Makes the privacy panics during the previous Trump administration seem quaint in hindsight
Washington Post reporter covering hacking, disinformation and what’s left of privacy. Author of books on the Cult of the Dead Cow, organized criminal hacking, and Napster. Pulitzer co-finalist 2024. Signal joemenn.01
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Makes the privacy panics during the previous Trump administration seem quaint in hindsight
ICE reactivates contract with phone spyware company Paragon Solutions, which drew criticism this year after Italian activists and journalists were hacked. Free version here: wapo.st/45O1WE8
dad-bod capitalism
This is your regular reminder that if you are developing an app that is supposed to help a vulnerable population, you need to do it WITH CONSIDERABLE INPUT FROM THE PEOPLE YOU ARE TRYING TO PROTECT. micahflee.com/unfortunatel...
Great story by my colleagues on the constant political realignment of Grok, the generative AI chatbot over on the other site. This change to Grok’s answer about the greatest threat to Western civilization is particularly ironic/meta. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/t...
Yes, it was carefully hidden in the New England Journal of Medicine. Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... ) 1/2
I wrote about @iceblock.app, the developer's infuriating HOPE talk, and how it's unfortunately basically activism theater micahflee.com/unfortunatel...
The world's leading genocide scholars' association passed a resolution Sunday saying Israel's actions in Gaza "meet the legal definition of genocide." The vote among the 500-member body passed with 86 percent support: www.reuters.com/world/middle...
He does not say he was not the instigator of the domestic violence. Just an observation.
New: I looked at 90 porn sites to test the new age-verification law rewriting the web. The ones following the rules, and scanning visitors' faces, are crumbling, while the lawbreakers are doubling or tripling their traffic. One of many unintended consequences for an experimental tech wapo.st/47QuttW
Former hacker faces new charges
#NYC baseball coach confronts ICE child predators. “There's only one way to get into the cage, so my whole thing was I can control that. I was in front of the entrance and that's when I just said, you know, I may die here, but they will not take one of these kids." www.wcpo.com/politics/imm...
Does having a former Thiel Foundation CEO running the CDC mean we all get blood boys now?
Today in ffs: www.reuters.com/business/met...
People also complained at first that Egyptian cotton should not be substituted for mashed potatoes. But everybody has a share.
Enough is enough. The health of the country is in danger. Read our resignation letters: insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...
WSJ: ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran’s paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him.... On Aug. 5, Greenwich police discovered that Soelberg killed his mother and himself in the $2.7 million Dutch colonial-style home where they lived together.
DC Friends: Neither CVS nor Walgreens appear to have any of the updated COVID vaccines available in the District yet, but both do in the nearby MD suburbs. Just scheduled mine in Bethesda. (It feels vaguely like arranging a drug deal, which I suppose getting vaccinated technically literally is.)
Three senior CDC leaders who resigned told The Post they were asked to participate in an unscientific vaccine recommendation process that they believe could harm the health of Americans.
I have never seen the whistleblower bar this busy.
🚨 The CDC as we know it is being severely altered tonight. In addition to the CDC director being ousted, the Post is reporting that several senior leaders are leaving as well. Here are from two of the resignations:
Here is a timely recap of ways the Kremlin has spread Nazi and white supremacist ideology to weaken the U.S.
what about bone spurs tho
Prosecutors literally failed to indict a sandwich, but do we know for sure it had ham?
FBI warns Chinese Salt Typhoon telco hacks have spread to 200 U.S. organizations and 80 countries, CISA and others publish guides for hunting and defending. Gift link: wapo.st/4mAaKmK
Trump said the just-ended 11 D.C. days without a murder was the longest streak in years. In fact, it was the longest since…March. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
Heather Honey, a 2020 election denier, has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security. State election officials and voting experts are concerned. @dougbockclark.bsky.social
As the US considers acquiring agentic AI systems to produce AI-generated propaganda campaigns, @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social warned @sambiddle.com of @theintercept.com that these systems are easily compromised, threatening national security rather than protecting it: theintercept.com/2025/08/25/p...
The funny thing is animals actually can suffer and we slaughter them by the billions but sure let’s have an existential panic over whether a software program screams when we turn it off
Do any historians remember if it’s bad when the main opposition party gets decreed an extremist organization?
It's weird how the military keeps going into places that are not politically aligned with Trump.
Pentagon's innovation unit chief resigns in latest shake-up reut.rs/4oT02t6
Journalists everywhere need to stand in solidarity on this killing spree and resulting news blackout. See below in this thread for some actions and stay tuned here https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-hits-gaza-hospital-killing-least-20-people-including-five-journalists-2025-08-25/
I predict Walz and other local Dems are going to start getting more airplay than whomever is leading the minority in Congress, whatsisname or the other one.
Huge congratulations to Covid.
A busy ~ this week in security ~ just went out, with stories on the U.K. dropping its Apple backdoor demand, the first Scattered Spider hacker getting jail time, Workday becomes the latest tech giant to have its Salesforce database stolen, feds seize a massive DDoS-for-hire botnet, and a lot more.
Big news for Hirohito.
Trump's splotchy hand and swollen ankles raise new questions about Joe Biden's health.
If not authoritarian, why authoritarian-shaped?
Wow they took away the cracker AND the barrel.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson warns tech companies that complying with EU or UK digital content laws must not come at the expense of U.S. users’ privacy and security www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...
This is bad, and Hyundai should feel bad. Do not sell security patches. www.theverge.com/news/757205/...
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
If you want us to report that the Eric Adams campaign is clean, it's going to cost you a lot more than this. www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/20/w...
