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Tag: Surveillance

  • Our Favorite Outdoor Security Cams for Your Home or Business

    Our Favorite Outdoor Security Cams for Your Home or Business

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    We have tested several other outdoor security cameras. These are the ones we like that just missed out on a place above.

    Safemo Set P1 (2-Pack) for $350: I love the idea of a simple kit like this, where you just plug the hub in, connect it to your router, and install the pre-paired cameras. Each has an optional solar panel to keep the battery charged. The Safemo app is well-designed, video goes up to 4K, and this entirely local system boasts 32 GB of storage (expandable up to 4 TB). It even has locally processed person, vehicle, pet, and package detection. The person detection was mostly accurate (it occasionally flagged my cat), and the vehicle detection flagged my robot lawnmower (close enough) and an inflatable donut that blew across the backyard, but false positives were rare. What prevents me from wholeheartedly recommending this impressive debut is the lack of 2FA (Safemo says it is coming) and connectivity issues where one of the cameras would occasionally disconnect from the hub and be inaccessible in the app. This always righted itself without me moving anything, but worryingly, it happened a few times. If you plan to up the resolution to 4K from the default SD, you will need fast internet, especially to view the live feed, which I found was choppy and pixelated at 4K, though recorded videos were sharp and detailed.

    X-Sense Smart Security Camera for $50: This affordable camera comes with a solar panel to keep the battery topped off, a slot for a microSD card (up to 128 GB), and records 1080p video. There is also a spotlight and two-way audio, but, as the price suggests, the quality is limited. The 60-day cloud storage, AI recognition, smart notifications, and activity zones require a subscription starting from $5 per month. The live feed was quick to load, but some alerts were slow to come through, and it occasionally missed motion that other cameras picked up. That said, for this price and in the right spot, this camera could be worth a look.

    Imilab EC6 Dual 2K WiFi Plug-in Spotlight Camera for $180: With dual 2K lenses, this security camera can cover a fixed spot and simultaneously track a subject. The bottom camera offers pan/tilt controls. It works via the Xiaomi Home app, making it an easier sell if you already have a Xiaomi phone or other gadgets from the Chinese brand. You can insert a microSD card for local storage or subscribe for cloud storage. The person detection and tracking worked well in my tests. The video was mostly crisp, but movement was sometimes a bit jerky, and fast-moving subjects can get blurry. It does have WDR but could use HDR to prevent bright areas from blowing out.

    Arlo Essential Wireless Security Camera for $70: This is the most affordable way to try Arlo’s wares, and it’s a solid security camera. Setup is a breeze, the 1080p footage is clear, and the rich notifications are the best, but you need an Arlo Secure subscription ($8 per month for one camera, $13 for unlimited). Compared to our top pick, the Essential has a narrower field of view and lacks HDR, so it loses details in bright and dark areas. I also tried the Essential XL ($100), which is the same camera with a much larger battery (4x longer lasting).

    AlfredCam Plus for $50: The AlfredCamera app allows you to turn your old smartphones into security cameras, but the company also has its own line of budget cameras. The AlfredCam Plus has an IP65 rating, can record video at up to 2K, and comes with a 64-GB microSD card. You get a 9.8-foot cable with it, but you will need a power adapter. The ad-supported free version offers seven days of cloud storage for video clips. Sadly, you need a subscription at $6 a month or $30 a year to unlock 14-day cloud storage, smart features (including person detection, scheduling, and zones), and better quality video for the live feed and recordings.

    Ezviz H3C for $60: I had issues setting this wired camera up because it can only connect to 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi, but once up and running, it proved a decent performer. The Ezviz app has 2FA and allows fingerprint unlock, which is handy. There’s also onboard AI for person detection, a spotlight, black-and-white night vision, and two-way audio, though it’s laggy and poor quality. The video quality is decent at up to 2K, and the live feed is fast to load. All in all, it’s not bad for the money. I also tested the Ezviz EB8 4G (£299), which is quite similar to the H8 Pro we recommend above, except it can connect to 4G mobile networks—this means it doesn’t require Wi-Fi, though you will need a SIM card and cell service plan.

    Imou Knight Spotlight Camera for $180: A smart design and solid feature set make this an attractive security camera for the right spot. It can record at up to 4K with HDR, has a 600-lumen spotlight around the lens, and can take microSD cards up to 256 GB (sold separately) to record locally. The app offers a wide range of features, including detection zones, cross-line alerts, and human or pet detection, though the AI sometimes gets it wrong. Sadly, the low frame rate (15 fps) too often results in blurry footage, but this came close to snagging a spot above.

    Reolink Go PT Ultra for $220: If you need a wireless security camera that can connect to cellular 3G or 4G LTE networks, you could do worse than this offering from Reolink. It’s a pan-and-tilt camera that can record up to 4K video on a local microSD card (sold separately), or you can subscribe for cloud storage. It has a wee spotlight and decent color night vision, and it comes with a solar panel to keep the battery topped up. The detection is reliable but doesn’t always categorize subjects correctly. Loading time and lag will depend on the strength of the signal. Just make sure you check carrier compatibility and get a SIM card before you buy.

    Swann AllSecure650 4 Camera Kit for $700: This kit includes four wireless, battery-powered cameras and a network video recorder (NVR) that can plug into a TV or monitor via HDMI. The cameras can record up to 2K, and footage is crisp and detailed enough to zoom in on, though there is a mild fish-eye effect. The night vision is reasonably good, but the two-way audio lags and sounds distorted. I like the option to view all camera feeds simultaneously, the backup battery in the NVR makes it a cinch to swap batteries when a camera is running low, and everything is local with no need for a subscription. Unfortunately, the mobile app is poor, camera feeds sometimes take several seconds to load, and there doesn’t seem to be any 2FA. The NVR interface is also clunky to navigate with the provided mouse.

    Arlo Pro 4 for $140: This camera was our top pick, and it is still an excellent buy that is widely available. Its successor, the Pro 5, has slightly better battery life and enhanced color night vision, but there isn’t a huge difference. This camera provides crisp, clear footage; responds swiftly; and has an excellent detection and notification system, but you must also factor in the cost of an Arlo subscription starting from $8 per month for a single camera.

    Reolink Argus 3 Pro for $70: There’s a lot to like with this security camera, not least the affordable price. It offers 2K video, local or cloud storage, two-way audio, a siren, and person recognition. The live feed loads fast, and it’s cheap to buy a solar panel accessory for power. The app is a little confusing, but Reolink recently added 2FA. I also tested the Reolink Argus PT with solar panel ($104), which is a solid pan-and-tilt camera with an otherwise similar feature set. Both Reolink cameras also support dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz).

    Eve Outdoor Cam for $242: This stylish floodlight camera must be wired in, and installation is tricky (you may want an electrician). It can replace an outdoor light to give you motion-activated light (up to 1,500 lumens), 1080p video (157-degree field of view), and two-way audio. But as a HomeKit camera, you will need an Apple HomeKit hub (Apple TV, HomePod, or iPad) and an iCloud+ storage plan. Sadly, the video and sound quality are average; it only works on 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi, and there’s no Android support.

    Toucan Wireless Outdoor Camera for $100: Toucan’s wireless camera resembles our top pick from Arlo with a smart magnetic mount and easy installation. The 1080p video is good in ideal conditions but struggles with mixed lighting (no HDR). The two-way audio is passable. The app works well and loads the live feed quite quickly, but this is cloud-only, which means you need to subscribe (from $3 per month) if you want tagged events, more than the last 24 hours recorded, or to download more than five videos per month.

