Anthropic is still in negotiations with the Trump administration, with the White House’s apparent concerns about the security of the new public model cloud Fable 5 resulting in Anthropic removing the product from the market entirely. But security experts say AI models with advanced capabilities for discovering and exploiting software vulnerabilities — in other words, creating potentially dangerous hacking tools — will soon be ubiquitous around the world.
A leak this week exposed the identities of members of Peter Thiel’s secret ‘Dialogue’ society, revealing more than 200 prominent names registered for the retreat, which includes panels on the creation of a cult, sex and preparing for World War Three. WIRED also revealed that the society has a secret way of ranking its members.
The United Kingdom will soon begin scanning the faces of asylum seekers as part of age checks, despite evidence that such age assessment and verification tools are seriously flawed and can make mistakes with life-altering consequences.
In one of the more advanced uses of surveillance technology, Knicks fans around the world got a chance to watch Thursday’s ticker tape parade in New York City on traffic surveillance cameras thanks to artist Maury Coleman’s livestream.
There is so much more. Each week, we round up security and privacy news that we haven’t covered in depth ourselves. Click on titles to read full stories. And stay safe there.
Hacking and extortion group ShinyHunters has been loudly announcing a number of high-profile victims in recent months, including education tech firm Instructor, causing disruption to thousands of schools in the process; photography firm Kodak; and a leading European human rights organization. This week it also published data allegedly stolen from Madison Square Garden, 404 Media reports.
The published data, which reportedly includes millions of records in 45 gigabyte files, includes potentially personal information about customers and references to Knicks players and coaches. This data was published shortly after the Knicks won their first NBA championship since 1973. A sample of the data reviewed by 404 Media included a file that contained the names of “talent”, including Knicks members.
WIRED recently reported on the widespread use of surveillance technologies, including facial-recognition systems, at Madison Square Garden. The stolen data seen by 404 Media purportedly contains an email from a man complaining about facial-recognition technology. MSG did not respond to the publication’s request for comment, and after the story broke, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed over the alleged data breach.
At least three bars in San Francisco’s Castro District, a famous LGBTQ area of the city, are using face scanners at their entrances to collect detailed information about customers. According to Gazetteer SF, the bars are using technology from PatronScan, an ID verification company, to collect facial images, names and genders of people who visited bars using the technology. As well as data collection, if bar staff see customers fighting, engaging in theft, or other negative behavior, they can log it into the system. The next time the person is at a bar, he or she can be identified using facial recognition. Recorded information can be shared as part of a “security network” between other companies using the technology, creating a broader surveillance network.
For months, governments and companies in Europe have been abandoning American technology, citing surveillance and security risks. This week France’s domestic spy agency, the Direction Generale de la Sécurité Intérieure, announced it would stop using Palantir’s data and AI tools in the coming years and replace them with software from French firm ChapsVision. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said, “We must use our own AI models.” “We cannot rely on equipment developed by foreign powers. France must have its own equipment.”
While France has been particularly active in trying to remove American technology from its public institutions – going as far as creating its own open-source counterparts to Zoom and Microsoft Office – it is not the first European intelligence agency to reject Palantir for ChapVision. Last month, Germany’s intelligence agency BfV had said that it would use French technology instead.
Apple’s ‘Hide My Email’ tool allows you to generate a random email address that you can use to privately sign up to new websites and apps, avoiding the need to hand over personal information to more websites. However, the company is ready to change the way these email addresses are created. Currently, they all use the @icloud.com domain. Moving forward, as TechCrunch reported this week, Apple plans to use this domain: @private.icloud.com. This is a not-so-subtle change that will make it easier for companies to detect when people are using a privacy-protecting service and demand they sign-up with a different email address.
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