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Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, rounding up the week’s top stories at the intersection of politics and the all-inclusive world of technology.
Robinson seeks revenge
North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has filed a defamation suit against CNN over the outlet’s reporting on chatroom posts he allegedly shared on a pornographic website between 2008 and 2012. The CNN report linked Robinson to an account that made posts on the website “Nude Africa,” in which the user who identified as a “black Nazi” admitted to peeping on women as a teenager and expressed support for slavery.
The lawsuit, which seeks $50 million in damages, also names a man named Louis Money as a defendant. Money is a former clerk at a porn store who told news outlets that Robinson had been a regular customer in his store in the past. Money stands by his claims, but Robinson alleges in his suit that he merely stopped by the store occasionally to “socialize.”
Robinson denied making the posts at the time CNN initially published its report, and his lawyer accused the outlet of a “journalistic hit job.” At a press conference Tuesday, Robinson called the report a “high-tech lynching,” but neither he nor his lawyer provided any evidence that would appear to contradict CNN’s reporting.
It’s hard to see this suit doing much to pull Robinson’s campaign out of its current tailspin. Several of his staffers have quit. Donald Trump, despite refusing to retract his endorsement of Robinson, has not included him in any of his events in North Carolina. The lawsuit seems like a last-ditch effort to salvage the legitimacy of a campaign that is seriously lacking.
Watch Robinson’s press conference in full here.
Heed Harris’ warning
During a conversation with journalist Roland Martin, Kamala Harris reminded his listeners of Russia’s 2016 efforts to engender apathy or pro-Trump sentiment among voters, particularly Black voters. Harris warned that Russia is making similar efforts again this year.
Anti-FEMA violence
A man who promoted a far-right militia and allegedly wanted to harm Federal Emergency Management Agency employees was arrested Saturday, according to authorities in North Carolina. William Jacob Parsons, 44, was charged with “Going Armed to the Terror of the Public,” NBC reports; he did not return NBC’s request for comment. That news comes after FEMA employees were reportedly forced to stand down in certain parts of the state because of threats, which have come as Trump and other Republicans have spread conspiracy theories online about the government response to Hurricane Helene.
Read more at NBC News.
Problems with predictive policing
A new Tech Policy report has found that officials in multiple states have expressed doubts about the effectiveness of high-tech tools used for predictive policing. Some of these tools, like artificial intelligence–driven algorithms designed ostensibly to predict where crimes are most likely to occur, have been known to perpetuate racial bias. The Tech Policy report suggests that skepticism of these tools may finally be starting to mount.
Read more at Tech Policy.
Bucket sprang a leak
American Water, the largest water utility in the United States, announced last week that it had been hit with a cyberattack. The company said that it had detected “unauthorized activity” in its computer networks but that the water it provides is safe to drink, and that no water or wastewater facilities have been affected.
Read more at CNBC. (And for more on cyberattacks targeting U.S. infrastructure, read some of my previous coverage.)
Musk’s election efforts
The New York Times published a report about an Elon Musk-backed organization called Building America’s Future, a pro-Trump political organization that’s been releasing digital ads — some of which Democrats have denounced as antisemitic — designed to peel off Black and Muslim support for Harris and “appear to be intended to depress turnout for Ms. Harris” in Michigan “using the conflict in the Middle East as a wedge.” The group has also reportedly funded efforts to place and keep third-party candidates such as Jill Stein and Cornel West on state ballots across the country.
Read more at The New York Times.