A retired British primary school administrator with a British passport and a valid visa was shackled, chained and detained for six weeks by ICE www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Across the US, people fed up with Flock cameras surveilling their communities, and with local governments that are often unwilling to listen to concerns over privacy violations and ICE data sharing practices, are taking matters into their own hands—and tearing them down.

In a 6-3 ruling, justices upended the Trump administration's signature economic policy, potentially putting the US government on the hook for at least $175 billion in tariff refunds. www.wired.com/story/suprem...

"He took six frames in all - two showed police, two were blank, one was out of focus. But one captured the unprecedented nature of the moment: for the first time in modern history, a senior royal was being treated as a common criminal."

A Bellingcat investigation reveals child soldiers in Sudan’s civil war have become viral figures on TikTok. Videos attracting millions of views show the children with senior military officials, celebrating battlefield victories and delivering violent threats. www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/02...

News you can use, from the @wired.com security team (who are the best in the biz). They asked technologists, activists, aid groups, and cybersecurity experts for guidance on how to organize and collaborate in an age of surveillance. Here’s the result:

really excellent/wild story bsky.app/profile/kimz...

NEW: Political organizing is getting riskier under the Trump administration, so @agreenberg.bsky.social and @lhn.bsky.social wrote a comprehensive guide to doing it safely. No paywall! www.wired.com/story/how-to...

I don’t think I’ve ever had so many people writing to me to ask about encrypted/secure/private tools for comms, collaboration, and organizing. So @lhn.bsky.social and I talked to experts and assembled this: the Wired guide to organizing in an age of surveillance. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

While this Freedom[dot]Gov domain now shows a holding page—saying "reclaim your human right to free expression"—it also appears to be the same US government domain that was used for a 'Victory in Iraq' site more than two decades ago Archived version: web.archive.org/web/20040110...

Exclusive: The US State Department is developing an online portal to enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda, sources told Reuters reut.rs/4cySsA6

I want to be extremely clear that this system is an AI agent controlling other AI agents controlling OTHER AI agents which use drones to blow things up. from @willknight.bsky.social

Palantir Technologies is suing Republik Magazine over an investigation into Palantir’s activities in Switzerland, published in December 2025. The lawsuit demands a counterstatement and is currently being heard by the Zurich Commercial Court. Link in comments. #palantir #freemedia

Do NOT miss this dog's photo-finish snapshot in the replies.

ICE tripled its reliance on Microsoft in last six months, leaked files reveal @972mag.com www.972mag.com/ice-microsof...

when big tech companies say that AI will save the planet, what kinds of AI are they actually talking about — and what's their proof? i took a look at some great new research from @ketanjoshi.co and talked to other experts about how a lot of this talk is probably bullshit:

New from 404 Media: a leaked email suggests Ring's 'Search Party' feature, which it advertised at the Super Bowl, won't be limited to just turning on neighborhoods' cameras to search for dogs. CEO Jamie Siminoff said the feature is “first for finding dogs.” www.404media.co/leaked-email...

"I'm going to say something I should never say, but I will anyway: you can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone."

EXCLUSIVE: Lego let @wired.com inside its HQ to see exactly how the Smart Brick system was created- including a look at the prototypes created along the way. A fascinating journey of a product Lego hopes will transform its future. www.wired.com/story/exclus...

rare positive journalism news story

NEW: ChatGPT and other chatbots are feeding users' fixations on real people, reinforcing users' delusional ideas and obsessions about others as they descend into unwanted harassment, stalking, and/or domestic abuse — traumatizing victims and profoundly altering lives. futurism.com/artificial-i...

Another Grok investigation, as Ireland’s data protection regulator launches a GDPR probe into its “undressing” use

“If Mastercard and Visa were turned off, it would send us back to the 1950s,” before cards dominated the UK economy, and businesses wholly relied on cash, one executive familiar with the project told the Guardian. “Of course, we need a sovereign payments system.”

We @foxglovelegal.bsky.social have called on the govt to release info about Lord Mandelson’s links with US tech giant Palantir and its growing number of uk govt contracts www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

Joseph Menn has been writing about cybersecurity since well before most journalists even understood it as a beat. Big loss for the Post and its readers, but also for the industry and the wider public, who will be less informed - and less safe - as a result.

