Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages

The US Treasury Department was initially alone in providing the court a timeline of the messages that it was able to retrieve. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had received a preservation memo on March 26, his acting general counsel said, as well as advice regarding his fundamental duty to preserve records.Continue Reading

Microsoft’s Recall AI Tool Is Making an Unwelcome Return

Security and privacy advocates are girding themselves for another uphill battle against Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store everything a user does every three seconds. When Recall was introduced in May 2024, security practitioners roundly castigated it for creating a goldContinue Reading

Spyware Maker NSO Group Is Paving a Path Back Into Trump’s America

Other NSO-connected figures also have close Trump ties: Bryan Lanza, a partner at Mercury Public Affairs, which consulted for the company from 2020 to 2021, is a veteran Trump ally; Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, was paid nearly $100,000 by NSO Group’s parent firms, according to the TheContinue Reading

Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Getting Audited

Notes from a March 18 meeting, marked “Internal/Confidential,” show that a DOL lawyer presented colleagues with an overview of DOL’s interactions with DOGE. “So far,” the notes read, “they do not have write access. They have asked; we’ve held them at bay. We’ve tried to get them to tell usContinue Reading

What Is the Meta AI Button in WhatsApp, and How Do I Remove It?

If you’ve noticed a new light-blue circle appear in your WhatsApp chats recently and wondered what it was, Meta has recently expanded its implementation of Meta AI into new markets—and now it’s in yours. While it began rolling out in the US and Canada in 2023, more recently it hasContinue Reading

Cybersecurity Professor Mysteriously Disappears as FBI Raids His Homes

A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer, Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why. Xiaofeng Wang hasContinue Reading

Democratic Senators Call for Privacy Act Reform in Response to DOGE Takeover

The arbitrary ways in which the government applies the “routine use” exemption have been drawing criticism since at least 1977, when a blue-ribbon commission established by Congress reported that federal law enforcement agencies were creating “broad-worded routine uses,” while other agencies were engaged in “quid pro quo” arrangements—crafting their ownContinue Reading