LONDON: Britain’s government acted unlawfully when it routinely housed newly arrived unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels, the High Court ruled Thursday.
A child protection charity brought legal action against Britain’s Home Office and local authorities in Kent, on England’s southern coast, over their treatment of unaccompanied migrant children, saying the temporary housing arrangements deny the youngsters the statutory child protection safeguards to which they are entitled.
Justice Martin Chamberlain ruled that authorities breached legal duties of care owed to all children who require looking after, irrespective of their immigration status.
“Ensuring the safety and welfare of children with no adult to look after them is among the most fundamental duties of any civilized state,” the judge said.
Every Child Protected Against Trafficking, or ECPAT, the charity that brought the lawsuit, said hundreds of children had gone missing, with many potentially trafficked for criminal exploitation, as a result of the failures by government.
The judge said Home Office officials had been accommodating children in hotels for over two years.
Placing asylum-seeking children in hotels for “very short periods in true emergency situations” was acceptable, he said, but “it cannot be used systematically or routinely in circumstances where it is intended, or functions in practice, as a substitute for local authority care.”
The Home Office and Department for Education had opposed the legal challenges, saying the hotel use was “a matter of necessity.”
“It remains a child protection scandal that so many of the most vulnerable children remain missing at risk of significant harm as a consequence of these unlawful actions by the Secretary of State and Kent County Council,” said Patricia Durr, the charity’s chief executive.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government has pledged to crackdown on asylum-seekers arriving by small boats that make the risky journey across the English Channel from northern France. He has stressed that “stopping the boats” is his key priority in office.
More than 45,000 people arrived in Britain by crossing the Channel last year, and so far this year more than 12,000 others have made the crossing.
Earlier this month Parliament passed the government’s controversial Illegal Migration Bill, which will bar anyone who reaches the UK by unauthorized means from claiming asylum. Under the new law, officials can detain and then deport refugees and migrants to their home country or a “safe third country,” such as Rwanda.
The bill has been widely criticized by rights groups as unethical and in violation of the UK’s international human rights obligations.
Critics have also condemned the government over a huge backlog of asylum claims, which has left scores of people in hotels or other unsuitable accommodation while they wait for their claims to be processed.
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UK government’s routine housing of unaccompanied child migrants in hotels ruled unlawful
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UK government’s routine housing of unaccompanied child migrants in hotels ruled unlawful
- Charity says the temporary housing arrangements deny the youngsters the safeguards they should receive by law
Anthropic CEO says AI company ‘cannot in good conscience accede’ to Pentagon’s demands
WASHINGTON: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday the artificial intelligence company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s demands to allow wider use of its technology.
The company said in a statement that it’s not walking away from negotiation but that new contract language received from the Defense Department “made virtually no progress on preventing Claude’s use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.”
The Pentagon’s top spokesman has reiterated that the military wants to use Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology in legal ways and will not let the company dictate any limits ahead of a Friday deadline to agree to its demands.
Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon “has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.”
Anthropic’s policies prevent its models, such as its chatbot Claude, from being used for those purposes. It’s the last of its peers — the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI — to not supply its technology to a new US military internal network.
Parnell said the Pentagon wants to “use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes” but didn’t offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from “jeopardizing critical military operations.”
“We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions,” he said.
During a meeting on Tuesday between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, military officials warned that they could designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, cancel its contract or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products, even if the company doesn’t approve.
Parnell mentioned only two of those consequences in the Thursday post on X and said Anthropic has “until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide.”
“Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk,” he wrote.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. It said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting that it “continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government’s national security mission in line with what our models can reliably and responsibly do.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is not seeking reelection, said Thursday that the Pentagon has been handling the matter unprofessionally while Anthropic is “trying to do their best to help us from ourselves.”
“Why in the hell are we having this discussion in public?” Tillis told reporters. “This is not the way you deal with a strategic vendor that has contracts.”
He added, “When a company is resisting a market opportunity for fear of negative consequences, you should listen to them and then behind closed doors figure out what they’re really trying to solve.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by reports that the Pentagon is “working to bully a leading US company.”
“Unfortunately, this is further indication that the Department of Defense seeks to completely ignore AI governance,” Warner said in a statement. It “further underscores the need for Congress to enact strong, binding AI governance mechanisms for national security contexts.”
As Pentagon officials say they always will follow the law with their use of AI models, Hegseth told Fox News last February, weeks after becoming defense secretary, that “ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything.”
The company said in a statement that it’s not walking away from negotiation but that new contract language received from the Defense Department “made virtually no progress on preventing Claude’s use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.”
The Pentagon’s top spokesman has reiterated that the military wants to use Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology in legal ways and will not let the company dictate any limits ahead of a Friday deadline to agree to its demands.
Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon “has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.”
Anthropic’s policies prevent its models, such as its chatbot Claude, from being used for those purposes. It’s the last of its peers — the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI — to not supply its technology to a new US military internal network.
Parnell said the Pentagon wants to “use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes” but didn’t offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from “jeopardizing critical military operations.”
“We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions,” he said.
During a meeting on Tuesday between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, military officials warned that they could designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, cancel its contract or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products, even if the company doesn’t approve.
Parnell mentioned only two of those consequences in the Thursday post on X and said Anthropic has “until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide.”
“Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk,” he wrote.
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. It said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting that it “continued good-faith conversations about our usage policy to ensure Anthropic can continue to support the government’s national security mission in line with what our models can reliably and responsibly do.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is not seeking reelection, said Thursday that the Pentagon has been handling the matter unprofessionally while Anthropic is “trying to do their best to help us from ourselves.”
“Why in the hell are we having this discussion in public?” Tillis told reporters. “This is not the way you deal with a strategic vendor that has contracts.”
He added, “When a company is resisting a market opportunity for fear of negative consequences, you should listen to them and then behind closed doors figure out what they’re really trying to solve.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed” by reports that the Pentagon is “working to bully a leading US company.”
“Unfortunately, this is further indication that the Department of Defense seeks to completely ignore AI governance,” Warner said in a statement. It “further underscores the need for Congress to enact strong, binding AI governance mechanisms for national security contexts.”
As Pentagon officials say they always will follow the law with their use of AI models, Hegseth told Fox News last February, weeks after becoming defense secretary, that “ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything.”
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