    Toucan Security Light Camera for $120: You can simply plug this camera into an outlet, and it comes with an 8-meter waterproof cable. It has a motion-activated light (1,200 lumens), records 1080p video, and supports two-way audio. I found the footage quite detailed, but it struggled with direct sunlight. You can record locally on a microSD card (sold separately), and you get 24 hours of free cloud storage, but it has limitations. Plans start from $3 per month. Even with motion detection set to the lowest sensitivity, this camera triggered too often during testing, and there’s no way to filter for people, so I got frequent false positives (blowing leaves, moths, and birds all triggered alerts).

    Blurams Outdoor Lite 3 for $50: This is a feature-packed security camera for the price, with support for pan, tilt, and zoom functionality; spotlights; siren; motion tracking; continuous recording; and two-way audio. You can store footage locally on a microSD card (sold separately) or subscribe to a cloud plan. Video quality is reasonable, but the app is very glitchy and loading the live feed was inconsistent (sometimes it just buffered indefinitely).

    SimpliSafe Wireless Outdoor Security Camera for $150: A solid set of features, crisp 1080p video, and support for HDR sounds tempting, but you need a Simplisafe security system (9/10, WIRED recommends) and monitoring plan to make this camera worthwhile, making it too expensive for what you get. (The Arlo Pro 4 offers better-quality video and more features.) It may be a useful add-on for existing SimpliSafe customers, though.

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    Simon Hill, Adrienne So

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  • Stadiums Are Embracing Face Recognition. Privacy Advocates Say They Should Stick to Sports

    Stadiums Are Embracing Face Recognition. Privacy Advocates Say They Should Stick to Sports

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    Thousands of people lined up outside Citi Field in Queens, New York, on Wednesday to watch the Mets face off with the Orioles. But outside the ticketing booth, a handful of protesters handed out flyers. They were there to protest a recent Major League Baseball program, one that’s increasingly common in professional sports: using facial recognition on fans.

    Facial recognition companies and their customers argue that these systems save time, and therefore money, by shortening lines at stadium entrances. However, skeptics argue that the surveillance tools are never totally secure, make it easier for police to get information about fans, and fuel “mission creep” where surveillance technology becomes more common or even required.

    The MLB’s facial recognition program, dubbed Go-Ahead Entry, lets participating fans go on a separate security line, usually shorter than the other queues. Fans download the MLB Ballpark app, submit a selfie, and have their face matched at an in-person camera kiosk at a stadium’s entrance.

    Six MLB teams are participating in Go-Ahead Entry, including the Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros, Kansas City Royals, San Francisco Giants, and Washington Nationals.

    Some MLB teams, including the Mets, have their own facial recognition programs for express entry. The Mets have been using the facial recognition company Wicket for its Mets Entry Express program since 2021. The Cleveland Guardians, similarly, have been using technology from the company Clear at its ballpark, Progressive Field, since 2019.

    Neither the Mets, MLB, nor Wicket immediately responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.

    The National Football League has also started using Wicket facial recognition for express entry. NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in an X post that the league-wide program, at least currently, is only available to “team/game-day personnel, vendors, and media”—not fans. The Cleveland Browns and Tennessee Titans, however, do have facial recognition entry systems that fans can use. (The news of the NFL’s expanded use of face recognition still caused confusion on Facebook and X, where some people thought facial recognition would be required at the stadiums for all 32 NFL teams.)

    At Citi Field on Wednesday, the Mets Entry Express Line was used scarcely, perhaps five people every five minutes or so. There was never a line. The main security lines, though longer in comparison, took only about five minutes.

    The protesters at Citi Field represented some of the 11 organizations that consigned an open letter arguing against the use of facial recognition systems at stadiums, including Fight for the Future, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Amnesty International. The letter argues that “not only does facial recognition pose unprecedented threats to people’s privacy and safety, it’s also completely unnecessary.” The activists outside Citi Field on Wednesday passed out flyers to passersby with information about Go-Ahead Entry, declaring in all caps, “WE CALL FOUL ON FACIAL RECOGNITION AT SPORTING EVENTS.” This wasn’t their first protest on the issue; organizers with Fight for the Future also staged a protest last year at Citizens Bank Park, home of the Phillies, to agitate against its introduction of facial recognition.

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    Caroline Haskins

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  • Detroit’s flawed police commission is failing to hold cops accountable

    Detroit’s flawed police commission is failing to hold cops accountable

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    Fifty years after Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young created a civilian oversight board to monitor the city’s police department, the commission has drifted far from its original mission, with members showing more allegiance to the administration than to public oversight.

    The shift has raised concerns about the board’s effectiveness and integrity at a time when police oversight is so important.

    The Detroit Board of Police Commissioners is supposed to have seven elected members and four mayoral appointees. The idea is to ensure a majority of the commissioners are accountable to the public and to minimize the role that appointees play since the mayor also appoints the police chief.

    But Mayor Mike Duggan recently appointed a replacement for one of the elected members who resigned, and some of the other elected commissioners either fail to show up to meetings, giving the appointees a majority, or fall in line with the police administration.

    Now, the mayor’s appointees are running the commission, holding the chair and vice chair positions.

    “Police oversight is dead in America’s Blackest and poorest city,” Commissioner Willie Burton, who was elected, tells Metro Times. “The mayor’s appointees are running the board. If you’re appointed, you’re beholden to the mayor and the police chief. If you’re elected, you’re beholden to the people who elected you.”

    Despite being established as an independent oversight body, the commission is largely functioning as a rubber stamp for the Detroit Police Department. Instead of scrutinizing controversial decisions and asking tough questions, the commission’s members often offer congratulatory comments to police leaders and fail to hold the department accountable.

    Critics argue that this lack of rigorous oversight undermines the commission’s role and erodes public trust in the accountability meant to ensure fair and just policing.

    “The commission goes along with what the chief says,” Reginald Crawford, a former Detroit police commissioner, tells Metro Times. “They’re like cheerleaders for the police department. That’s the kind of commission you have.”

    At a time when officer misconduct is a persistent problem and the use of controversial police surveillance technology is at an all-time high, even leading to false arrests, the commission rarely challenges the department.

    The commission’s role is significant. It’s tasked with establishing departmental policies, investigating citizen complaints, and holding abusive officers accountable. But some elected commissioners aren’t showing up to meetings, and those who do often bicker over minor issues instead of making difficult decisions.

    What’s worse, some elected commissioners say, is that Duggan is meeting privately with some of his appointees and diluting the power of the independent oversight board.

    “The problem is the mayor himself,” Commissioner Ricardo Moore, who was elected and often challenges the status quo, says. “He meets secretly with commissioners and staff. Whatever he wants them to do, he’s going to suggest it.”

    Duggan’s spokesman John Roach denied the claim that appointed commissioners are acting as rubber stamps, calling the assertion “fiction.”

    “A cursory review of the Board of Police Commissioners’ votes over the last year will show that the mayor’s appointees rarely vote as a block on controversial issues,” Roach says. “Their votes diverge just as frequently as the votes of elected commissioners.”

    When the police commission had the opportunity to address public concerns about heavy-handed responses to protests and surveillance overreach with facial recognition technology, the camera network Project Greenlight, license plate readers, and the gunshot detection system Shot Spotter, the appointed members largely aligned with the mayor and police chief.

    But so did some of the elected members.

    Commissioners Willie Bell, a former Detroit cop, and Lisa Carter, a retired Wayne County Sheriff’s lieutenant, often fall in line with the administration and rarely show a desire to act as overseers. They’ve also missed a lot of meetings.

