from the lies,-damned-lies,-and-AI dept

To quote the opening line from the court opinion that this post is based upon, “Millions of American teenagers have sex.” This post is has nothing to do with whether that sort of thing is good or bad, natural or otherwise, nor the moral implications of it all. Whatever you think about that opening line, I think we can at least agree that teenagers engaging in sexual activity that results in unwanted pregnancies is something we collectively would want to avoid. The government, and HHS specifically, has offered up grants for programs that seek to reduce unwanted pregnancies in teenagers and, as the court notes, those programs appear to have worked.

Alarmed by the country’s rising teenage birth rate, Congress funded grants through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (“TPP”) Program to support local initiatives proven to reduce teen pregnancy, as well as promising approaches that might also prove effective after further observation and study. Congress intended for these programs to employ a range of strategies, from encouragement of abstinence and delayed sexual activity to education about contraceptives. The effort seems to be working: The teen pregnancy rate has plummeted since Congress began funding the grants in 2010.

Good news all around, it would seem. But since the Trump administration never seems to miss an opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, HHS has decided to reinterpret, or you could say simply make up, what Congress intended to do with the money appropriated for these grants. Specifically, HHS has decided that this money will only be used for grants to fund programs that focus solely on abstinence and whatever the fuck “body literacy” is. The general idea is that any education or proliferation of tried and true forms of contraception are now verboten.

Several state counties, a nonprofit focusing on sex education, and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed suit to get the grant solicitation paperwork restored to its original state. As the lawsuit notes, neither HHS nor the Executive Branch are allowed to simply rewrite the mandates given alongside money appropriated by Congress. That is law-making by the Executive Branch by any plain reading.

And, to make matters worse, it appears that HHS wrote the grant criteria citing some studies that flatly don’t exist and citing others that don’t say what HHS says they say. The court agreed and issued a preliminary injunction putting a hold on the grant changes for now.

In his opinion granting a preliminary injunction as the lawsuit continues, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper called the changes “likely arbitrary and capricious” and said the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence for its policy. He wrote that grant solicitations for the program“(remarkably) reference public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited — a hallmark of AI-generated citations.” In seven cited articles, two appeared to be entirely made up and three others did not exist in the journals they were attributed to, according to Cooper, a judge who was appointed to the federal court in Washington, D.C., in 2014.

This has become a pattern for HHS under RFK Jr. In June of last year, Kennedy issued a report to Congress to support the changes his hand-picked CDC team made to COVID vaccine recommendations. That report included several studies that were unpublished, or that indicated within the study itself that it shouldn’t be cited because more research needed to be done, or which said something completely different than what HHS claimed they said. In May of last year, HHS released a “MAHA Report” on American health that once again claimed certain studies said something other than what they actually said, but which also included cited studies that could not be found upon inspection. The wide speculation was that the report was generated in part using AI that was going through one of its hallucination episodes. One wonders if the AI was doing drugs off a toilet seat with Kennedy himself.

In a real, functioning government, this sort of embarrassment would result in action by somebody, somewhere, somehow. Sadly, we don’t have that. We have a bunch of con-artists cosplaying as government officials instead. But as Kennedy stacks up the losses when it comes to his work and credibility, the calls for his resignation or firing are only getting louder.

Filed Under: fake studies, health & human services, hhs, rfk jr., studies, teen pregnancy

from the when-even-cops-think-you’re-shady dept

You have to know you’re fucking up when your largest and best-paying customer base is increasingly noping out of contract renewals. That more than anything is probably what provoked ALPR maker Flock Safety to start implementing a few guardrails for use.

It seemingly had no problem with being the target of negative press for most of the past couple of years. Every time the press (or politicians) came gunning for it, it would either claim the reporting was misleading or suggest those criticizing it were opposed to public safety.

For the first time ever, Flock has finally added some stuff to its products that’s meant to address months of reporting on abusive use by cops and abusive actions by the company itself. Flock’s tech has aided and abetted acts of stalking by police officers all over the nation, with new incidents seemingly reported daily. To that end, Flock has added some new default settings that limit retention periods, demand more info from officers performing searches, and flag potential misuse for review by police departments using its tech.

But it’s too little and far too late. “Too little” because while these new restrictions are on by default, they don’t seem to affect any systems already in use and can easily be switched off by law enforcement agencies. While you’d think more cops shops would welcome additional reporting that might flag misuse of ALPR databases, most seem perfectly content to allow local journalists to operate as unofficial, unpaid interns who will do the work Internal Affairs doesn’t seem interested in doing itself.