SCOOP from me in this week’s @wired.com Inner Loop newsletter: A look inside a forum where users claiming to be ICE/CBP vent their frustrations and concerns about their jobs. “This is going to be a train wreck that we may not survive.” www.wired.com/story/inside...

New: Together with colleagues I’ve been testing Grok. The chatbot still produces sexualized images — even when told the subjects don’t consent. even when told the photos will be used for public humiliation. even when told the subjects are survivors of abuse. www.reuters.com/business/des...

for connoisseurs of local journalism traffic farming, this is the latest frontier – you reprint ancient facts from Wikipedia and present them as news, in order to create curiosity gap headlines that appear in Google Discover / Apple News

BREAKING: Met Police reviewing reports about Mandelson’s emails to Epstein to decide if to investigate. “The Met has received a number of reports relating to alleged misconduct in a public office. The reports will all be reviewed to determine if they meet the criminal threshold for investigation.”

Here's our 25-min video news-documentary version of the story of Red Bull, the whistleblower who leaked me the secrets of a crypto scam compound while trapped as a forced laborer inside it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOcN... Hope you'll watch and consider the immense scale of this global crisis.

NEW: The Justice Department published dozens of unredacted images of nude women (and possibly teens) as part of its Epstein release. The faces of those people were also left unredacted. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/u...

As Trump’s mass deportation program unfolds, immigration policy and enforcement is shifting fast. That’s why we’re launching Tracker, a limited-series newsletter navigating what’s happening and what’s next. Sign up for free: www.wired.com/newsletter/I...

BREAKING on ft website: Lord Peter Mandelson leaked a sensitive UK government document to Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary that proposed £20bn of asset sales and revealed Labour’s tax policy plans www.ft.com/content/fdf7...

BREAKING: The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

Wowsers look at what happened to posts on Twitter/X about London crime after monetisation of posts was introduced… economist.com/britain/2026...

NEW: The @wired.com Security desk put together a comprehensive guide to filming ICE—with tips for reducing risk at the forefront. No paywall, but please consider subscribing to help find these kinds of resources. And stay safe out there. www.wired.com/story/how-to... www.wired.com/v2/offers/wi...

Ulez bomber: the retired electrician who turned bomb-making extremist

I'm not prone to exaggeration but this is probably the biggest scoop I've ever been involved in Mandelson's partner took £10,000 from Epstein to pay for his osteopath course while Mandelson was de facto UK deputy prime minister, according to new files more to follow www.ft.com/content/c950...

BIG news from @bloomberg.com, which confirms that ICE has gone ahead and *purchased* multiple commercial warehouses with the aim of converting them into mass detention camps. This is likely to be the big detention story of 2026 — literal warehousing of people. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

We're being sued for libel by a London businessman who thinks he can bully us into taking down a @londonermag.bsky.social story about him. He's wrong! Please read and share. www.the-londoner.co.uk/the-londoner...

This wasn’t easy to share, but it mattered. Thanks to WIRED for documenting what I witnessed. It shows what’s happening behind online scam operations.

I am directing my course to port

The largest infrastructure projects currently being built in the US appear to be data centers and detention centers. The AI boom has coincided with ICE becoming the most heavily funded government agency. It's hard not to see a connection: This is the architectures of digital fascism

NEW: I reviewed nearly 1,400 screenings at over 300 movie theaters in the united states, and I am here to report that I successfully found two (2) sold out Melania screenings. Read on at @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/we-fou...

“Time and again, we see what happens when devices go to market without proper consideration of how they might be used to harm women and girls.”

NEW: An AI toy company's web portal had basically protections, allowing anyone with a Gmail address to access some 50,000 transcripts of kids' chats with their stuffed animals. @agreenberg.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/an-ai-...

The AI-chat-enabled stuffed toy Bondu invites little kids to have intimate conversations with it, like an LLM imaginary friend. It also exposed virtually all their chats on a web interface with no security. Anyone with a Gmail account could log in and read transcripts. www.wired.com/story/an-ai-...

The director of McDonald's Netherlands is called... Zoe Hamburger www.mcdonalds.com/nl/nl-nl/con...