If you read an amazing article from Teen Vogue about politics in the last several years, chances are that Lex McMenamin wrote it. Any publication that is serious about meeting this moment would be lucky to have them.

Interesting - I'd heard of a cop's account getting hacked on at least one occasion. One thing I will note, however, is that Flock has been pushing and in some cases enforcing multi-factor authentication, per public records. See here for an email sent by Flock to a customer...

🚨🚨🚨 Absolutely insane stuff here. @lorenzofb.bsky.social spent months working on this story. Peter Williams, former L3Harris Trenchant boss — the division that makes cyber exploits, zero-days and spyware for Western governments — has pleaded guilty to selling Trenchant's exploits to Russia.

I'm sure this is fine. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

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-...

SCOOP: On Mon, Kaspersky said it found new spyware called Dante targeting Windows users in Russia & Belarus, saying the spyware was developed by Milan-based Memento Labs. Memento's CEO confirmed to TechCrunch that Dante is its spyware, and blamed one of its government customers for getting caught.

Filling in for @thomasbrewster.bsky.social on this week's edition of our cybersecurity newsletter The Wiretap. What's inside: 🃏 The hacking at the center of the (alleged) NBA/Mafia poker cheating. 🤖 A startup working to make AI agents more secure. 🐞 Apple's bigger bug bounties And more!

I just wrote about this warrant, what it means for a potential new chapter of the "reverse warrants" saga, and some questions we should be asking for the future: cyberlaw.stanford.edu/eight-or-so-...

One of Europe’s most successful startup investors Klaus Hommels who made early bets on Facebook, Spotify, and Skype, has told backers of his fund Lakestar that future startup bets will be made with his own capital. www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

Just published: "Trump’s White House Demolition Isn’t His First Time Leveling A Building — Or Ignoring Preservationists" me, for @forbes.com

Also in the article: the warrant is to unlock the phone of one of the WhatsApp users, also identified as a fake ID dealer. It allows ICE agents to force the suspect to open their phone with thumb, finger or face.

ICYMI from yesterday: A former Trenchant employee working in exploit development says he was wrongly accused of leaking internal tools and fired. Weeks later, he received a threat alert from Apple saying his own iPhone was targeted with mercenary spyware.

🚨NEW🚨 In a recently-unsealed warrant ICE's HSI division detailed a case in which it spied on an undocumented immigrant's WhatsApp account. She was dealing fake ID documents. An ICE HSI agent spied on who she contacted on WhatsApp, then identified those contacts. www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

A potential playbook for ICE here on mapping out networks of immigrants by using/abusing WhatsApp's maintenance of metadata...

But then I saw that TikTok had recently changed its policies about when and how it notifies users that their data has been requested. And the new policy was weaker than most of TikTok's competitors'. 5/8 www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

A potential playbook for ICE here on mapping out networks of immigrants by using/abusing WhatsApp's maintenance of metadata...

🚨NEW🚨 In a recently-unsealed warrant ICE's HSI division detailed a case in which it spied on an undocumented immigrant's WhatsApp account. She was dealing fake ID documents. An ICE HSI agent spied on who she contacted on WhatsApp, then identified those contacts. www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

ICYMI yesterday

Updated this story with EFF comment, noting that it shows how the likes of DHS are increasingly turning to ChatGPT records for help on investigations. How broad could data grabs get here?

🚨SCOOP🚨 DHS ordered OpenAI to identify a user who'd made 2 specific prompts. User was anonymous and accused of helping run 15 child abuse sites. They'd disclosed the prompts to an undercover agent. First example of what I'm calling a reverse AI prompt search. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

“However, the government did not require the OpenAI data to identify their man. Instead, they were able to glean enough information during undercover chats with the suspect to discover that he was connected to the U.S. military.”

I think this is also the first federal search warrant on OpenAI to be made public but correct me if I'm wrong. There's potential here for broader searches - e.g. asking for anyone who prompted something less specific, as in cases where Google was asked to identify people searching certain terms.