And it really doesn’t matter whether or not Flock’s CEO believes the company is the “first” to do anything about police misconduct. The rest of the country doesn’t believe him. Nor does it trust Flock. Flock is getting kicked to the curb with escalating frequency, as Cyrus Farivar reports for Ars Technica.

New data compiled by a Bay Area anti-surveillance advocacy group shows that not only are American localities dropping cameras from Flock Safety, but they are doing it at an accelerating rate.

Communities from Lansing, Michigan, to Pflugerville, Texas, are ending their relationship with Flock, largely over concerns regarding out-of-control surveillance, unwanted data sharing, high expenses, and reports of police abusing the tool.

Secure Justice, an Oakland-based advocacy group, has recorded 214 cities and counties that have dropped Flock since 2021. Of those, 90 ended their relationship with Flock in August 2026 alone, a fourfold increase compared to the previous month.

If you like your charts with hockey sticks, Secure Justice has one for you — one that has already been updated twice since Ars Technica first published its piece on August 28:

Here’s a closer look at the updated chart, which tallies another 10 Flock drops since August 26, bringing the new total to 96 in August alone.

This trend will continue. Flock doesn’t seem capable — much less willing — to provide ALPR tech that can be trusted by the public or even the law enforcement agencies utilizing it.

If you want more anecdotal evidence of Flock’s apparent desire to engage in self-destructive actions, just ask a cop.

In a public letter, Bellingham (MA) Police Chief Kenneth Fitzgerald stated that last year, Flock “tried to modify some of the terms of our service and access, while the contract was still in place.” He said this “raised concerns for me about our relationship with the company.”

Then, during a recent criminal investigation, Fitzgerald was further incensed when the department learned a feature called Flock “Free Form” was available through the cameras used by the department — an “Al-powered tool that can search video information using plain-language searches,” the chief said.

He said he was unaware of the AI features on the cameras and does not believe Flock “clearly explained or identified” them to the department.

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“Those features go beyond what most people would think of as a traditional license plate reader,” Fitzgerald said. “That concerned me because I had previously told the public, based on our understanding of the system, that our Flock technology was a license plate reader only.”

Looks like hubris to me — the thing that seems to plague nearly every tech company that secures a dominant position in the market. Flock assumes all cops will want their surveillance tech to be increasingly pervasive and invasive. So, it implements new features without giving anyone a head’s up and then plays the victim when legislators, the general public, and even cops themselves decide they no longer want Flock in their cities.

And that makes Belligham only one of four PDs in Massachusetts that have chosen to terminate Flock contracts since the beginning of this month. Flock is losing ground everywhere in the nation and due to its willingness to ignore everything up to this point, it’s not going to be able to prevent the bleeding from continuing indefinitely.

And while this is certainly good news for Americans’ privacy, rest assured there are plenty of smaller companies that aren’t nearly as nationally infamous waiting to fill the void Flock leaves behind.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, alprs, license plate readers, police misconduct, rights violations, stalking

Companies: flock, flock safety

ON-PREM

2016 and 2019 installations must meet the October 2025 baseline to reach cloud-hosted inboxes

Microsoft is upping the ante on Exchange Server security, warning that outdated on-premises systems will soon be blocked from sending email to Exchange Online.

From the second week of September, Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 machines that send email to Exchange Online through an inbound connector of the OnPremises type must be patched to the final public update baseline released in October 2025, according to Microsoft.

“This update level was released almost a year ago,” Microsoft stated, “and all organizations should have updated to it.”

Microsoft has been advancing its “oldest acceptable version” for some time, but this change takes the baseline to the final public update for Exchange 2016 and 2019. Any subsequent increase would leave only customers enrolled in the Extended Security Update (ESU) program or those who have migrated to Exchange Server Subscription Edition able to meet it.

Organizations may retain on-premises Exchange servers to support hybrid deployments, applications, or other systems that depend on them for email.

According to Microsoft, throttling and blocking apply only to servers sending email to Exchange Online through an inbound OnPremises connector. Other delivery methods are unaffected, and the policy does not necessarily cover “all servers in your organization.”

The company added: “This might change in the future,” which doesn’t sound sinister at all.

Administrators must balance the need to apply security patches promptly against the risk that an update introduces problems of its own – something Microsoft has, to put it delicately, caused in the past. 

Some administrators responding to the announcement were more than a little perturbed, although Microsoft has applied throttling and blocking to “significantly out of date” Exchange Server installations for several years.