    Perhaps not surprisingly, groups connected to Duggan have supported Bell and Carter in their elections. A dark money group linked to Duggan, Our Neighborhoods First, which is run by current and former mayoral appointees and was incorporated by a lawyer for Duggan’s campaign, sent out mailers urging residents to vote for Bell and Carter in 2021.

    A political action committee called Powering the Economy, which is funded primarily by the Detroit Regional Chamber and received donations from Duggan, contributed financially to the campaigns of two police commissioners who weren’t speaking out against facial recognition technology in 2017 and 2018.

    In simple terms, Moore says, Duggan is a “puppet master.”

    “You don’t see him, but he’s always right there in the mix,” Moore says.

    Moore says some police commissioners also accept gifts and favors, which creates conflicts of interest. For example, he says, some of them receive “baseball tickets, get taken out to dinner, and ask the chief for favors.”

    Burton says citizen complaints against police are stacking up, but no one is joining him in raising the issue.

    “Police oversight is dead until we get rid of these rubber stamps and call on a charter amendment to ensure every commissioner is elected,” Burton says. “Residents want justice and accountability.”

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    In April, a former top executive with the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against because of her gender and that “a clique” of commissioners “sabotaged” her attempts to resolve a backlog of hundreds of citizen complaints against cops. The lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court alleges Melanie White was unlawfully fired from her job as executive manager after she was tasked with eliminating a “massive citizen complaint backlog.”

    Since then, the backlog of citizen complaints has more than doubled, Burton says.

    At an important commission meeting on June 13, when members were tasked with appointing the new leaders, only three elected members attended the meeting — Burton, Moore, and Cedrick Banks. The other four attendees were mayoral appointees. With a majority at the meeting, the mayoral appointees selected two of their own to serve as chair and vice chair.

    Darryl Woods, who spent 29 years in prison after being convicted of murder for his role in a 1990 drug-related robbery, was selected to serve as the chair, even though he had just been appointed by Duggan last year. He also has been criticized for falsely suggesting he was exonerated.

    The new vice chair is Tamara Liberty Smith, who was appointed by Duggan last year to replace elected commissioner Bryan Ferguson and resigned after getting arrested for allegedly getting a blow job from a sex worker in his truck on the city’s northwest side.

    Burton tried to nominate an elected commissioner to serve in the leadership roles, but he was rebuffed.

    For the position of vice chair, Burton nominated Cedrick Banks, who was elected to the commission. But Banks declined

    “I’m not getting into that,” Banks responded at the meeting.

    Then Burton tried to nominate Linda Bernard, but she didn’t show up to the meeting.

    “The whole thing is sad,” Burton said at the meeting.

    Under the city’s charter, an election must be held by November for Ferguson’s seat. But it’s unclear if that’s going to happen. To find out, Metro Times called the Detroit Bureau of Elections, which referred us to the Wayne County Bureau of Elections, which in turn directed us to the Detroit Bureau of Elections, which then insisted we talk to the Wayne County Bureau of Elections. We gave up.

    Some of the appointed commissioners have also tried to shut down elected commissioners. In April, Woods urged the commission to censor Burton because “his posture and his demeanor is negative.” At the time, Burton was trying to pass a resolution that supported Palestinians and admonished the kinds of surveillance technology used by both Detroit and Israel.

    Woods’s motions went nowhere because the board no longer had a quorum after too many commissioners left the meeting early.

    At other times, mayoral appointees shut off Burton’s microphone.

    “You have people in these positions who don’t understand their roles,” Burton says. “They arrived on this board and are silencing me and the 100,000 people who live in my district. They are putting a rope around democracy.”

    Activists and others say one solution is making the entire board elected.

    “I was elected, not selected,” Crawford says. “That’s what democracy is about. The charter should be revised so that all the commissioners are elected. It should come from the people.”

    Burton agrees.

    “Police oversight is dead until we get rid of these rubber stamps and call on a charter amendment to ensure every commissioner is elected,” Burton says. “Residents want justice and accountability. The only way they’re going to get that is to vote on elected leadership.”

    Even the commission’s website lacks basic information. For example, the newest available minutes for public meetings is from 2020.

    Burton says residents must demand accountability.

    “Go to city hall, put your fist in the air, and say, ‘You’re not going to take it no more,’” Burton says, his voice rising. “No justice, no peace. Stand up to injustice. Stand up to officer misconduct. That’s what democracy is about.”

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    Steve Neavling

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  • Transgender girl murdered in western Pa.; man charged in homicide

    Transgender girl murdered in western Pa.; man charged in homicide

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    SHARON, Pa. — A western Pennsylvania man is charged with homicide following the death and dismemberment of a transgender teenager.

    Dashawn Dale Depree Watkins, 29, of Sharon, Pa., was charged Wednesday with murder in the first degree, aggravated assault, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence following the death of Pauly Likens.

    Pamela Ladner, director of the Shenango Valley LGBTQIA+ Alliance in Sharon said she has spoken to Likens’ mother, Jennifer, and she confirmed that Likens identified as a transgender girl.

    Likens was murdered June 23 near a canoe launch in downtown Sharon, police said.

    Mercer County District Attorney Peter C. Acker said he does not plan to charge Watkins with a hate crime. Acker said this is one of the worst homicide cases he’s ever seen in his 46 years as a lawyer. 

    “I’ve gotten several questions about whether or not we’re investigating this as a hate crime,” Acker said. “The answer is no because the defendant is an admitted homosexual and the victim was transitioning.”

    Likens was reported missing June 25. Her father said she planned to spend the night at a friend’s house on June 22. About 2:30 a.m. on June 23, Likens posted an image on Snapchat of a dark road and said she was out for a late-night walk to clear her mind and she was not heard from after that.

    On June 25, Hermitage police responded to a report of dismembered human remains at Shenango River Lake. Over the next week, more remains were recovered around the lake.

    Mercer County Coroner John A. Libonati confirmed the remains to be Likens. Upon completion of an autopsy for some of the recovered remains the coroner’s office ruled Likens’ cause of death to be sharp force trauma to the head with the manner of death as homicide. Acker said authorities have not yet all of Likens’ remains.

    Surveillance video from June 23 in the area of the canoe launch shows a vehicle entering and exiting the canoe launch when Likens’ phone last connected with cellular towers in the area. Video images later show the vehicle turning toward the apartment building where Watkins lives. After the vehicle leaves the canoe launch, the victim is not seen leaving the area, police said.

    Police also watched video surveillance from inside Watkins’ apartment complex in the early morning of June 23. The surveillance shows Watkins carrying a large duffle bag out of the apartment just before Likens’ last known phone activity. The video shows Watkins taking this duffle bag with him to make initial contact with Likens on June 23. At that time, the bag appeared to be empty.

    Watkins returns 20 to 25 minutes later carrying the duffle bag, which then appears to be heavy and awkward, into the first floor of the apartment building, police said.

    State troopers detained Watkins on July 2. According to the criminal complaint, Watkins told police he used the Grindr app to arrange a meet-up with someone.

    In the interview, Watkins said he did not previously know the person he met. Watkins explained the bag by telling police that he took a large bag from his car which had been there from a vacation from about a month ago.

    Police executed search warrants on the entryway of 335 Sterling Ave. and of Watkins’ apartment. Preliminary tests indicated that there was blood in the hallway and inside the apartment at multiple locations including the bathroom and under the bathroom flooring. A receipt from June 23 indicated that Watkins purchased a saw with exchangeable blades, which was found in the apartment. 

    A preliminary hearing is scheduled for July 25.

