significantly to about 260 this year as state officials have resumed issuing permits following the passage last fall of a bill focused on Kern County production. Speaking to analysts after CRC reported fourth-quarter net income of $12 million on $924 million in revenues, president and chief executive officer Francisco Leon and chief financial officer Clio Crespy said the goal is to manage 2026 output decline to roughly 0.5% per quarter while operating four rigs and

Petro-Victory Energy spuds São João well in Brazil

@import url(‘https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:[email protected]&display=swap’); a { color: var(–color-primary-main); } .ebm-page__main h1, .ebm-page__main h2, .ebm-page__main h3, .ebm-page__main h4, .ebm-page__main h5, .ebm-page__main h6 { font-family: Inter; } body { line-height: 150%; letter-spacing: 0.025em; font-family: Inter; } button, .ebm-button-wrapper { font-family: Inter; } .label-style { text-transform: uppercase; color: var(–color-grey); font-weight: 600; font-size: 0.75rem; } .caption-style { font-size: 0.75rem; opacity: .6; } #onetrust-pc-sdk [id*=btn-handler], #onetrust-pc-sdk [class*=btn-handler] { background-color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-policy a, #onetrust-pc-sdk a, #ot-pc-content a { color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-pc-sdk .ot-active-menu { border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-accept-btn-handler, #onetrust-banner-sdk #onetrust-reject-all-handler, #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-pc-btn-handler.cookie-setting-link { background-color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk .onetrust-pc-btn-handler { color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } Petro-Victory Energy Corp. has spudded the SJ‑12 well at São João field in Barreirinhas basin, on the Brazilian equatorial margin, Maranhão. Drilling and testing SJ‑12 is aimed at proving enough gas can be produced to sell locally. The well forms part of the single non‑associated gas well commitment under a memorandum of understanding signed in 2024 with Enava. São João contains 50.1 bcf (1.4 billion cu m) non‑associated gas resources. Petro‑Victory 100% owns and operates São João field.

Opinion Poll: Strait of Hormuz disruptions

Iran war

@import url(‘https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:[email protected]&display=swap’); a { color: var(–color-primary-main); } .ebm-page__main h1, .ebm-page__main h2, .ebm-page__main h3, .ebm-page__main h4, .ebm-page__main h5, .ebm-page__main h6 { font-family: Inter; } body { line-height: 150%; letter-spacing: 0.025em; font-family: Inter; } button, .ebm-button-wrapper { font-family: Inter; } .label-style { text-transform: uppercase; color: var(–color-grey); font-weight: 600; font-size: 0.75rem; } .caption-style { font-size: 0.75rem; opacity: .6; } #onetrust-pc-sdk [id*=btn-handler], #onetrust-pc-sdk [class*=btn-handler] { background-color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-policy a, #onetrust-pc-sdk a, #ot-pc-content a { color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-pc-sdk .ot-active-menu { border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-accept-btn-handler, #onetrust-banner-sdk #onetrust-reject-all-handler, #onetrust-consent-sdk #onetrust-pc-btn-handler.cookie-setting-link { background-color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } #onetrust-consent-sdk .onetrust-pc-btn-handler { color: #c19a06 !important; border-color: #c19a06 !important; } <!–> –> <!–> ]–> <!–> –> You’ll need free site-access membership to view certain articles below. If you are not already registered with Oil & Gas Journal, sign up now for free. For Offshore articles, sign up here for free. New content will be added as it becomes available. Oil & Gas Journal content <!–> Economics & Markets –> 26184925 © Robert Hale | Dreamstime.com <!–> ]–> <!–> When the market opened after the initial strike on Iran, oil prices traded $75/bbl on the Open, a $7/bbl jump from Friday’s High, indicating a higher risk premium as the market… –> March 6, 2026 96633437 © Titoonz | Dreamstime.com <!–> ]–> <!–> Broader infrastructure risks are emerging as regional attacks threaten production in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, while Europe and Asia face heightened vulnerability due to … –> March 3, 2026 387409148 © Clare Jackson | Dreamstime.com <!–> ]–> <!–> Despite initial market volatility, oil storage levels and pre-positioned supplies have mitigated immediate price shocks. However, ongoing tensions and insurance issues continue… –> March 2, 2026 220736519 © Pavel Muravev | Dreamstime.com <!–> ]–> <!–> About 20 million b/d of

