Congressional Democrats on the Joint Financial Committee launched a report this week pinpointing more than $20.9 billion in consumer losses stemming from id theft that got here out of 4 main breaches of information dealer companies. US senator Maggie Hassan launched the investigation in August after an investigation by The Markup and CalMatters, copublished by WIRED, discovered that some knowledge brokers have been hiding opt-out tools from Google and different serps.
The US Division of Justice’s current launch of three million paperwork associated to convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein included grand jury subpoenas to Google that shed light on how federal investigators interact with tech companies and the way they reply to authorities requests for information.
The Mexican drug cartel CJNG might survive the killing of its longtime chief Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes partially thanks to its prolific use of technologies like drones, social media, and AI. In the meantime, the Mexican Navy introduced on Thursday that it had seized a semi-submersible vessel carrying practically 4 tons of cocaine as a part of a current initiative to deter drug trafficking in the Pacific Ocean. The trouble comes as the US has launched its personal purported marketing campaign in opposition to maritime trafficking through a series of deadly attacks on boats in the Caribbean.
In the meantime, as AI assistant brokers like OpenClaw explode in reputation—and sow chaos round the net—a brand new open supply venture known as IronCurtain is using a unique design to secure and constrain agentic AI before it can go rogue.
And there’s extra. Every week, we spherical up the safety and privateness information we didn’t cowl in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to learn the full tales. And keep secure on the market.
Setting an autonomous internet-enabled robotic free in your home ought to give anybody a second’s pause. When that robotic is a roving vacuum cleaner outfitted with a digicam and microphone that might be hijacked from wherever in the world with nothing greater than its serial quantity, it turns into an precise privateness horror story.
One such robovac proprietor, Sammy Azdoufal, found that absurd safety vulnerability whereas making an attempt an experiment in piloting his DJI Romo robotic vacuum cleaner with a PS5 controller. He discovered that he may as an alternative management 6,700 of the robots in 24 international locations round the world, with full entry to the flooring plans they generated of their house owners’ houses and their video and audio feeds. When The Verge contacted Azdoufal, he was ready to immediately entry a Romo owned by a staffer at the tech information outlet simply by figuring out its 14-digit serial quantity. DJI has now fastened the vulnerability in response to Azdoufal basically live-tweeting his findings. However the story nonetheless raises severe questions on the safety of different audio- or video-enabled internet-of-things devices—not to point out ones able to freely roaming your property.
Whereas the Division of Homeland has been vastly empowered beneath the Trump administration in its mission to deport tens of millions of immigrants, the group inside DHS that serves as the United States’ major cyber defender, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, has been uncared for. Now its performing director, Madhu Gottumukkala, has been changed as CISA seeks to discover new footing.
Even before that information, CyberScoop this week reported on the crises which have plagued the company for the complete first 12 months since Trump’s inauguration: A 3rd of the workers has been laid off and whole divisions of the company have been closed. Nominations for a everlasting director have been blocked in Congress. Its capabilities have withered, and organizations that had sought out CISA for help and partnerships have appeared elsewhere. Gottumukkala has suffered his personal extra private scandals akin to ousting safety personnel after he failed a polygraph take a look at and sharing delicate contracts on ChatGPT. Now Nick Andersen, who has served as CISA’s government director for cybersecurity, will change Gottumukkala at the beleaguered company.
A researcher at King’s School London pitted three in style massive language fashions in opposition to one another in simulated warfare sport eventualities and located that, 95 % of the time, no less than one among the fashions opted to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. The researcher additionally found, when an AI mannequin deployed a tactical nuclear weapon, its AI opponent solely deescalated a fourth of the time. None of the corporations behind the three fashions—OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic—responded to New Scientist’s request for remark.
AI’s position in war-fighting has lurched into the highlight this week. Anthropic and the Division of Struggle are embroiled in a contract dispute over whether or not Anthropic’s AI fashions can be utilized to energy totally autonomous weapons and mass home surveillance. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, wrote in a statement that most of these use instances “can undermine, reasonably than defend, democratic values.” In flip, President Donald Trump has threatened to ban the use of Anthropic products, together with its Claude chatbot, inside the US authorities. In the meantime, tons of of Google and OpenAI workers have signed an open letter asking for his or her bosses to “put apart their variations and stand collectively to proceed to refuse the Division of Struggle’s present calls for for permission to use our fashions for home mass surveillance and autonomously killing individuals with out human oversight.”
A brand new app for Android telephones known as Close by Glasses lets customers scan for good glasses in your neighborhood, revealing the presence of the wearable devices, which are typically indistinguishable from regular glasses and let wearers report individuals with out their data. The app scans for the distinctive Bluetooth signatures that the glasses emit, and sends customers a notification if it detects a close-by supply.
The developer advised 404 Media that he was impressed to construct the app after studying about a number of incidents involving good glasses. Over the summer time, 404 Media reported {that a} Customs and Border Safety agent had donned a pair throughout an immigration raid, and this fall the outlet additionally reported that males have been utilizing good glasses to film massage parlor workers, seemingly with out their data or consent. In February, The New York Occasions reported that one smart-glasses developer, Meta, had plans to combine face recognition into its glasses, spurring recent issues amongst privateness specialists.
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