license plate data merged with credit header data, marriage records, vehicle ownership, and voter registrations, in one app for ICE agents. oh and it sends push notifications when someone they're seeking is nearby. 🆒: www.404media.co/this-app-let...

NEW: Nearly 10,000 employees & contractors at The Washington Post, including ex-national security adviser John Bolton, had their personal data exposed after the paper was breached by hackers. san.com/cc/john-bolt...

NEW: Five people who live in the U.S. pleaded guily for "facilitating" and helping the North Korean regime place fake remote IT workers inside American companies. U.S. Department of Justice said their actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue.

Epstein files (121 GB) A collection of documents, emails, and recordings relating to Jeffrey Epstein, including his FBI and Interpol files, court documents, releases from the DOJ and Congress, and leaked emails. ddosecrets.com/article/epst... Help us keep publishing: donorbox.org/supporting-d...

NEW: DHS ingested a trove of highly unreliable Chicago police records on people accused of having gang ties to feed an FBI watchlist and then just ... didn't delete it for seven months after being told to do so because no one noticed. Scoop from @dell.bsky.social, and is outside our paywall.

@mustafasuleymanai.bsky.social Hey Mustafa, Mikael Thalen here, tech reporter for Straight Arrow News. Was interested in sending a few questions your way about MAI. Can you shoot me a DM or email (info in bio)? Thanks!

In 2023, students at Ohio State blocked the doors to the president's office. Little did they know, live video from campus CCTVs were being fed straight to DHS. It's part of a little-known, decades-long surveillance effort built on the back of college football. www.foiaball.com/p/dhs-colleg...

New, by me at this.weekinsecurity.com: I wrote ~3,700 of my finest words on North Korea's remote IT workers, who have infiltrated businesses across the U.S. and Europe and aren't slowing down. Probably the most pervasive cyber threats today. Here's my primer on how to recognize & combat them.

New from 404 Media: CBP has quietly launched a facial recognition app for local cops to do immigration enforcement. Scans their face, tells cops whether to contact ICE about this person or not. A truly rapid expansion of ICE's facial recognition app to local cops www.404media.co/cbp-quietly-...

NEW: Surveillance footage from inside an Israeli defense contractor has been leaked online by an Iranian-linked hacktivist group. The footage shows defense contractors attending internal meetings, designing weapons systems and their involvement with Israel's Iron Dome. san.com/cc/iran-link...

The Texas Dept of Public Safety carried out aerial surveillance of Austin's No Kings protest after Gov. Abbott suggested that "violence & destruction" were likely. Of course, the event was peaceful. Even the pilot, in video I obtained via FOIA, says: "Seems like it’s gonna be pretty peaceful, huh?"

New from 404 Media: logins for Flock, the company behind the nationwide AI-camera network, are included in malware infections. Includes government and police accounts, meaning hackers could potentially break in. Senator Wyden asking FTC to investigate Flock www.404media.co/flock-logins...

New from 404 Media: you can't refuse to be scanned by ICE's new facial recognition app, according to internal DHS document I obtained. Photos captured by the app are stored for 15 years, including U.S. citizens. We've seen officers scanning faces w/ phones on streets www.404media.co/you-cant-ref...

NEW: ICE is planning to build a shadow deportation network in Texas. A proposal outlines a 24/7 transport operation run by armed contractors—turning Texas into the logistical backbone of an industrialized deportation machine. My latest @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/ice-is...

New from 404 Media: someone managed to get into a Microsoft Teams call with phone hackers Cellebrite, who then detailed some of the company's hacking capabilities against Google Pixel phones. Also its capabilities against GrapheneOS, security-focused devices www.404media.co/someone-snuc...

Full story: The self-described "founder" of Anonymous and part-time federal cooperator Kirtaner announced he would be returning to prison after violating the terms of his bail with $ANON.

New: Videos show ICE/CBP agents are scanning peoples' faces on the street to verify citizenship. ICE has tool to instantly look up unprecedented number of databases with just a photo “I’m an American citizen so leave me alone” “Alright, we just got to verify that” www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

NEW: CBP searched a record 55,424 devices at the US border over the past 12 months. While these searches are rare compared to the number of travelers, the data shows a notable uptick over the past six months. @mattburgess1.bsky.social and @dell.bsky.social w/ the scoop: www.wired.com/story/cbp-se...

NEW: DHS is asking companies to submit plans to turn standard 4x4 trucks into AI-powered watchtowers—combining radar, cameras, and autonomous tracking to extend surveillance on demand. by me @ wired:

New from 404 Media: DHS is trying to unmask an anonymous Instagram/Facebook account that tracks ICE activity by claiming the accounts are importing merchandise. Zero evidence for that, lawyers say demand is wildly out of scope. It's a tactic to unmask critics www.404media.co/dhs-tries-to...

NEW: there's been some chatter in recent days about an ICE purchase of "guided missile warheads and explosive components" in September. However, it appears ICE simply entered the wrong product code when it entered the payment record into a federal database: www.wired.com/story/no-ice...