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    By MELISSA KLARIC Sharon Herald Staff Writer

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  • The Tech Crash Course That Trains US Diplomats to Spot Threats

    The Tech Crash Course That Trains US Diplomats to Spot Threats

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    By the time the Senate unanimously confirmed Nate Fick to be America’s cyber ambassador in September 2022, tech diplomacy headaches were impossible to ignore, and Fick quickly tasked his team with creating a modern training program and embedding it in the FSI’s regular curriculum.

    “He understood that we needed to do more and better in terms of preparing our people in the field,” Hop says.

    The training program fit neatly into secretary of state Antony Blinken’s vision of an American diplomatic corps fully versed in modern challenges and nimble enough to confront them. “Elevating our tech diplomacy” is one of Blinken’s “core priorities,” Fick says.

    As they developed a curriculum, Fick and his aides had several big goals for the new training program.

    The first priority was to make sure diplomats understood what was at stake as the US and its rivals compete for global preeminence on tech issues. “Authoritarian states and other actors have used cyber and digital tools to threaten national security, international peace and security, economic prosperity, [and] the exercise of human rights,” says Kathryn Fitrell, a senior cyber policy adviser at State who helps run the course.

    Equally critical was preparing diplomats to promote the US tech agenda from their embassies and provide detailed reports back to Washington on how their host governments were approaching these issues.

    “It’s important to us that tech expertise [in] the department not sit at headquarters alone,” Fick says, “but instead that we have people everywhere—at all our posts around the world, where the real work gets done—who are equipped with the tools that they need to make decisions with a fair degree of autonomy.”

    Foreign Service officers are America’s eyes and ears on the ground in foreign countries, studying the landscape and alerting their bosses back home to risks and opportunities. They are also the US government’s most direct and regular interlocutors with representatives of other nations, forming personal bonds with local officials that can sometimes make the difference between unity and discord.

    When these diplomats need to discuss the US tech agenda, they can’t just read monotonously off a piece of paper. They need to actually understand the positions they’re presenting and be prepared to answer questions about them.

    “You can’t be calling back to someone in Washington every time there’s a cyber question,” says Sherman.

    But some issues will still require help from experts at headquarters, so Fick and his team also wanted to use the course to deepen their ties with diplomats and give them friendly points of contact at the cyber bureau. “We want to be able to support officers in the field as they confront these issues,” says Melanie Kaplan, a member of Fick’s team who took the class and now helps run it.

    Inside the Classroom

    After months of research, planning, and scheduling, Fick’s team launched the Cyberspace and Digital Policy Tradecraft course at the Foreign Service Institute with a test run in November 2022. Since then, FSI has taught the class six more times—once in London for European diplomats, once in Morocco for diplomats in the Middle East and Africa, and four times in Arlington—and trained 180 diplomats.

    The program begins with four hours of “pre-work” to prepare students for the lessons ahead. Students must document that they’ve completed the pre-work—which includes experimenting with generative AI—before taking the class. “That has really put us light-years ahead in ensuring that no one is lost on day one,” Hop says.

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    Eric Geller

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  • War Crime Prosecutions Enter a New Digital Age

    War Crime Prosecutions Enter a New Digital Age

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    A custom platform developed by SITU Research aided the International Criminal Court’s prosecution in a war crimes trial for the first time. It could change how justice is enacted on an international scale.

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    Vittoria Elliott

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  • The Mystery of AI Gunshot-Detection Accuracy Is Finally Unraveling

    The Mystery of AI Gunshot-Detection Accuracy Is Finally Unraveling

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    This week, New York City’s comptroller published a similar audit of the city’s ShotSpotter system showing that only 13 percent of the alerts the system generated over an eight-month period could be confirmed as gunfire. The auditors noted that while the NYPD has the information necessary to publish data about ShotSpotter’s accuracy, it does not do so. They described the department’s accountability measures as “inadequate” and “not sufficient to demonstrate the effectiveness of the tool.”

    Champaign and Chicago have since canceled their contracts with Flock Safety and SoundThinking, respectively.

    “Raven is over 90 percent accurate at detecting gunshots with around the same accuracy percentage at detecting fireworks,” Josh Thomas, Flock Safety senior vice president of policy and communications, tells WIRED in a statement. “And critically, Raven alerts officers to gun violence incidents they never would have been aware of. In the San Jose report, for example, of the 111 true positive gunshot alerts, SJPD states that only 6 percent were called in to 911.”

    Eric Piza, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, has conducted some of the most thorough studies available on gunshot detection systems. In a recent study of shooting incidents in Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri, his team’s analysis showed that police responded faster to shooting incidents, stopped their vehicles closer to the scene of shootings, and collected more ballistic evidence when responding to automated gunshot alerts compared to 911 calls. However, there was no reduction in gun-related crimes, and police were no more likely to solve gun crimes in areas with gunshot sensors than in areas without them. That study only examined confirmed shootings; it did not include false-positive incidents where the systems incorrectly identified gunfire.

    In another study in Kansas City, Piza found that shots-fired reports in areas with gunshot sensors were 15 percent more likely to be classified as unfounded compared to shots-fired reports in areas without the systems, where police would have relied on calls to 911 and other reporting methods.

    “If you look at the different goals of the system, research shows that [gunshot detection technology] typically tends to result in quicker police response times,” Piza says. “But research consistently has shown that gun violence victimization doesn’t reduce after gunshot detection technology has been introduced.”

    The New York City comptroller recommended the NYPD not renew its current $22 million contract with SoundThinking without first conducting a more thorough performance evaluation. In its response to the audit, the NYPD wrote that “non-renewal of ShotSpotter services may endanger the public.”

    In its report, San Jose’s Digital Privacy Office recommended that the police department continue looking for ways to improve accuracy if it intends to keep using the Raven system.

    Pointing to the report’s finding that only 6 percent of the confirmed gunshots detected by the system were reported to police via 911 calls or other means, police spokesperson Sergeant Jorge Garibay tells WIRED the SJPD will continue to use the technology. “The system is still proving useful in providing supplementary evidence for various violent gun crimes,” he says. “The hope is to solve more crime and increase apprehension efforts desirably leading to a reduction in gun violence.”

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    Todd Feathers

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  • Salem State gets $624K grant for cybersecurity training center

    Salem State gets $624K grant for cybersecurity training center

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    SALEM — Salem State University announced this week that it received a $624,437 grant to establish and operate a cybersecurity training facility on campus.

    The grant is part of the state’s Security Operations Center (SOC) Cyber Range Initiative, a program managed by Mass Tech’s MassCyberCenter that aims to help build a diverse generation of cybersecurity professionals through education, training and workforce development, according to a news release.

    “Massachusetts is committed to leading in cybersecurity and ensuring that all communities have the skills, resources and capacity to protect their businesses and residents,” Gov. Maura Healey said. “Congratulations to Salem State on this award and their efforts to grow the cyber workforce.”

    Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll said how proud she is, “as Salem’s former mayor and a Salem State graduate … of the work the university is doing to teach students critical cybersecurity skills.

    “Cybersecurity affects every part of our community whether you are a small business, elementary school or local government office. The more cybersecurity professionals we have, the more we can ensure our communities are protected online,” Driscoll said.

    “Salem State is grateful to the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the MassCyberCenter for selecting us for this important partnership,” Salem State President John Keenan said. “This type of investment and professional relationships are a win-win for everyone involved.

    “Like our nursing and occupational therapy simulation labs, the CyberRange will imitate real-world problems for students to solve in real time,” he said.

    The funding is expected “to promote cybersecurity while also ensuring Massachusetts stays competitive in modern economic development,” said Yvonne Hao, state secretary of economic development and board chair of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

    Salem State will join Bridgewater State University, Springfield Technical Community College and MassBay Community College as a critical part of a statewide network of cybersecurity educators, MassCyberCenter Director John Petrozzelli said.