🚨SCOOP🚨 DHS ordered OpenAI to identify a user who'd made 2 specific prompts. User was anonymous and accused of helping run 15 child abuse sites. They'd disclosed the prompts to an undercover agent. First example of what I'm calling a reverse AI prompt search. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

My latest @forbes.com daily cover profiles startup Leo Cancer Care, which is transforming cancer radiation treatment with a simple idea: having patients sit up instead of lying down. Now hospitals are buying dozens of its chairs. www.forbes.com/sites/amyfel...

this is the dumbest shit i have ever read

NEW: Abu Dhabi’s MGX is suddenly everywhere in Trump’s Washington— 📱 TikTok’s possible new US ownership 💰 A $2B Binance deal using Trump’s stablecoin 💻 A 51% stake in Intel’s Altera unit—and US taxpayers own 9.9% of Intel Me, for @forbes.com 🎁🔗

You could say the devices really sucked. I'm here all week.

🚨NEW🚨 A couple made millions from an anti-choking device that sucked objects out of throats, claiming it was FDA-approved. Turns out the FDA had told them to stop selling it. While a bunch of similar devices were on Amazon up until this week when I flagged them. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

The US seized today $15b from a mega cyber scam operator: www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr... Elliptic says it tracked these funds to the the hack of Chinese mining pool LuBian in December 2020: www.elliptic.co/blog/15-bill... Things... are getting weird

🚨NEW🚨 Feds have been raiding the data of 3D printed gun communities on Facebook and Discord, which have tens of thousands of members. A "slippery slope," says one privacy activist. '3D2A' leaders say neither social media nor the government can "stop the signal." www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

New in The Wiretap newsletter: Turns out this Oracle 0day is really very bad... Also, Amazon appears to be a big fan of AI surveillance again. www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

New from 404 Media: police used a nationwide network of Flock cameras to search for a woman who self-administered an abortion, said it was for her 'safety'. But new docs show they considered charging her with a crime as part of a 'death investigation' into the fetus www.404media.co/police-said-...

Also the search was two weeks after she'd gone missing. The claim they were suddenly concerned about her safety is a stretch.

This may come as a surprise to some people, but reality exists and if you just put your screens away you might find it.

Apple removes ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE official sightings, from the App Store; AG Pam Bondi says the DOJ requested its removal (Ashley Oliver/Fox Business) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

New: Abu Dhabi fund MGX told me it picked USD1—a Trump family–linked stablecoin from World Liberty Financial—to put $2B into Binance, citing its “compliance history.” USD1 had just launched. me, for @forbes.com 🪙🍼🤷 1/

Already understaffed and now further diminished, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is scrambling to investigate a spate of cyber attacks. The lapse of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act has made it even harder.

NEW - CISA insiders tell me about "chaos" in the agency since the shutdown began, exacerbated by major leadership departures and the expiration of the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act. “It's just a matter of time before something major happens,” says one. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Red Hat is investigating a breach impacting as many as 28,000 customers. We got some files related to it, shows impacted customers might include the Navy and Congress. Also Federal Aviation Administration, Bank of America, AT&T. www.404media.co/red-hat-inve...

ICYMI from yesterday. Amazon's previously unknown work boosting AI surveillance for cops (and schools).

Sloppy scary shit enabled by Amazon:

“At conferences and parties with local and federal law enforcement, it’s [Amazon] been promoting its own products and an expanding array of partner surveillance tools that run on its vast cloud infrastructure…”

This post appeared under this Techmeme headline:

Sad news today. Honored to have met her a week ago at #ForbesSustainabilitySummit: “We are the most intellectual species to walk the planet, but we’re not intelligent. If you’re intelligent you don’t destroy your only home.” youtu.be/RCbcF-ePDzA?...

This was all found in hundreds of emails obtained via public records requests for comms between various police departments and Amazon's law enforcement and school safety lead, an ex-cop himself. Yes, Amazon has also been pushing AI surveillance at schools.

🚨NEW🚨 Amazon has been developing drone surveillance tech for American cops, from gun detection to repurposing Twitch's streaming code. It's also pushing all manner of surveillance tools, including Flock car tracking and AI that constantly monitors all prison calls. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

The wheels of justice now turning even slower thanks to the gov shutdown...

My TikTok book is out in stores today! Why should you read it? Because 1 in 5 Americans now get their news from this thing. We should all understand how it works. It was inevitable that strongmen would seek to control a tool this powerful. The book is the story of what happened when they did.

This was all found in hundreds of emails obtained via public records requests for comms between various police departments and Amazon's law enforcement and school safety lead, an ex-cop himself. Yes, Amazon has also been pushing AI surveillance at schools.

🚨NEW🚨 Amazon has been developing drone surveillance tech for American cops, from gun detection to repurposing Twitch's streaming code. It's also pushing all manner of surveillance tools, including Flock car tracking and AI that constantly monitors all prison calls. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...