Cisco blends Splunk analytics, security with core data center management

With the integration, data center teams can gather and act on events, alarms, health scores, and inventory through open APIs, Cisco stated. It also offers pre-built and customizable dashboards for inventory, health, fabric state, anomalies, and advisories as well as correlates telemetry across fabrics and technology tiers for actionable insights, according to Cisco. “This isn’t just another connector or API call. This is an embedded, architectural integration designed to transform how you monitor, troubleshoot, and secure your data center fabric. By bringing the power of Splunk directly into the Data Center Networking environment, we are enabling teams to solve complex problems faster, maintain strict data sovereignty, and dramatically reduce operational costs,” wrote Usha Andra is a senior product marketing leader and Anant Shah, senior product manager, both with Cisco Data Center Networking in a blog about the integration. “Traditionally, network monitoring involves a trade-off. You either send massive amounts of raw logs to a centralized data lake, incurring high ingress and storage costs. Or you rely on sampled data that misses critical microbursts and anomalies,” Andra and Shah wrote. “Native Splunk integration changes the paradigm by running Splunk capabilities directly within the Cisco Nexus Dashboard. This allows for the streaming of high-fidelity telemetry, including anomalies, advisories, and audit logs, directly to Splunk analytics.”

Execution, Power, and Public Trust: Rich Miller on 2026’s Data Center Reality and Why He Built Data Center Richness

DCF founder Rich Miller has spent much of his career explaining how the data center industry works. Now, with his latest venture, Data Center Richness, he’s also examining how the industry learns. That thread provided the opening for the latest episode of The DCF Show Podcast, where Miller joined present Data Center Frontier Editor in Chief Matt Vincent and Senior Editor David Chernicoff for a wide-ranging discussion that ultimately landed on a simple conclusion: after two years of unprecedented AI-driven announcements, 2026 will be the year reality asserts itself. Projects will either get built, or they won’t. Power will either materialize, or it won’t. Communities will either accept data center expansion – or they’ll stop it. In other words, the industry is entering its execution phase. Why Data Center Richness Matters Now Miller launched Data Center Richness as both a podcast and a Substack publication, an effort to experiment with formats and better understand how professionals now consume industry information. Podcasts have become a primary way many practitioners follow the business, while YouTube’s discovery advantages increasingly make video versions essential. At the same time, Miller remains committed to written analysis, using Substack as a venue for deeper dives and format experimentation. One example is his weekly newsletter distilling key industry developments into just a handful of essential links rather than overwhelming readers with volume. The approach reflects a broader recognition: the pace of change has accelerated so much that clarity matters more than quantity. The topic of how people learn about data centers isn’t separate from the industry’s trajectory; it’s becoming part of it. Public perception, regulatory scrutiny, and investor expectations are now shaped by how stories are told as much as by how facilities are built. That context sets the stage for the conversation’s core theme. Execution Defines 2026 After

Nomads at the Frontier: PTC 2026 Signals the Digital Infrastructure Industry’s Moment of Execution

Each January, the Pacific Telecommunications Council conference serves as a barometer for where digital infrastructure is headed next. And according to Nomad Futurist founders Nabeel Mahmood and Phillip Koblence, the message from PTC 2026 was unmistakable: The industry has moved beyond hype. The hard work has begun. In the latest episode of The DCF Show Podcast, part of our ongoing ‘Nomads at the Frontier’ series, Mahmood and Koblence joined Data Center Frontier to unpack the tone shift emerging across the AI and data center ecosystem. Attendance continues to grow year over year. Conversations remain energetic. But the character of those conversations has changed. As Mahmood put it: “The hype that the market started to see is actually resulting a bit more into actions now, and those conversations are resulting into some good progress.” The difference from prior years? Less speculation. More execution. From Data Center Cowboys to Real Deployments Koblence offered perhaps the sharpest contrast between PTC conversations in 2024 and those in 2026. Two years ago, many projects felt speculative. Today, developers are arriving with secured power, customers, and construction underway. “If 2024’s PTC was data center cowboys — sites that in someone’s mind could be a data center — this year was: show me the money, show me the power, give me accurate timelines.” In other words, the market is no longer rewarding hypothetical capacity. It is demanding delivered capacity. Operators now speak in terms of deployments already underway, not aspirational campuses still waiting on permits and power commitments. And behind nearly every conversation sits the same gating factor. Power. Power Has Become the Industry’s Defining Constraint Whether discussions centered on AI factories, investment capital, or campus expansion, Mahmood and Koblence noted that every conversation eventually returned to energy availability. “All of those questions are power,” Koblence said.