    The award will support capital expenditures to construct the CyberRange and expenditures for the first year of operations.

    The center is expected to promote the Massachusetts cybersecurity ecosystem by working to build a strong cyber talent pipeline and to strengthen the defense of local communities.

    More information is available online at https://masscybercenter.org.

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  • Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram | TechCrunch

    Bangladeshi police agents accused of selling citizens’ personal information on Telegram | TechCrunch

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    Two senior officials working for anti-terror police in Bangladesh allegedly collected and sold classified and personal information of citizens to criminals on Telegram, TechCrunch has learned. 

    The data allegedly sold included national identity details of citizens, cell phone call records and other “classified secret information,” according to a letter signed by a senior Bangladeshi intelligence official, seen by TechCrunch.

    The letter, dated April 28, was written by Brigadier General Mohammad Baker, who serves as a director of Bangladesh’s National Telecommunications Monitoring Center, or NTMC, the country’s electronic eavesdropping agency. Baker confirmed the legitimacy of the letter and its contents in an interview with TechCrunch. 

    “Departmental investigation is ongoing for both the cases,” Baker said in an online chat, adding that the Bangladeshi Ministry of Home Affairs ordered the affected police organizations to take “necessary action against those officers.” 

    The letter, which was originally written in Bengali and addressed to the senior secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs Public Security Division, alleges the two police agents accessed and passed “extremely sensitive information” of private citizens on Telegram in exchange for money.

    According to the letter, the police agents were caught after investigators analyzed logs of the NTMC’s systems and how often the two accessed it.

    The letter reveals the identity of the officials. One of the accused is a police superintendent serving with the Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU). The other is an assistant police superintendent deputy at the Rapid Action Battalion, also known as RAB 6, a controversial paramilitary unit that the U.S. government sanctioned in 2021 over allegations that the unit is linked to hundreds of disappearances and extrajudicial killings. TechCrunch is not naming the two people who were accused as it’s unclear if they have been charged under the country’s legal system.

    The NTMC is a government intelligence agency established under Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs. The agency’s core task is to monitor all telecommunications traffic and intercept phone and web communications to detect and prevent threats to national security. 

    Organizations like Human Rights Watch and Freedom House have criticized the NTMC for lacking safeguards against abuses, both against free speech as well as privacy. Over the years, NTMC procured sophisticated technology from companies in Israel, which Bangladesh does not officially recognize, as well as other Western countries, to conduct mass surveillance largely on opposition party members, journalists, civil society members and activists.  

    As part of its mission, the NTMC runs the National Intelligence Platform, or NIP, an internal government web portal that holds classified citizen information, like national identification details, cell phone registration and cell data records, criminal profiles and other information. 

    Various law enforcement and intelligence agencies have user accounts on the NIP portal provided by the NTMC. 

    NTMC’s own investigation concluded that the agents used the NIP platform more frequently than others, and accessed and collected information that was not relevant to them.

    “Considering the context, such irrelevant access and unlawful handover of extremely sensitive classified data should be investigated to identify everyone involved in this and we also request for appropriate action against all those identified/involved,” the letter read.  

    Baker told TechCrunch that there were a “number of Telegram channels,” adding that one of them was called BD CYBER GANG.

    TechCrunch could not identify the specific channel on Telegram. 

    Contact Us

    Do you have more information about this incident, or similar incidents? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email. You can also reach out to Zulkarnain Saer Khan on Signal at +36707723819, or on X @ZulkarnainSaer. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

    Baker told TechCrunch that it appears that the two agents sent the information to the administrator of at least one Telegram group, who then attempted to sell it. 

    Baker said that the two agents have been notified of the investigation. 

    Because of the investigation, all NIP users from ATU and RAB 6 have had their access suspended “until the involved officials are identified, and proper action is taken,” according to the letter.

    Baker confirmed the suspended access, saying that if agents “need any information for investigation purposes they can collect through Police and RAB HQ.”

    Spokespeople for Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs and ATU did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A person identifying only as an “operations officer” at RAB 6 told TechCrunch that the agency had no comment. 

    Last year, a security researcher found that the NTMC was leaking people’s personal information on an unsecured server. The leaked data included real-world names, phone numbers, email addresses, locations and exam results, according to Wired. Another Bangladeshi government agency, the Office of the Registrar General, Birth & Death Registration, also leaked citizens’ sensitive data last year, as TechCrunch reported at the time.

    In both cases, the leaks were found by Viktor Markopoulos, a researcher who works at Bitcrack Cyber Security. 

    While those were significant cases of data exposure, this incident allegedly involving the ATU and RAB 6 agents is potentially more damaging, given that the agents allegedly sold information online in an attempt to profit from their privileged access to classified personal information.  

    Although the incident is under investigation, a well-placed source within the government told TechCrunch that there are still officials who are offering to sell citizens’ data.

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    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

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  • Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps | TechCrunch

    Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps | TechCrunch

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    Last week, an unknown hacker broke into the servers of the U.S.-based stalkerware maker pcTattletale. The hacker then stole and leaked the company’s internal data. They also defaced pcTattletale’s official website with the goal of embarrassing the company. 

    “This took a total of 15 minutes from reading the techcrunch article,” the hackers wrote in the defacement, referring to a recent TechCrunch article where we reported that pcTattletale was used to monitor several front desk check-in computers at Wyndham hotels across the United States.

    As a result of this hack, leak and shame operation, pcTattletale founder Bryan Fleming said he was shutting down his company.

    Consumer spyware apps like pcTattletale are commonly referred to as stalkerware because jealous spouses and partners use them to surreptitiously monitor and surveil their loved ones. These companies often explicitly market their products as solutions to catch cheating partners by encouraging illegal and unethical behavior. And there have been multiple court cases, journalistic investigations, and surveys of domestic abuse shelters that show that online stalking and monitoring can lead to cases of real-world harm and violence. 

    And that’s why hackers have repeatedly targeted some of these companies.

    According to TechCrunch’s tally, with this latest hack, pcTattletale has become the 20th stalkerware company since 2017 that is known to have been hacked or leaked customer and victims’ data online. That’s not a typo: Twenty stalkerware companies have either been hacked or had a significant data exposure in recent years. And three stalkerware companies were hacked multiple times. 

    Eva Galerpin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a leading researcher and activist who has investigated and fought stalkerware for years, said the stalkerware industry is a “soft target.” “The people who run these companies are perhaps not the most scrupulous or really concerned about the quality of their product,” Galperin told TechCrunch.

    Given the history of stalkerware compromises, that may be an understatement. And because of the lack of care for protecting their own customers — and consequently the personal data of tens of thousands of unwitting victims — using these apps is doubly irresponsible. The stalkerware customers may be breaking the law, abusing their partners by illegally spying on them, and, on top of that, putting everyone’s data in danger. 

    A history of stalkerware hacks

    The flurry of stalkerware breaches began in 2017 when a group of hackers breached the U.S.-based Retina-X and the Thailand-based FlexiSpy back to back. Those two hacks revealed that the companies had a total number of 130,000 customers all over the world.

    At the time, the hackers who — proudly — claimed responsibility for the compromises explicitly said their motivations were to expose and hopefully help destroy an industry that they consider toxic and unethical.

    “I’m going to burn them to the ground, and leave absolutely nowhere for any of them to hide,” one of the hackers involved then told Motherboard. 

    Referring to FlexiSpy, the hacker added: “I hope they’ll fall apart and fail as a company, and have some time to reflect on what they did. However, I fear they might try and give birth to themselves again in a new form. But if they do, I’ll be there.”