Microsoft is now limiting China-based companies' access to its advanced vulnerability notification program. change comes after last month's SharePoint 0-days 👀 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Harvard dropouts rejoin the front lines of the war on privacy.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
This is a major issue.
Our investigation reveals how the man who started Tea, the ‘women dating safety’ app, tried to hire a female ‘face’ for the company and then hijack her grassroots community. 🔗 www.404media.co/how-teas-fou...
Lol
Spoiler alert: the true grail is a plain wooden cup.
Updating our free story on the UK dropping its demand for an Apple back door to add Vance role and activist comments. wapo.st/4fIbVxX
😕
UK drops backdoor demand to Apple, Gabbard says. Gift link: wapo.st/4fIbVxX
I’m kind of speechless with this one. I can’t imagine the kind of person who continues to make the argument that it doesn’t count as real starvation if the kids were already sick.
Federal agents violently detained a food delivery driver as he emerged from a D.C. coffee shop Saturday morning. The incident captured on video showed the officers throwing him to the ground and beating him before sweeping him away in an unmarked vehicle. wapo.st/45Egtkc
hundreds of national guard troops stationed around union station, the white house and the capital to do...what exactly? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/u...
Oh wait, that was last week.
Spotted by the Dupont Circle Krispy Kreme. #SandwichGuy @katestarbird.bsky.social
Well Putin certainly is an expert in bogus elections.
I’m so old I remembered when Putin was deliberately sending missiles I to maternity hospitals.
An estimated 120,000 Ukrainians who fled to the U.S. will begin losing their two-year, renewable status known as humanitarian parole today on a rolling basis, leaving them vulnerable to possible arrest and deportation. www.wsj.com/us-news/ukra...
Perfectly fine for AI to engage in sensual chats with kids, Meta document says before being exposed.
The stats showing a huge decline in violent crime and homicide in D.C. last year were put out just the other day by the FBI, which is run by Kash Patel.
In other wtf news, Texas AG tries to jail prospective Senate race opponent Beto O’Rourke. www.texastribune.org/2025/08/12/a...
The worst single-day crime spree in modern Washington history, of course, took place on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump issued no order to the National Guard to intervene -- Mike Pence did -- and later pardoned the perpetrators.
The IDF planned a journalist’s killing.
never take freedom of the press or access to news for granted. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/...
Thanks?
Lies kill. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/u...
What the heck is that
🚨 WaPo EXCLUSIVE Hours before Trump removed Billy Long as IRS commissioner, his agency clashed with the White House over sharing immigrants’ tax data.
Judge blocks Beto O’Rourke from financially supporting Texas Democrats who left the state The order came at the request of A.G. Ken Paxton, who O’Rourke accused in a separate lawsuit of going on a “fishing expedition, constitutional rights be damned.” #txlege www.texastribune.org/2025/08/08/b...
Fave shirt so far.
Thankfully this information will not be used for unintended purposes.
Atlanta, Trail of Bits, and Theori have won DARPA's AI Cyber Challenge by developing autonomous vulnerability detection software, agency officials just announced at @defcon.bsky.social. aicyberchallenge.com
Happy #DefCon to all. Turn off Bluetooth and hydrate.
I remember many security conferences where trusted guy friends would run interference to protect me from creepy dudes. Don’t be a creepy dude. Don’t tolerate your friends being creepy dudes. Don’t tolerate strangers being creepy dudes. 9/
Stanford University’s student-run newspaper sued two senior Trump administration officials Wednesday, challenging Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s ability to revoke student visas and deem an individual deportable based on the content of their speech.
Good Reuters story on the fight between X and India’s massive censorship apparatus. This follows the Post’s Pulitzer-finalist series on India’s strong-arming US tech giants.
Oh my god.
The Era of A.I. Propaganda Has Arrived, and America Must Act www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/o...
"We are watching a new generation of reactionaries, neo-fascists, would-be authoritarians, and crack-pot science-conspiracy theorists who have grown up in the most peaceful, prosperous, and healthy age in human history undo some of the most magnanimous things humans have ever done for one another."
In Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, there is a framed photo showing Epstein with Donald Trump and his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss. The photo was cropped to exclude Ghislaine Maxwell. Framed photos of Steve Bannon were kept in at least two rooms in the mansion. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/u...
Plato’s cave, 2025 edition
Remember when people who followed the law weren’t getting thrown in jail? I sure do!
Not now, radioactive wasps.
Meta fired its fact-checkers, citing concerns of liberal bias, and replaced them with a version of X's "Community Notes." How's that going? Well, my coworker @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social proposed 65 fact-checks debunking false posts... and only 3 got approved. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
NEW: Google announced its AI-powered bug hunter Big Sleep found its first 20 vulnerabilities, mostly in open source projects. A company executive called it "a new frontier in automated vulnerability discovery." But it's important to note that there was still a human involved, as Google told us.
Institutions are like muscles, not light switches. Especially institutions that build stuff rather than destroy or hollow out. If you cut a knife into muscle, and then starve its owner, any recovery will be slow and hard.
New: A few weeks ago, when my father-in-law died, the funeral home asked if we wanted to use AI to write his obituary. So I dug into it and found that it's the biggest new trend in "death care." Tens of thousands of AI obits have been made already. Often the families don't even know wapo.st/4okuxIg
When Microsoft revealed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers had exploited vulnerabilities in SharePoint, it did not disclose that China-based engineers handle support for the widely used collaboration software. By @reneedudley.bsky.social
Raise your hand if, like me, you saw Limp Bizkit and Cypress Hill on the Napster tour.
The best way to find good music across genres is analyzing proximity to Bootsy Collins.
Jose Pagliery 