New from 404 Media: the same hackers who doxed hundreds of DHS, ICE, and FBI officials say they have personal data of tens of thousands more government officials, including thousands NSA, more in intel community. They sent me data from a dizzying list of agencies www.404media.co/hackers-say-...

Portland police deploy ‘informants’ within ICE protest crowds to aid in arrests, documents reveal www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

New: hackers just doxed hundreds of DHS, ICE, FBI, and DOJ officials. I went through the data. In many cases does look legitimate, sometimes includes residential addresses. “Mexican Cartels hmu [hit me up] we dropping all the doxes wheres my 1m [1 million].” www.404media.co/hackers-dox-...

In response to the No Kings protest in Austin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is sending in the National Guard, the Texas Rangers, state troopers & Public Safety personnel “supported by aircraft and other tactical assets.” www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Never been a laptop sticker guy, but when I saw @micahflee.com with this, I had to get one.

"The Bulletin is the latest sign that Trump’s NSPM-7 national security directive ordering federal agencies to root out domestic terrorism will ramp up surveillance and monitoring of protests and free speech."

NEW: A stunning new study finds that satellite transmissions—from calls and texts on T-Mobile to US and Mexico military communications—were sent unencrypted for any snoop to grab. @agreenberg.bsky.social and @mattburgess1.bsky.social have the scoop: www.wired.com/story/satell...

ICE is likely surveilling protesters’ phones in Portland using fake cellphone towers, aka stingrays. Here’s my interview with @mikaelthalen.bsky.social about what’s happening.

Mikael Thalen's video explainer is the best, simplest explanation that I've ever seen of how these somewhat obscure devices work. Well worth your 2 min. 24 secs.

“Although warrants are required to operate cell-site simulators, the devices can be used without judicial authorization in certain circumstances, such as when there is an immediate threat to national security.” san.com/cc/exclusive...

Yet more evidence, direct from @mikaelthalen.bsky.social, of blanket ICE cell phone surveillance at protests san.com/cc/exclusive...

EXCLUSIVE: A cell-site simulator, commonly referred to as an IMSI-catcher or "Stingray," may have been used at the ICE facility in Portland. Analysis of cellular signals in the area showed phones receiving abnormal spikes in requests for their unique identifiers. san.com/cc/exclusive...

For the latest episode of Hacklab, we carried out one of the more fun and stressful hacking experiments of my career: We hacked a casino card shuffler to help me cheat in a game of poker against unsuspecting players in Vegas. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20...

New: Apple banned an app that simply archived videos of ICE abuses. Rather than other apps that record ICE official's real-time location, Eyes Up is to "preserve evidence until it can be used in court." Videos from TikTok etc. Every submission manually reviewed www.404media.co/apple-banned...

I'm losing count of all the "we're clean on opsec" moments from the admin.

Scoop, by @lorenzofb.bsky.social: A federal contract shows ICE spent $825,000 on vans equipped with fake cellphone towers known as cell-site simulators, which can be used to spy on nearby phones.

“People over Papers, a crowdsourcing project that maps sightings of US immigration agents, was taken offline yesterday by Padlet, the collaborative bulletin board platform on which it was built. It’s just the latest ICE-tracking initiative to be pulled by tech platforms in the past few days.”

@councilormorillo.bsky.social Hey councilor, tech journalist with Straight Arrow News here. Can you shoot me a DM or a message on Signal (in bio)? Thanks

The messages show high-level officials in the Trump administration discussing the possible deployment of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, an infantry force that has dropped into combat zones in both World Wars, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Mario Guevara, an Emmy-award winning reporter, was deported to El Salvador — a nation he fled more than two decades ago. He was arrested while covering a protest of the Trump administration in a case that has alarmed free speech groups.

New from 404 Media: Google removed an ICE-spotting app too. Called Red Dot, an immigration support group on the ground in Chicago told me it was using it. Google now removed, just like Apple did with ICEBlock after DOJ pressure. Google calls ICE vulnerable group www.404media.co/google-calls...

New: Apple just removed ICEBlock, the app for reporting sightings of ICE, from its App Store after DOJ pressure. ICEBlock's developer tells 404 Media "we are determined to fight this." "Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move." www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

NEW: ICE is planning to hire a team of nearly 30 people to surveil social media 24/7, build dossiers on people, and flag them for arrest and deportation. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/ice-so...

New from 404 Media: ICE to buy tool that tracks locations of hundreds of millions of phones every day. Billions of pieces of location data. ICE previously stopped using data remotely harvested from smartphones. Now it's buying it again. Usually used w/o warrant www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

New: Last night in the Senate, Ted Cruz blocked a bill that would have prevented data brokers from selling personal data on anyone in the United States, and not just federal lawmakers and government officials.

Hacker stole FEMA and border patrol data in months-long breach www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/p...

Shout out to @wired.com for including my story in their weekly roundup about the app that doxed its users who doxed critics of Charlie Kirk.