NCGOP spokesman appears to be threatening @propublica.org's @dougbockclark.bsky.social with retaliation by the Trump administration for reporting on a state Supreme Court justice www.propublica.org/article/paul...

Tim Robinson w/ the v honest portrayal of online investigations in the most recent episode of The Chair Company

DHS says our new piece is "dishonest, slanted, and fundamentally inaccurate" but won't say why. Here's the story where we show with evidence that DHS spliced together clips spanning years and multiple locations to create its own reality. Gift link wapo.st/4nuDGwf

This is an especially worrying statement when facial recognition can be inaccurate, biased, and generally make mistakes. Basing whether someone should be in the US or not, and ignoring physical media like a birth certificate, is ripe for disaster bsky.app/profile/jose...

We first revealed Mobile Fortify in June. It takes the CBP system usually used when people enter or exit the US, and puts it into an app to be used on American streets www.404media.co/ice-is-using...

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

So this story is super duper interesting for a whole ton of reasons, but one big one is its a very rare glimpse into the private valuation of high-end exploits held by major defense contractors bsky.app/profile/lega...

Reminds me of this

Read through. The regime breaking laws and ignoring the Constitution AGAIN❗️ Colorado law states that this is NOT permitted. cdor.colorado.gov/control-devi...

“officials created a secret warning system: the companies must send signals hidden in payments to the Israeli government, tipping it off when it has disclosed Israeli data to foreign courts or investigators”

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-...

meta talks about its recording light and yet the vast majority of viral videos we see that were filmed with meta ai glasses seem as though the subject is completely unaware of what's happening or otherwise feels like they can't say anything www.404media.co/metas-ray-ba...

"One agent appeared to grab a woman’s phone as she recorded him. When she tried to retrieve her phone, he grabbed her by the hair, pulled her across the road and pushed her to the ground." Happening in tiny Durango, CO today. www.durangoherald.com/articles/con...

Six hours later: yes

We identified another Russian vessel that disabled its location data while smuggling grain from occupied Ukraine to Yemen. Learn how we used photographs, satellite imagery, and ship-tracking data, to uncover its covert voyage. www.youtube.com/shorts/OrTUa...

A new version of @bsky.app is rolling out, and we're proud to be contributors! Now, if you share a CourtListener PDF link, it will magically have metadata and a preview thumbnail. Here's a random example: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

"ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok are serving users propaganda from Russian-backed media when asked about the invasion of Ukraine, new research finds." www.wired.com/story/chatbo...

Ravin Academy, the private school that recruits and trains hackers for Iran's MOIS intelligence service , has been hacked and its data leaked www.iranintl.com/202510230171 blog.narimangharib.com/posts/2025%2... Public searchable database: ravin-academy.com

Lots of folks sending me interesting case studies on NASA night lights data after I published this tutorial. Amazing to see so many applications used in Mali, North Korea, South China Sea and more. Check out some case studies and how to use it here 👇 youtu.be/x9JR7myjivs?...

Two weeks ago, we at WIRED published a video showing how a hacked casino card shuffling machine can be used for undetectable cheating in poker. Now it turns out the mob and a couple of NBA stars were already (allegedly) using exactly this trick to make millions. www.wired.com/story/how-ha...

The best evidence that it's a Nazi dog whistle from DHS? People who post overt Nazi propaganda understand the video as a Nazi dog whistle.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that it is aware the Department of Justice investigation into Trenchant's former general manager Peter "Doogie" Williams. In early September, it told me it was not aware of the case.

You know things are utterly FUBAR in the US when @bellingcat.com is doing satellite imagery analysis of the White House.

Google said Nah best to not download our competitor's browser

34 people killed in 50 days. Their guilt or innocence unknown, for an alleged crime that doesn't carry a death sentence. That's a lot of death. adamisacson.com/boat-strikes/

Pretty clever. As Kim noted, the attack still relied on the user to follow additional instructions

Those annoying Cloudflare Captchas made everyone so used to clicking "I am not a robot" that Russian hackers used this to hack victims. Victims received PDF with a link that, if clicked, produced a Cloudflare Captcha. If user checked "I am not a robot" box and followed instructions, they got hacked

Charli xcx had a similar take: "If enough people say that it is true on the internet, it becomes the truth" bsky.app/profile/nath...

