Elizabeth M. Renieris, a Harvard lawyer on the ID2020 technical advisory committee, has resigned from the ID2020 Alliance. The organization aims to enable digital identity for those that lack one, and is especially active with refugees and marginalized groups. Renieris' resignation was driven by concerns that the organization will get involved in COVID-19 immunity passports, as Coindesk first reported.

More than half a million people from ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang have been coerced into picking cotton, on a scale far greater than previously thought, new research has suggested.

Portland, Maine has passed a ballot initiative banning the use of facial recognition by police and city agencies. The Bangor Daily News is reporting that voters have passed a ballot initiative bolstering a ban on facial recognition by city agencies. The initiative follows a city council vote in August, which put a preliminary ban in place as an ordinance.

IT IS big, bulky, you can't snort it, and it doesn't get you high. Per tonne, it sells for about $125, compared with cocaine, which fetches at least $50m wholesale. By any reckoning, iron ore would seem like a daft thing to peddle if you were in the drugs trade.

IBM announced Monday it's withdrawing from the general purpose facial recognition market, saying it worries that the technology is being used to promote discrimination and racial injustice.

TL;DR: As first reported by Summit News for English-reading audiences, a hastily translated China Press account claimed a so-called prominent Hong Kong protester is calling for a run on Chinese banks, hoping to take civil disobedience from the streets and to the heart of China's economic engine.

Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, will become the head of the ECB. Already, she has made a fool out of herself. Following a two-day marathon in which "Spitzenkandidat" Failed and Merkel's Plan A and Plan B Dumped Lagarde will now head the ECB and give up her job at the IMF.