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「最終保障提供責務の導入等に伴う基礎的電気通信役務制度の在り方 三次答申（案）」 に対する意見募集

第7回緊急消防援助隊全国合同訓練「図上訓練」の開催

「家庭用IoT機器を悪用するレジデンシャルプロキシの対策について（提言）」（案）に対する意見募集

デジタル空間における情報流通の諸課題への対処に関する検討会（第13回）・デジタル広告ワーキンググループ（第18回）・青少年保護ワーキンググループ（第8回）・発信者情報開示ワーキンググループ（第5回）合同会合

夕張市財政再生計画の変更の同意

情報通信審議会　情報通信技術分科会　電波利用環境委員会　CISPR　I作業班（第21回）開催案内

成年後見制度の利用促進に関する調査　＜結果に基づく通知＞

令和8年度消防団入団促進広報に関するイベントの実施

情報通信行政・郵政行政審議会　電気通信事業部会　市場検証委員会（第12回）配布資料・議事録

国立研究開発法人審議会　情報通信研究機構部会（第56回）

令和8年7月21日付　総務省人事

第141回サービス統計・企業統計部会

A new report from the Government Accounting Office reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to nearly triple the number of surveillance towers along U.S. borders, from the current 830 to 2,300 by 2034.

DHS expects to expend $1 billion in taxpayer dollars for this dangerous expansion of a surveillance network indiscriminately trained on towns, school playgrounds, backyards, and vehicles—threatening the privacy and civil liberties of everyone in the border regions.

The towers are planned as part of DHS component Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Integrated Surveillance Tower (IST) program, which captures images of people and vehicles. The IST program operates autonomous surveillance towers, consisting of autonomous surveillance towers, consisting of AI-based systems using radar, thermal infrared and optical systems to track targets over long distances; integrated fixed towers, optimized for surveilling foot traffic and vehicles; and remote video surveillance systems, which can often be found very close to the border fence in Arizona, including residential neighborhoods where cameras are capable of spying on homes on both sides of the border. (For a description and photos of these technologies, see EFF’s updated guide to surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico Border.)

DHS expects to purchase more long-range autonomous towers and to upgrade existing towers with autonomous capabilities. The $1 billion comes from the so-called One Big Beautiful Act—a massive tax and spending law that President Trump signed in 2025, the report says.

The explosive expansion of border surveillance is a digital dumpster fire for human rights and civil liberties. It’s not just surveillance towers; drones, aerostats, surveillance vehicles, ground sensors, game cameras, and license plate readers are also part of the vast taxpayer-funded infrastructure that threatens all those who live, work, or seek refuge in the borderlands. This technology isn’t exclusive to U.S. federal agencies: it’s also deployed by state and local law enforcement, and even by governments on the Mexican side.

Since 2022, EFF has studied and mapped surveillance technology along the U.S.-Mexico border using public records research, open-source intelligence, and fact-finding trips, and created a handy interactive map to provide researchers and journalists with the tools they need to analyze the impact of U.S. border security policy. We have also documented the different types of surveillance technology in a zine, "Surveillance Technology at the U.S.-Mexico Border." We updated the publication earlier this year to help people identify the machinery of homeland security by adding more models of surveillance towers, newly deployed military tech, and a gallery of disguised trail cams and automated license plate readers.

EFF’s work includes defending the rights of individuals whose devices have been searched or seized upon entering the country; pushing back on the collection of biometric and social media identifiers; and developing digital security guidance for people crossing borders.

With the web of surveillance tech at the borders about to explode, EFF will continue to investigate and expose it and find ways to fight back with the communities that live in the shadow of this technological threat to human rights.

This document combines a baseline synthesis report and the results of a national validation workshop to create a national roadmap for strengthening community-centered connectivity initiatives in the…

There’s a new boogeyman in the battles over AI: so-called “stealth crawlers.” We’ll admit it—the term “stealth crawlers” sounds quite nefarious. In reality, they’re anything but.

“Stealth crawlers” are simply automated tools to access and collect public web data—without disclosing the user’s identity. Private crawlers like these facilitate all kinds of important work that benefits the public, including investigative reporting, academic research, cybersecurity protection, and more.

Anonymous crawling enables some of the most publicly beneficial uses of the open web.

Many publishers want to unmask crawlers anyways—and are pushing for new legislation that would give them new powers to do so. These legislative proposals threaten the open web, user privacy, and valuable research without directly addressing the problems they’re supposedly intending to solve.

Alarmingly, these harmful proposals are gaining traction. The New York state legislature has already passed such a bill, the NY Stealth Crawler Protection Act, which is now on Governor Hochul’s desk. We expect to see similar bills introduced in other states, and potentially in Congress. That’s a big problem for the open web—and the many benefits it provides.