    Despite the hack, and years of negative public attention, FlexiSpy is still active today. The same cannot be said about Retina-X.

    The hacker who broke into Retina-X wiped its servers with the goal of hampering its operations. The company bounced back — and then it got hacked again a year later. A couple of weeks after the second breach, Retina-X announced that it was shutting down. 

    Just days after the second Retina-X breach, hackers hit Mobistealth and Spy Master Pro, stealing gigabytes of customer and business records, as well as victims’ intercepted messages and precise GPS locations. Another stalkerware vendor, the India-based SpyHuman, encountered the same fate a few months later, with hackers stealing text messages and call metadata, which contained logs of who called who and when. 

    Weeks later, there was the first case of accidental data exposure, rather than a hack. SpyFone left an Amazon-hosted S3 storage bucket unprotected online, which meant anyone could see and download text messages, photos, audio recordings, contacts, location, scrambled passwords and login information, Facebook messages and more. All that data was stolen from victims, most of whom did not know they were being spied on, let alone know their most sensitive personal data was also on the internet for all to see. 

    Other stalkerware companies that over the years have irresponsibly left customer and victims’ data online are FamilyOrbit, which left 281 gigabytes of personal data online protected only by an easy-to-find password; mSpy, which leaked over 2 million customer records; Xnore, which let any of its customers see the personal data of other customers’ targets, which included chat messages, GPS coordinates, emails, photos and more; Mobiispy, which left 25,000 audio recordings and 95,000 images on a server accessible to anyone; KidsGuard, which had a misconfigured server that leaked victims’ content; pcTattletale, which prior to its hack also exposed screenshots of victims’ devices uploaded in real-time to a website that anyone could access; and Xnspy, whose developers left credentials and private keys left in the apps’ code, allowing anyone to access victims’ data.

    As far as other stalkerware companies that actually got hacked, there was Copy9, which saw a hacker steal the data of all its surveillance targets, including text messages and WhatsApp messages, call recordings, photos, contacts, and brows history; LetMeSpy, which shut down after hackers breached and wiped its servers; the Brazil-based WebDetetive, which also got its servers wiped, and then hacked again; OwnSpy, which provides much of the backend software for WebDetetive, also got hacked; Spyhide, which had a vulnerability in its code that allowed a hacker to access the back-end databases and years of stolen around 60,000 victims’ data; and Oospy, which was a rebrand of Spyhide, shut down for a second time.

    Finally there is TheTruthSpy, a network of stalkerware apps, which holds the dubious record of having been hacked or having leaked data on at least three separate occasions. 

    Hacked, but unrepented

    Of these 20 stalkerware companies, eight have shut down, according to TechCrunch’s tally. 

    In a first and so far unique case, the Federal Trade Commission banned SpyFone and its chief executive, Scott Zuckerman, from operating in the surveillance industry following an earlier security lapse that exposed victims’ data. Another stalkerware operation linked to Zuckerman, called SpyTrac, subsequently shut down following a TechCrunch investigation. 

    PhoneSpector and Highster, another two companies that are not known to have been hacked, also shut down after New York’s attorney general accused the companies of explicitly encouraging customers to use their software for illegal surveillance. 

    But a company closing doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. As with Spyhide and SpyFone, some of the same owners and developers behind a shuttered stalkerware maker simply rebranded. 

    “I do think that these hacks do things. They do accomplish things, they do put a dent in it,” Galperin said. “But if you think that if you hack a stalkerware company, that they will simply shake their fists, curse your name, disappear in a puff of blue smoke and never be seen again, that has most definitely not been the case.”

    “What happens most often, when you actually manage to kill a stalkerware company, is that the stalkerware company comes up like mushrooms after the rain,” Galperin added. 

    There is some good news. In a report last year, security firm Malwarebytes said that the use of stalkerware is declining, according to its own data of customers infected with this type of software. Also, Galperin reports seeing an increase in negative reviews of these apps, with customers or prospective customers complaining they don’t work as intended.

    But, Galperin said that it’s possible that security firms aren’t as good at detecting stalkerware as they used to be, or stalkers have moved from software-based surveillance to physical surveillance enabled by AirTags and other Bluetooth-enabled trackers.

    “Stalkerware does not exist in a vacuum. Stalkerware is part of a whole world of tech enabled abuse,” Galperin said.

    Say no to stalkerware

    Using spyware to monitor your loved ones is not only unethical, it’s also illegal in most jurisdictions, as it’s considered unlawful surveillance. 

    That is already a significant reason not to use stalkerware. Then there is the issue that stalkerware makers have proven time and time again that they cannot keep data secure — neither data belonging to the customers nor their victims or targets.

    Apart from spying on romantic partners and spouses, some people use stalkerware apps to monitor their children. While this type of use, at least in the United States, is legal, it doesn’t mean using stalkerware to snoop on your kids’ phone isn’t creepy and unethical. 

    Even if it’s lawful, Galperin thinks parents should not spy on their children without telling them, and without their consent. 

    If parents do inform their children and get their go-ahead, parents should stay away from insecure and untrustworthy stalkerware apps, and use parental tracking tools built into Apple phones and tablets and Android devices that are safer and operate overtly. 

    If you or someone you know needs help, the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) provides 24/7 free, confidential support to victims of domestic abuse and violence. If you are in an emergency situation, call 911. The Coalition Against Stalkerware has resources if you think your phone has been compromised by spyware.

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    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

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  • Secrecy Concerns Mount Over Spy Powers Targeting US Data Centers

    Secrecy Concerns Mount Over Spy Powers Targeting US Data Centers

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    Last month, US president Joe Biden signed a surveillance bill enhancing the National Security Agency’s power to compel US businesses to wiretap communications going in and out of the country. The changes to the law have left legal experts largely in the dark as to the true limits of this new authority, chiefly when it comes to the types of companies that could be affected. The American Civil Liberties Union and organizations like it say the bill has rendered the statutory language governing the limits of a powerful wiretap tool overly vague, potentially subjecting large swaths of corporate America to warrantless and secretive surveillance practices.

    In April, Congress rushed to extend the US intelligence system’s “crown jewel,” Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The spy program allows the NSA to wiretap calls and messages between Americans and foreigners abroad—so long as the foreigner is the individual being “targeted” and the intercept serves a significant “foreign intelligence” purpose. Since 2008, the program has been limited to a subset of businesses that the law calls “electronic communications service providers,” or ECSPs—corporations such as Microsoft and Google, which provide email services, and phone companies like Sprint and AT&T.

    In recent years, the government has worked quietly to redefine what it means to be an ECSP in an attempt to extend the NSA’s reach, first unilaterally and now with Congress’s backing. The issue remains that the bill Biden signed last month contains murky language that attempts to redefine the scope of a critical surveillance program. In response, a coalition of digital rights organizations from the Brennan Center for Justice to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are pressing the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, and the nation’s top spy, Avril Haines, to declassify details about a relevant court case that could, they say, shed much-needed light on the situation.

    In a letter to the top officials, more than 20 such organizations say they believe the new definition of an ECSP adopted by Congress might “permit the NSA to compel almost any US business to assist” the agency, noting that all companies today provide some sort of “service” and have access to equipment on which “communications” are stored.

    “Deliberately writing overbroad surveillance authorities and trusting that future administrations will decide not to exploit them is a recipe for abuse,” the letter says. “And it is entirely unnecessary, as the administration can—and should—declassify the fact that the provision is intended to reach data centers.”

    The Justice Department confirmed receipt of the letter on Tuesday, but referred WIRED to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which has primary purview over declassification decisions. The ODNI has not responded to a request for comment.

