As it has done repeatedly in the past, the Iranian regime cut off the country’s residents from the global internet during the latest anti-government uprising. But it also cut off access to the country’s intranet, known as the National Information Network, which new research finds is becoming a mechanism of constant and pervasive surveillance that may ultimately be the only way for Iranians to get online.
The last remaining major nuclear weapons treaty between the United States and Russia has just expired. So what will take its place? Of course artificial intelligence. At least, that’s what some researchers believe. Combined with satellite imagery and human reviewers, AI-powered systems could replace individual inspections of countries’ nuclear facilities. Obviously, there are flaws in this plan.
Cryptocurrencies may only be 16 years old, but they’ve already become the currency of choice for the world’s worst. Crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis revealed this week that blockchain-based transactions involving the sale of humans for prostitution and coercion scams have nearly doubled over the past year, with transactions amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Chainalysis researchers say the amount is likely an underestimate.
While the Trump administration says it is reducing its immigration enforcement in Minnesota, the U.S. court system in that state is still being hurt. A WIRED analysis found that court filings to give people a chance to be released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody skyrocketed in January, pushing U.S. lawyers to breaking point and leaving people incarcerated far longer than they should have been released.
Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection has signed a $225,000 deal with Clearview AI that gives Border Patrol intelligence units access to the company’s facial-recognition technology.
and that’s not all. 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.
Ring is once again being pushed back by the public’s dislike of mass surveillance. In an announcement first reported by The Verge, Ring explained that after an “extensive review,” it determined that its plan to integrate its vast network of privately owned surveillance cameras with Flock Safety, which sells license plate reader technology to police departments across the U.S., would “require far more time and resources than anticipated.”
“The integration never launched, so no Ring customer video was ever sent to Flock Safety,” Ring said.
The company canceled its Flock partnership just days after airing an ad featuring its new Search Party feature during the Super Bowl, which it said “uses AI to help families find lost dogs.” Many people reacted to the feature by asking, essentially, “If search teams can find lost dogs, surely they can also be used to hunt people, right?”
Owned by Amazon since 2018, Ring has drawn ire from privacy advocates for years because of its partnerships with police departments and a tool in its Neighbors app that allowed authorities to obtain surveillance footage directly from people who installed Ring cameras, rather than going through any judicially monitored process like obtaining a warrant. The company removed this tool in early 2024. Flock has drawn similar anger because of its Dragnet surveillance network, which, according to 404 Media, is covertly used by ICE as part of its continuing pursuit of removing immigrants from US soil.
Facial recognition has not been having a great moment in American society: Democratic lawmakers have called on ICE to stop using facial recognition on the streets, and ICE itself remains concerned about people potentially using it on its agents.
As stated in an internal Meta memo obtained by the Times, this “dynamic political environment” is why Meta is updating its smart glasses to include a new facial recognition feature that is referred to internally as Name Tag.
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