And phew boy it gets a lot worse with this excellent video showing how Flock's exposed systems put people at risk (h/t @jsrailton.bsky.social): youtu.be/vU1-uiUlHTo?...

And as if on cue, here's another exhibit about the same type of security lapses, this time in Uzbekistan techcrunch.com/2025/12/23/i...

Surveillance systems have always presented counter-intelligence and public safety risks -- from backdoors to poorly regulated wares of mercenary spyware firms Here's another example thanks to @404media.co @jasonkoebler.bsky.social who discovered a Flock camera system exposed to the internet 👇

The Globe and Mail’s Christmas painting: Home on the Range, by William Kurelek. www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/arti... via @theglobeandmail.com

What is your favorite Christmas family tradition? 🎄#CalvinandHobbes

Instacart is using algorithmic pricing to charge you 20% more for your Wheat Thins.

People must understand that don't need to save the planet. It's perfectly capable of saving itself, and will do so by killing ut when we become too much of a nuisance. Extreme weather, higher temperatures, less arable land, water shortages? The planet don't care. It's just about saving ourselves.

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-...

Q&A with journalist Jacob Silverman on his new book Gilded Rage, the radical politics of certain tech elites, AI's impact on Silicon Valley politics, and more (Calder McHugh/Politico) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

my new pal here says it's gonna be the best halloween portland has ever seen

bubble dance party

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 this is a very, very desperate move - a very silly app of generative AI slop that will be incredibly expensive for OpenAI to run, and on top of it, they're requiring rights holders to *opt out* once they see violations. You can't do it in advance. They're washed, and trying everything to survive.

🤷🏿‍♂️

CRA addresses long call centre wait times by hiring CRA scammers

If you don't vaccinate your kids and they end up disabled or disfigured, I hope they disown you as the abusive parent you are. To be clear, they should disown you for risking their safety like that at all.

That's not a denial.

So, an app was created with the express purpose of anonymously doxxing critics of Charlie Kirk, including their names, locations, and employers. Guess what? Yup! The app leaked the personal details of its *own* users. #irony san.com/cc/app-for-o...

Still digesting this joint finding of federal and provincial privacy regulators into TikTok's compliance with Canadian privacy law. I've found myself shaking my head a few times while going through it. www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actio...

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

So Google, selling a pay-per-use video generation tool, turned a blind eye as users created videos against their terms of service, that were subsequently uploaded to its video platform against its terms of service, getting them ad revenue?

I’ve advised Helsinki, Finland a few times in the past, and among the many conversations I’ve had with the Finns, we’ve talked about what it’s like to live right next to an aggressive dictatorship like Russia. I’m not the first one to say it, but Canada needs to be vigorously learning from Finland.

Many mainstream news outlets don't post much on Bluesky. The Associated Press does. I find the vast majority of AP's reporting to be more accurate for breaking news than other outlets. And, their long-term investigations are often paradigm-changing. Bonus: they're nonprofit. Follow: @apnews.com

Looking up something in the Boston census of 1900, and these are just other families on the same pages. 2 children surviving out of 14 1 child surviving out of 5 0 children surviving out of 10 3 children surviving out of 4

Always a sign that your business is thriving…

womp womp.

Ontario’s #Privacy Commissioner finds a university responsible for on-campus vending machines collecting biometrics without the university's knowledge. But they're still on the hook. New on my YouTube channel: youtu.be/EEmNO3swj2Y

Fundamentally, tech bros don't believe other people are people.

Today on Incognito Mode, @couts.bsky.social reveals how ICE's surveillance tactics reach beyond immigrants- impacting American citizens and people with no criminal record. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QUG...

Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture. www.wired.com/story/resear...

BREAKING: ICE Adds Random Person to Group Chat, Exposes Details of Manhunt in Real-Time 🔗 www.404media.co/ice-adds-ran...

"It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual." Meta removed that language from its internal guidelines after I raised it. AI experts worry financial incentives will blur the line between human relationships and bot engagement. www.reuters.com/investigates...

I’m grateful to Bue Wongbandue’s family for telling his story to me. It took courage, and they didn’t want attention. www.reuters.com/investigates...

Police seeking suspect who assaulted 87-year-old for cutting him off while driving

National Public Data, a website infamous for its role in leaking millions of Social Security numbers last year, has returned with the ability to look up anyone's personal information.

This great piece by @davekarpf.bsky.social confirms my realisation (thnx to @bildoperationen.bsky.social ‘s Platform Realism article) that Sianne Ngai’s Theory of the Gimmick (2020) is the most useful tool for understanding the way we (apparently have to) live now. open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

🇺🇸 NO WARRANT, NO BOARDING. Greyhound now refuses immigration checks on buses and in nonpublic areas without a warrant. Thank them, then tag two carriers you use and ask for the same rule. Simple, public, repeatable. Turn one company’s stand into the standard.

Re-up for the weekend crowd

NEW: I spoke to @rondeibert.bsky.social ahead of his keynote at Black Hat today. Ron travelled to Vegas to warn the cybersec industry that perhaps it’s time to get political. “They should be aware of what’s going on and hopefully they can not contribute to it, if not help reverse it,” he said.

"If the U.S. can't get its greenhouse emissions under control, they need to face real consequences" said the rest of the world.

Thorough reporting that links back to so much other thorough 404 media reporting with clear through lines. (It’s also sad for the world that they have so much of this sort of thing to link back to.) You should officially subscribe if you don’t already.

honestly, this is par for the course. if you’re an authoritarian security service with multiple lines of access — legitimate or otherwise — to your country’s ISPs and/or technology like SORM or the Great Firewall, techniques like this are day-one frolics.

CBP are the "Reno 911" of the law enforcement world...