Anonymous crawling is worth protecting

Anonymous crawling enables some of the most publicly beneficial uses of the open web. Researchers, journalists, and other watchdog groups use unidentified automated tools to gather the information necessary to hold powerful institutions accountable and protect the public.

Anonymous crawling fuels important investigative journalism. For example, The Markup, a non-profit news site, used anonymous crawlers to investigate potentially anti-competitive practices by tech companies, such as Amazon’s tendency to prioritize Amazon brands and Amazon-exclusive products over competitors with higher ratings. The crawlers identified themselves as ordinary Firefox browsers to web servers, which allowed The Markup to understand how Amazon search results pages would appear to ordinary users. Similarly, ProPublica used an automated tool designed to simulate an ordinary Amazon customer to reveal that the site steered shoppers to more expensive products over cheaper alternatives.

Anonymous web scraping is also crucial for cybersecurity professionals, who use automated tools to monitor the web for information that helps them protect against malicious attackers. Privacy tools, including EFF’s own Privacy Badger, also crawl sites anonymously to identify trackers without compromising user privacy.

However, without the ability to scrape anonymously, these tools would likely be blocked. Sites can—and do—block crawlers operated by researchers, journalists, and activists who criticize them. For example, Facebook shut down accounts belonging to researchers who used automated tools to study misinformation on the platform and demanded that they take down published research. Many sites block automated access by anyone who hasn’t paid to crawl public webpages.    

Unmasking crawlers threatens the open web

News publishers—and their allies in government—say that unmasking crawlers is necessary to protect news organizations from technological strain caused by AI-related crawling, and fears that AI could reduce news sites’ traffic and ad revenue. These are legitimate concerns.

But enacting broad, reactionary restrictions on automated access is not the answer. Legislation targeting anonymous crawling threatens the open web, user privacy, and valuable research without actually addressing these technological and potential economic harms of scraping.

The New York state legislature recently passed the NY Stealth Crawler Protection Act, a law that would make it illegal to crawl news websites without revealing who is operating the crawler and all possible future uses of the data collected by the crawler. The law would give websites the power to obtain court orders that unmask anyone using an unidentified crawler—without any evidence that they broke the law.

Laws like the New York bill sweep far beyond AI, and do not meaningfully address the technological or potential harms of AI-related web scraping. These policies would chill beneficial crawling by allowing publishers to veto lawful public access, giving them the power to block not just bad actors, but also security professionals, researchers, dissidents, or anyone who has not paid for a license to view public text. This needlessly undermines the free and open internet.

Digital news publishers—like most websites—face real technological challenges in the AI era. While web crawling has been around for decades, with the proliferation of AI, crawlers now collect far more public web data than they used to. This pushes servers closer to their maximum capacity, and if some bots collect information too aggressively, they may strain web servers to the point that it degrades site performance. The problem is not anonymity—so unmasking crawlers won’t solve it. The real problem is overaggressive crawling, which can be effectively addressed with technical measures that target harmful conduct without impeding anonymous access to information.

A better path forward

There are other, far less harmful ways to protect publishers from the harms these “stealth crawler” laws claim to target. Addressing the harms of AI-related crawling requires policies that narrowly target the causes of these issues–without undermining free expression and the open web. Policies that target crawlers and scrapers are anything but.

　帯には「伝説のフィールドワーカーによる遺稿集」とある。45歳という若さで、白血病により世を去った俊英の足跡を、学者仲間が惜しみながら編んだのが本書だ。著者の打越正行は『ヤンキーと地元』（筑摩書房）において参与観察という手法で、一躍注目を浴びた社会学者だった。　ひたすら観察に徹するという姿勢で、地元のヤンキー集団に受け入れられ、パシリという立場に自分をおいて社会内側から分析していく。並の感覚ではとてもまらない立ち位置。そこでの観察を「新章」というインタビュー（それも沖縄言葉う..

令和8年7月20日付　総務省人事

　近年、生成AIの急速な普及に伴い、膨大なデータを処理する「データセンター」の建設が世界中、そして日本国内でも急ピッチで進んでいます。　これに伴い、メディアや政財界では「データセンターによる電力需要増に対応するため、原発の再稼働や新増設が必要だ」という論調が強まっています。しかし、それは本当でしょうか。　データセンターの急増は、単に電力消費の問題にとどまらず、地域の水資源の枯渇や排熱による環境負荷、騒音、電気代上昇、景観破壊などの、さまざまな地域課題・社会問題を世界中で引き起..

令和8年7月19日付　総務省人事