Wanna know if your school uses Flock? Through records requests and audit logs, FOIAball found over 75 universities that have surveillance cameras installed on campus. There's almost certainly many, many more. www.foiaball.com/p/flock-came...

I love this idea. I keep wondering what the "solve" is for the huge problem of how a customer can expect to pay for independent media, which is often great but not a substitute for a fully actual staffed newsroom. Plus ofc most people have limited budgets. Really hope this takes off and grows.

My earliest memory of really cracking up at the Onion is this. 1999!!!!

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar has accused the ruling government of using the Candiru spyware against his TISZA party x.com/magyarpeterM...

Trying to do more of these ad-maker convos as the cycle goes on. Lots of interesting new ideas being tried; this one, Magnus told me, came from seeing and hearing Dem voters say "fuck Trump" and thinking "well if that's what people are saying..."

Can't stress enough that there is no one doing it like @kattenbarge.bsky.social!!! THE thought leader on gender, power, and media, I could never put to words how much I learn from her every day/learned from her on this particular story, if you don't subscribe to Spitfire what are you doing

Well holy shit. The Onion was just named one of the 50 most innovative companies in the world by FastCompany. We're coming for you AI perverts!!!

People will react to news of major security vulns with "The only way to stay secure is to live as a hermit and throw your devices into the sea" and then keep chattering on the internet in a deeply unhermitlike manner while not throwing their devices into the sea.

You really gotta watch this space. I might be wrong, but feels like we're watching a wave starting to crest. Could see mass takeover of old/unpatched iPhones in a way we've never seen before.

Is there a pejorative word for a particularly bad/unfounded conspiracy theory? The vast majority of conspiracy theories are effectively obviously false to me, but some (i.e a lot around Epstein) clearly have some factual basis and it seems wrong to lump them into the same bucket.

For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

True story: I was into karate as a kid and took lessons from an acolyte/former stuntman of Chuck Norris. I am a karate grandson of Chuck Norris.

Remarkable story from Denmark's nat'l broadcaster. "When Danish soldiers were flown to Greenland in January...they brought explosives so they could destroy, among other things, the runways in Nuuk & Kangerlussuaq [to] prevent US mil aircraft from landing" www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...

This is notable and maybe helps distill some fear that Iran is gonna hack us all in our beds, but CISA is also down to just a couple employees in a trench coat, furloughed, has lost tons of partnerships, etc so it's not clear they have much authority to say this anymore.

If AI has impacted your job or the way you work, share your story at [email protected]. I'll protect your identity as I would any source—stories can be shared anonymously. Next, I'm hoping to hear from healthcare workers: nurses, doctors, therapists, hospital workers, techs, admin, and beyond

Iran is currently enduring its longest-ever internet shutdown, which began shortly after the Feb-28 airstrikes. My latest post covers all of 2026, outages within the whitelisted traffic, and other observations from our data. #DigitalBlackOutIran‌ www.kentik.com/blog/interne...

Tulsi Gabbard under oath: "I was at Fulton County, Sir, at the request of the president." Feb. 5: President Trump: "She went in at Pam’s insistence.” Feb. 4: NBC's Tom Llamas: "Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?" President Trump: "I don’t know."

Cyber is a great tool to aid initial military strikes, i.e cut the lights a few minutes before or hack internet-connected cameras to for real-time targeting. And it's useful to harass a country you're not in a hot war with. But once you're actually dropping bombs, it's almost completely useless.

Funny, Iran's own spokesperson and Foreign Minister didn't use the cyberwarfare justification. They clearly said internet goes to those who can amplify the regime's voice. That's not a defensive posture. That's content policy.

And none of us should forced to change our passwords to SamePasswordWithNumberIncreasedByOne every three months.

As we enter our third week of war with a government that has repeatedly tried to assassinate enemies on US soil, I am heartened to learn that the US counterterrorism director was bad at his job but has quit.

Pretty amusing: the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti simply omitted the best documentary *feature* film category from its Oscars roundup, apparently in order to avoid reporting that the award went to "Mr. Nobody Against Putin."

Re this story from last week, it strikes me as weird that the cyber industry is not freaking out more about how they did this. Seems they just got into a Microsoft account and remote-wiped most of a multinational company's devices. Pretty easy and effective! Yet it's been pretty quiet.