Awesome long read on the Kinahans referencing our work @conplnk.bsky.social @beaudonelly.bsky.social @johnmooneyirl.bsky.social “But in 2024, Bellingcat, the open-source-investigations team, published a colorful story about how Kinahan, Sr., had left hundreds of traces of himself online”

ICYMI (story broke late Friday evening): A judge has ordered NSO Group to stop targeting WhatsApp users. At the same time the judge reduced the damages the spyware maker had to pay to WhatsApp from $167 million to $4M, becasue there was no evidence NSO’s behavior was “particularly egregious."

At 404 Media we're starting to experiment with some longer video stuff. Very excited about what we may do now. It turns out when you own the company you can just do stuff. Here's a short doc on the man keeping the lost art of neon glowing alive: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSNf...

EXCLUSIVE: One Saturday afternoon in October, my phone lit up with a notification. I glanced down at the message. “Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began. So began my text exchange with the woman who is prosecuting the president's perceived political enemies. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/anna...

Charli on truth on the internet, fun interview by @vanityfair.com www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/st...

EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat. Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇

DomainTools Investigations worked with OSINT analysts & journalists to help uncover the connections between websites involved in the harassment of Ukrainian personnel and their families, and the people and infrastructure involved. Technical writeup below! www.domaintools.com/resources/bl...

On a Saturday night I stumbled across something on the internet that made me feel like ****** my pants. A giant dataset of real surveillance operations targeting 1000s of people across nearly every country. Unraveling it and the mysterious company behind it has consumed 1.5 years of my life

The Wired piece by @agreenberg.bsky.social and @mattburgess1.bsky.social on this just dropped, and the research by Heninger et al is stunning: “sensitive [sat] traffic is being broadcast unencrypted, including critical infrastructure, corp, gov't, and…private citizens’ voice calls & SMS". 🧵

Whistling when ICE is about to kidnap someone for no reason is incredibly effective. They know what they are doing is wrong and will scatter in the wind when too many witnesses gather.

NSO to be acquired by U.S. investors, ending Israeli control of Pegasus maker | Ctech https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1jgvmitgx

The TikTok outlines that a specific goal of these animations is to multiply their reach by cultivating secondary coverage And indeed, dozens of major outlets like BBC, CNN and Sky News have aired them, in part or in full, often without context

Many of these “illustrations” aren’t based on verified intelligence at all. Our analysis of 43 official IDF videos found recycled 3D environments, spatial inaccuracies, and assets lifted from unrelated artists and institutions.

NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites The style is now unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war

Can LLMs identify where a photo was taken? And how accurate are they? We put some AI models to the test... www.youtube.com/shorts/tUBm4...

Federal officer blasts chemical spray into vocal but nonviolent Portland protester, video shows The interaction illustrates how federal law enforcement officers do use aggressive tactics against protesters who yell and needle officers but don’t appear to present clear physical threats.

so the US government just forced a tech company to delete an app it doesn’t like, which is totally normal stuff www.404media.co/iceblock-own...

Our researchers have noticed today that NASA FIRMS, one of the main free and available open source sites for monitoring fires around the world has a new notice on it stating that NASA is no longer updating the site due to a lack in federal funding. firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/

We're happy to see that this important project covering the plight of journalists in Gaza has been recognised with an award. You can read Bellingcat's contribution here, which includes explorable 3D models of Jabalia Refugee Camp and Al-Shati Refugee Camp. www.bellingcat.com/news/2025/03...

Earlier today, an Iraqi court sentenced a man in Baghdad (remember how often that place used to be in the news?) to life in prison for human trafficking after he recruited Iraqis to fight for Russia against Ukraine. apnews.com/article/iraq...

Russia's Matryoshka disinformation campaign is now creating new content formats for Bellingcat. This is both the worst and best thing they've done, imo.