The announcement gives administrators advance notice of a change Microsoft says would have happened anyway. “With or without this announcement, the change would have been made (just as it was made in the past, without any announcement),” explained Microsoft Principal Project Manager Nino Bilic.

“The bottom line is that admins really need to understand that updating Exchange should be done on time.” ®

With three straight wins, Les Kiss’ Australia tenure is off to the perfect start, and victory against Argentina in Mendoza would be another huge step forward. Across three previous multi-game series, the Wallabies have never secured a sweep on Argentine soil, and to do so now they’ll have to break a telling pattern.

Argentina and Australia have alternated wins in their past six meetings, a run of results that illustrates both the Pumas’ improvements and the Wallabies’ inconsistencies.

The Sony Bravia 5 is a mini-LED TV with crisp images, strong contrast and great gaming features. It occupies that level in Sony’s TV range where the brand has historically struggled to maintain its high standards. The Bravia 5, though, bucks this trend in pretty spectacular fashion.

The Sony Bravia 5 retains both mini-LED lighting and local dimming, for starters, as well as an 120Hz panel to keep gamers happy. Sony says the Bravia 5 LCD panels are still made to the brand’s Master Backlight Drive standard too, and they’re equipped with a full up-to-date version of the Google TV smart system.

PUBLIC SECTOR

DoD controls on mobile ad identifiers haven’t stopped military location data turning up for sale

The US military’s effort to prevent troops from being tracked by adversaries through purchased location data hasn’t worked as well as anticipated, and lawmakers want to know why.

US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) on Friday asked for an investigation by the Defense Department Inspector General into policies that have only partially stanched the flow of location data that allows military personnel to be tracked and targeted.

In May, Wyden, Harrigan, and a bipartisan group of 12 other members of Congress released details about how commercially purchased location data – often captured by mobile apps and advertising SDKs – can be used to identify where US military personnel gather and to target those locations. They noted that the DoD has been aware of this threat since at least 2016.

The lawmakers urged Defense Department CIO Kirsten A. Davies to take steps to mitigate this risk, including turning off advertising identifiers on DoD smartphones and issuing a policy requiring the disabling of advertising identifiers on all personal devices brought into DoD facilities or overseas.

Since then, various military branches have blocked advertising identifiers on government-issued devices. According to the letter, “several DoD components – the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command – confirm that they now disable advertising IDs on government-issued devices to protect their personnel from such threats.”

But that hasn’t entirely eliminated the availability of location data tied to US military personnel. Citing ongoing reports, Wyden and Harrigan want to know why location data pinpointing the movement of troops continues to be available.

“We commend these service branches for implementing this cybersecurity defensive best practice on government devices,” they said in their letter [PDF] to the DoD IG. “However, recent reports regarding the continued availability of commercial location data originating from DoD facilities raise troubling questions.”

The two lawmakers speculate about the reason DoD policies have fallen short. One possibility, they say, is that some parts of the DoD turned off their advertising identifiers only as recently as July. Another, they say, is that disabling ad identifiers may no longer be sufficient to limit the availability of location data. And the third is that the location data is coming entirely from the personal devices of DoD personnel and contractors.

Zach Edwards, staff threat researcher at Infoblox, told The Register in an email that it’s good to hear all the military branches have disabled advertising IDs on their phones because it will make members of the military and their families safer, especially those serving in combat zones overseas.

“This change will essentially ensure that military device location data isn’t being included in bulk data sales being done by numerous vendors,” he said. “It’s truly unfortunate that Google and Apple have not effectively reformed their mobile advertising IDs, even after it’s been well documented that it’s the primary piece of data being used by data brokers to connect up people’s mobile phone location data for bulk sales.”

Mobile advertising identifiers (MAIDs), Edwards explained, serve as join keys for tracking people – they can link different datasets.

“So one core benefit is that military data won’t be available for sale via data brokers, who will sell to literally anyone with a pulse and a credit card,” said Edwards. “But the other slightly less obvious benefit is that this MAID was also being broadcast to all ad systems participating in the auctions.”

Edwards said that while states like California, Vermont, Texas, and Oregon have data broker registries, he’s unaware of any Russian or Chinese ad tech vendors who have registered. And those companies, he said, partner with Western publishers and mobile apps to collect data anyway.

“I think it’s important to appreciate that these ad tech companies in Russia and China have also likely been getting MAID data from the programmatic ad tech auctions from members of the military, and companies in those countries have an obligation to share it with the state without any ability to appeal or provide any external notice,” he said. ®

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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Filed Under: daily deal