Land and Expand: Early 2026 Megaprojects Reflect a Power-First Ethos

Vantage — Lighthouse (Port Washington, Wisconsin) Although the on-site ceremonial groundbreaking occurred in 2025, Vantage Data Centers’ Lighthouse campus in Port Washington, Wisconsin, remained one of the most closely watched AI infrastructure developments entering 2026, with updated local materials posted February 19 reinforcing the project’s scale and timeline. Announced in October 2025 in partnership with OpenAI and Oracle, Lighthouse is positioned as the Midwest anchor site within the companies’ broader Stargate expansion, which targets up to 4.5 gigawatts of additional AI capacity globally. Current plans call for four hyperscale data centers delivering nearly 902 MW of IT load on a site encompassing roughly 672 acres, with construction expected to run through 2028. From a Land and Expand perspective, the project exemplifies the new generation of AI campuses involving large-scale land banking paired with phased delivery designed to stay ahead of hyperscale demand curves. Just as notable is the project’s power and community framework. Vantage is working with WEC Energy Group’s We Energies on a dedicated rate structure under which the developer will underwrite 100% of the power infrastructure investment, a model explicitly designed to shield existing customers from rate increases. The utility partnership also includes plans to enable nearly 2 gigawatts of new zero-emission energy capacity, with approximately 70% allocated to the Lighthouse campus and the remainder supporting broader grid needs. Water and environmental positioning are also central to the project narrative. Lighthouse is designed around a closed-loop liquid cooling system intended to minimize water consumption, alongside local restoration investments aimed at achieving water positivity. Vantage has also committed to preserving significant portions of the site’s natural landscape while pursuing LEED certification for the campus. Economically, the development is expected to generate more than 4,000 primarily union construction jobs and over 1,000 long-term operational roles, while Vantage has pledged at

7×24 Exchange’s Dennis Cronin on the Data Center Workforce Crisis: The Talent Cliff Is Already Here

The data center industry has spent the past two years obsessing over power constraints, AI density, and supply chain pressure. But according to longtime mission critical leader Dennis Cronin, the sector’s most consequential bottleneck may be far more human. In a recent episode of the Data Center Frontier Show Podcast, Cronin — a founding member of 7×24 Exchange International and board member of the Mission Critical Global Alliance (MCGA) — delivered a stark message: the workforce “talent cliff” the industry keeps discussing as a future risk is already impacting operations today. A Million-Job Gap Emerging Cronin’s assessment reframes the workforce conversation from a routine labor shortage to what he describes as a structural and demographic challenge. Based on recent analysis of open roles, he estimates the industry is currently short between 467,000 and 498,000 workers across core operational positions including facilities managers, operations engineers, electricians, generator technicians, and HVAC specialists. Layer in emerging roles tied to AI infrastructure, sustainability, and cyber-physical security, and the potential demand rises to roughly one million jobs. “The coming talent cliff is not coming,” Cronin said. “It’s here, here and now.” With data center capacity expanding at roughly 30% annually, the workforce pipeline is not keeping pace with physical buildout. The Five-Year Experience Trap One of the industry’s most persistent self-inflicted wounds, Cronin argues, is the widespread requirement for five years of experience in roles that are effectively entry level. The result is a closed-loop hiring dynamic: New workers can’t get hired without experience They can’t gain experience without being hired Operators end up poaching from each other Workers may benefit from the resulting 10–20% salary jumps, but the overall talent pool remains stagnant. “It’s not helping us grow the industry,” Cronin said. In a market defined by rapid expansion and increasing system complexity, that

Powering AI When the Grid Can’t: Inside the New Behind-the-Meter Playbook

The AI infrastructure boom is forcing a hard reset in how the data center industry thinks about power. What was once a relatively straightforward utility procurement exercise is rapidly evolving into a complex, multi-disciplinary strategy problem spanning generation, fuel logistics, finance, and system architecture. That reality framed a recent special edition of The Data Center Frontier Show Podcast, which recast and updated one of the most consequential sessions from the DCF Trends Summit 2025: From Grid to Onsite Powering: Optimizing Energy Behind the Meter for Data Centers. Moderating the discussion was Fengrong Li, Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, whose questions and analytical framing shaped the conversation’s direction. With more than 20 years of experience across energy and infrastructure—including expert testimony before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and multiple state bodies—Li brought a systems-level perspective that pushed the panel well beyond a simple technology tour. Her premise was clear from the outset: the rise of AI is not just increasing data center demand. It is restructuring the entire power delivery paradigm. A Moderator Focused on the System-Level Shift Li’s role went well beyond traditional moderation. Drawing on a career that includes 13 years at Siemens focused on grid issues and eight years at Mitsui in commodity trading and infrastructure investment, she constructed the discussion around what she described as “one of the most urgent topics shaping digital infrastructure deployment.” “Onsite power and the rise of co-located, integrated power and AI campuses,” Li told the panel, “are accelerating data centers beyond traditional hubs and changing how they interact with the grid.” Throughout the session, Li repeatedly pushed panelists to connect near-term deployment realities with longer-term structural implications particularly around redundancy, financing, and regulatory exposure. The result was a grounded look at an industry that is

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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