What a paragraph. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I love this joke. You love this joke. We all do. It is hilarious. Buuuuuut...you know we're about to discuss Roman calendars, right? And that this joke isn't quite right? SO! Let's talk about Roman calendars and why the 'number months' (Sept-Dec) do not match their numbers (7-10)! 1/

Deep dive into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch by @jonschuppe.bsky.social and me: www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news... At least 10 women and girls say they were groomed, and that’s just what’s publicly documented.

Maybe they should have thought about that before laying me off in 2019.

Might have to turn in my journo card for this one, but it rubs me wrong for Reuters to reveal Banksy's identity.

Could not cosign this more strongly. Putting $100 on your team on vacation in a janky casino or dog track is a great American experience; a world of addictives app putting every other American man under 25 into deep, lifelong debt is bad.

Lost in translation: How Russia’s new elite hit squad was compromised by an idiotic lapse in tradecraft @christogrozev.bsky.social, @dobrokhotov.bsky.social and @michaeldweiss.bsky.social detail how hubris and Google Translate exposed Russia's most secretive assassination unit, Center 795.

Here's DHS's statement on CISA's behalf on the apparent Iran hack on medical tech company Stryker. In addition to the now normal but still weird partisan jabs in these statements, I can definitely assure you CISA does not launch investigations into all cyber incidents. They're barely staffed!

I take my toddler on the NYC subway all the time. He loves riding the train and looking out the window.

This is the best lede I've seen in a tech story in...years? There should be an award just for ledes.

NEW: Outdated intelligence likely led to a deadly U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 170 people, sources say.

Almost every company of a certain size employs people to send emails like this and I would reckon there are more people who do this for a living than actual journalists.

It's very clear ABC has a LE or adjacent source and they're gonna publish any of these hastily written fusion center reports that relate to Iran. This story has the same bylines! Published two days ago. There's reporting value when you get these docs but their worries are often not realistic.

As the U.S. military expands its use of AI tools to pinpoint targets for airstrikes in Iran, members of Congress are calling for guardrails and greater oversight of the technology’s use in war.

Excellent reporting here by @raphae.li about a hacker who breached an FBI server, apparently without knowing it was the FBI, and accessed the Epstein files. The hacker allegedly threatened to report the server's owner TO THE FBI bc of disgust over CSAM on the server, www.reuters.com/world/us/for...

On Feb-4, @Starlink disabled terminals in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine that weren't on Ukrainian Ministry of Defense's approved list. We saw a 75% drop in Starlink traffic to Ukraine as a result. 🤯 www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

New: In a pretty straightforward calculation I'm surprised I hadn't seen done before, researchers at @consumerfed.bsky.social looked at how much people report in the scam losses to FBI + the most reliable study on how underreported scams go, and calculated we're losing $119 billion a year at least.

The Singularity is upon us: Apple's AI summarized a text message that read "I'm still down to clown if you are" to.... "clown event still possible."

Scoop: DHS ousted multiple privacy officers at CBP after they questioned orders to purposely mislabel records about government surveillance to prevent their release under FOIA.

A key component of cyber media-savvy is asking: Does the person making a claim have the visibility to know this? And that should fall on the reporter, not the audience. Like Microsoft sees cybers because they run Windows, Google because everybody uses them, US agencies because they're everywhere.

BREAKING: A device ignited outside Zohran Mamdani's mayoral residence yesterday during an anti-Islam protest and counterprotest was confirmed to be an improvised explosive, New York City police say.

My only immediate take at Noem being fired is that it really feels like DHS secretary is a scapegoat position for any administration regardless of party.

NEW: President Trump has grown frustrated with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and has begun to consider possible replacements, lawmakers and people familiar with the discussions tell NBC News.

This is from the March 2025 Director of National Intelligence Annual Threat Assessment: "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003." www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/d...

If you're following the situation in Iran, this one is of interest to you. We can prove how the regime in Iran is using facial recognition software to surveil its citizens. (Gift link) www.spiegel.de/ausland/iran...

A Iran-tied hacktivist group claims to have hacked Saudi Aramco. 12 years ago Iran wiped that company, one of the most significant cyberattacks in history. I didn't think this looked to be similar, but I asked Aramco anyway. This is their response.

The Shamwow Guy, Vince Shlomi, says he is suing the Texas GOP for “rigging” his Texas House race by not including the word “Shamwow” on ballots