    It is widely believed—and has been reported—that data centers are the intended target of this textual change, and Matt Olsen, the assistant US attorney general for national security, appeared to confirm as much during an April 17 episode of the Lawfare podcast.

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    Dell Cameron

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  • Chinese-backed crypto firm must sell Wyoming land plot and get rid of equipment possibly capable of ‘espionage activities,’ says President Biden

    Chinese-backed crypto firm must sell Wyoming land plot and get rid of equipment possibly capable of ‘espionage activities,’ says President Biden

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    President Joe Biden on Monday issued an order blocking a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining firm from owning land near a Wyoming nuclear missile base, calling its proximity to the base a “national security risk.”

    The order forces the divestment of property operated as a crypto mining facility near the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base. MineOne Partners Ltd., a firm partly backed by Chinese nationals, and its affiliates are also required to remove certain equipment on the site.

    This comes as the U.S. is slated on Tuesday to issue major new tariffs on electric vehicles, semiconductors, solar equipment and medical supplies imported from China, according to a U.S. official and another person familiar with the plan.

    And with election season in full swing, both Biden and his presumptive Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, have told voters that they’ll be tough on China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States and an emerging geopolitical rival.

    The Monday divestment order was made in coordination with the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — a little-known but powerful government committee tasked with investigating corporate deals for national security concerns that holds power to force companies to change ownership structures or divest completely from the U.S.

    A 2018 law granted CFIUS the authority to review real estate transactions near sensitive sites across the U.S., including F.E. Warren Air Force Base.

    MineOne purchased the land that is within one mile of the Air Force base in Cheyenne in 2022, and according to CFIUS, the purchase was not reported to the committee as required until after the panel received a public tip.

    The order was vague about the specific national security concerns, with the Treasury Department saying only that there were issues with “specialized and foreign-sourced equipment potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities” that “presented a significant national security risk.”

    A representative from the firm did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who serves as the chairperson of CFIUS, said the role of the committee is “to ensure that foreign investment does not undermine our national security, particularly as it relates to transactions that present risk to sensitive U.S. military installations as well as those involving specialized equipment and technologies.”

    The committee is made up of members from the State, Justice, Energy and Commerce Departments among others, which investigates national security risks from foreign investments in American firms.

    CFIUS directed the sale of the property within 120 days, and that within 90 days the company remove all structures and equipment on the site.

    Subscribe to the Eye on AI newsletter to stay abreast of how AI is shaping the future of business. Sign up for free.

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    Fatima Hussein, Zeke Miller, The Associated Press

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  • How A Controversial Gun-Detection Technology Found Its Way to NYC

    How A Controversial Gun-Detection Technology Found Its Way to NYC

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    There was a lot of overlap with former members of the NYPD. Adams and Banks came up together as police officers—as did a then-account executive of Evolv, also name-dropped by Chitkara in the email to the mayor’s staff. Dominick D’Orazio, who had been Evolv’s sales manager in the northeast US before being promoted to regional manager in April, was a commander in Brooklyn South whose reporting line included Banks—who was at the time deputy chief of patrol for Borough Brooklyn South. (Banks has denied meeting D’Orazio in his capacity as an Evolv employee.)

    Evolv’s connection to the NYPD is something George, Evolv’s CEO, has used to market the company’s technology. “About a third of our salespeople were former police officers,” George said at a conference in June 2022. “The one here in New York was an NYPD cop, and he’s a really good sales guy because he understands who we’re selling to. He has the secret handshake.”

    David Cohen, former NYPD deputy commissioner of intelligence, also sits on Evolv’s Security Advisory Board.

    The Mayor’s Office has been keen to stress that it is not set on Evolv being a permanent fixture. “To be clear, we have NOT said we are putting Evolv technology in the subway stations,” Kayla Mamelak, deputy press secretary of the Mayor’s Office, tells WIRED in an email. “We said that we are opening a 90-day period to explore using technology, such as Evolv, in our subway stations.”

    Civil rights and technology experts have argued that utilizing Evolv’s scanners in subway stations is likely to be futile. “This is Mickey Mouse public safety,” says Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy advocacy organization. “This is not a serious solution for the largest transit system in the country.”

    Moreover, deploying the company’s technology might not just be ineffective—it’s likely to add more police officers to the daily rhythms of New Yorkers’ lives, heightening Adams’ pro-cop agenda. The NYC subway has 472 stations. “That is roughly 1,000 subway station entrances,” explains Sarah Kaufman, director of the New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation. “That means that Evolv would have to be at every single entrance in order to be effective, and that of course would require monitoring.”

    According to the draft policy posted by the NYPD, the process surrounding weapons-detection technology in the subway is extremely vague, and still relies heavily on police officers. “The checkpoint supervisor will determine the frequency of passengers subject to inspection (for example, every fifth passenger or every tenth passenger),” the document reads. It will also be based on “available police personnel on hand to perform inspections.”

    The NYC subway has an estimated 3.6 million daily riders. Stopping every 10th passenger would mean 360,000 searches a day.

    “It’s going to mean that people are routinely going to have to go through invasive and inconvenient searches,” says Cahn. “What’s really emblematic here is that the city keeps trying to go for security measures that are highly visible, even when they’re highly ineffective.”

    School Supplies

    In the email thread to the NYC officials who attended the meeting, Chitkara touted Evolv’s successful deployment in schools. But there, too, the scanners have failed to detect weapons and guns on multiple occasions. While the Adams administration was being persuaded to pilot the technology, internal emails obtained from a large school district that uses Evolv’s technology illustrate how everyday objects were being mistaken by the scanners.

    “I know the simple solution is to tell kids not to use binders but rather regular notebooks,” Jacqueline Barone, principal of Piedmont Middle School, part of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina, wrote at the end of 2022. “But it hurts my soul to have to tell kids or teachers that certain supplies can’t be used because the scanners mistake them for weapons.”

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    Georgia Gee

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  • Top FBI Official Urges Agents to Use Warrantless Wiretaps on US Soil

    Top FBI Official Urges Agents to Use Warrantless Wiretaps on US Soil

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    House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner and ranking member Jim Himes blasted out invitations announcing a “bipartisan celebration” of the 702 program’s continuation last week. The event, which the lawmakers have dubbed FISA Fest, is being held in a reception room in the US Capitol building Wednesday night.

    A House Intelligence Committee spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

    Turner and Himes were instrumental in preserving the FBI’s warrantless access to 702 data. In countless “briefings” since October, the pair urged members of their respective parties to avoid reining in the FBI’s authority too greatly. Instead, the new procedures designed by the bureau itself were touted by both lawmakers as a sufficient bulwark against further abuse.

    Narrowly winning that battle last month, Himes and Turner worked to kill an amendment that would have forced FBI employees to get search warrants before reviewing the communications of Americans swept up by the program. (The amendment, opposed by the Biden White House, failed in a tie vote, 212-212.) Instead, the FBI’s procedures, now part of the 702 statute, require employees to affirmatively “opt in” before accessing the wiretaps. They must also seek permission from an FBI attorney before conducting “batch queries” of the database. And queries for communications of elected officials, reporters, academics, and religious figures are now all deemed “sensitive” and require approval from higher up the chain of command.

    Congress established Section 702 in 2008 to legitimize an existing surveillance program run by the National Security Agency (NSA) without congressional oversight or approval. The program, more narrowly defined at the time, intercepted communications that were at least partly domestic but included a target the government believed was a known terrorist. While bringing the surveillance under its authority, Congress has helped to steadily expand the scope of the surveillance to encompass a new slate of threats, from cybercrime and drug trafficking to arms proliferation.

    While advocates for 702 surveillance often imply that Americans who are wiretapped are communicating with terrorists—a concoction that Turner himself repeatedly lent credence to this year—the allegation is dubious. Officially, it is the US government’s position that it is impossible to know which US citizens are being surveilled or even how many of them there are. The chief aim of the 702 program is to acquire “foreign intelligence information,” a term that encompasses not only terrorism and acts of sabotage but information necessary for the government to conduct its own “foreign affairs.”

    Surveillance critics worry that the array of possible targets extends far beyond what is being characterized in unclassified settings. It is uncontroversial to suggest that the US government—like all governments with the power to spy—finds reasons to spy on foreign allies, businesses, even news publications. So long as the target is foreign, they have no privacy rights.

    The limits of the 702 program remain murky, even to congressional members insisting that it should not be curbed further. The Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Mark Warner, acknowledged to reporters this week that language in Section 702 needs to be “fixed,” even though he voted last month to make the current language law.

    FISA experts had warned for months that new language introduced by the House Intelligence Committee is far too vague in the way it describes the categories of businesses the US government can compel, fearing that the government would obtain the power to force anyone with access to a target’s online communications into snooping on the NSA’s behalf—IT workers and data center staff among them.

    A trade group representing Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft, among some of the world’s other largest technology companies, concurred last month, arguing that the new version of the surveillance program threatens to “dramatically expand the scope of entities and individuals” subject to Section 702 orders.

    “We are working on it,” Warner told The Record on Monday. “I am absolutely committed to getting that fixed,” he said, suggesting the best time to do so would be “in the next intelligence bill.”

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    Dell Cameron, William Turton

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  • Private Eyes: 5 things an N&O investigation into NC license plate cameras revealed

    Private Eyes: 5 things an N&O investigation into NC license plate cameras revealed

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    Raleigh

    Automated license plate reader cameras can be hard to spot if you’re just driving by.

    But along hundreds of North Carolina streets, these shoebox-sized devices are quietly capturing details on every passing vehicle, data easily made accessible to law enforcement officers across the country.

    Until now, no one in North Carolina had a full picture of how widespread these cameras have become. But a News & Observer investigation shows they’re a much more common tool for law enforcement, who say the devices can act as a force multiplier for solving crime.

    In our series, Private Eyes, we show these cameras have generated a lot of success stories for closing cases — recovering stolen vehicles, finding missing children, even arresting an attempted murder suspect who fled out of state. But the embrace of these devices by law enforcement has also raised serious privacy concerns from groups worried about cases of misuse, overpolicing and misidentification leading to arrests.

    Here’s a look at five major things our reporting over the last several months revealed.

    A Flock automated license plate reader camera used by the Raleigh Police Department is mounted on a Duke Energy utility pole on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh Jan. 29. RPD operates 26 automated readers that collect license plate and vehicle information including color, make and type.
    A Flock automated license plate reader camera used by the Raleigh Police Department is mounted on a Duke Energy utility pole on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh Jan. 29. RPD operates 26 automated readers that collect license plate and vehicle information including color, make and type. Travis Long tlong@newsobserver.com

    From rare to regular practice in just a few years

    Flock Safety got its start in 2017. It didn’t officially register to do business in North Carolina until 2021.

    Yet the company has in that time signed contracts with at least 80 law enforcement agencies across the state, from the Nags Head Police Department to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office, The N&O found. Our survey of police and sheriff’s departments statewide has so far tallied more than 700 of Flock’s fixed cameras on North Carolina roads, a count that far exceeds any of the company’s competitors, like Rekor and Motorola.

    And because Flock doesn’t sell its cameras — it leases them — that can mean big money for the private company.

    Contracts with several North Carolina clients show the cameras cost between $2,000 to $3,000 each annually. So a conservative estimate is that North Carolina law enforcement agencies are spending upwards of $1.49 million on the devices every year.

    And it’s not just law enforcement. Flock markets its cameras to companies and HOAs, which as we explored in our series sparked controversy in one Knightdale neighborhood.

    Flock CEO Garrett Langley has discussed that explosive growth nationally, telling an Atlanta podcast in 2023 that the company has gone from “single-digit millions to over a hundred-million in revenue in four years.”

    ALPR cameras don’t have the same safeguards

    From the video camera inside Target to the doorbell camera on your neighbor’s front porch, Americans are already awash in surveillance.

    So what makes automated license plate readers from Flock or any other vendor different?

    Access, for one.

    With some exceptions, the vast majority of privately operated video surveillance isn’t readily available for law enforcement to search or review. Camera owners can turn it over on request, sure. But forcing the matter requires a warrant issued by the court, based on probable cause.

    What if police wanted GPS location data tracked by your phone? That also requires a search warrant served on Google (at least it did before the company announced in late 2023 it would cut off access to such data).

    Could detectives acquire your mobile device’s location via cell towers? Or attach a GPS device to your car? Both techniques require search warrants, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

    In North Carolina, state laws place protections on license plate data captured for certain non-law enforcement purposes.

    Toll cameras, for instance, capture and retain images of vehicles and license plates for 90 days to bill drivers. But the agency requires a subpoena to provide police with any of that footage, says N.C. Turnpike Authority spokesperson Logen Hodges.

    When police officers search for license plates or other vehicle data through an ALPR system like Flock, they don’t need a warrant — or any other external oversight. And although state law now makes misuse of ALPR devices a misdemeanor, privacy advocates are concerned.

    Flock and police departments argue, however, that license plate readers capture information available in public spaces where there is no expectation of privacy — the equivalent of an officer standing on a corner to jot down every plate number.

    Flock Safety automated license plate reader cameras monitor around 400,000 vehicles per month in Raleigh, according to the police department’s transparency portal.
    Flock Safety automated license plate reader cameras monitor around 400,000 vehicles per month in Raleigh, according to the police department’s transparency portal. Travis Long tlong@newsobserver.com

    Across North Carolina, transparency isn’t consistent

    Much of The N&O’s reporting was built on the collection of thousands of data points from Flock Safety’s transparency portals, websites that provide basic details on a department’s use of the cameras. That’s everything from how many cameras they have installed to the number of cars they’ve detected in the last month or so.

    The portals are optional, and not all of Flock’s clients have committed to using them.

    Flock did provide a list of about 30 North Carolina agencies using the transparency portals. That’s far short of the 80 or more agencies The N&O independently counted that are using the service in the state so far.

    A number of law enforcement agencies told us through our survey that they have no plans to use the sites.

    Case in point: police at UNC-Chapel Hill. The university, which fought to keep its contracts with Flock Safety secret from the public before relenting earlier this year, “has not discussed the creation of a transparency portal,” according to spokesperson Kevin Best.

    The N&O found more than 360 of the sites across the country. But it’s hard to know how many of the company’s 5,000-plus law enforcement clients actually have the portals activated because the company hasn’t told us.

    Oversight in other states exceeds regulation here

    North Carolina has a law on the books that regulates the use of automated license plate readers.

    The rules limit retention of license plate data to 90 days and prohibit its use for enforcing simple traffic violations. The law also requires agencies using these systems to have a written policy that addresses, among other things, training, oversight and “annual or more frequent auditing.”

    But the regulations don’t require anyone to oversee whether agencies follow their own rules.

    And North Carolina law enforcement agencies aren’t always forthcoming about how they abide by those rules.

    The Raleigh Police Department, for example, has provided no evidence that an annual audit of its ALPR system has been completed.

    New Jersey, by contrast, issues a report publicly through its attorney general’s office on which law enforcement agencies completed audits and which saw violations and complaints.

    The limit on how long North Carolina agencies can keep data, meanwhile, pales in comparison to New Hampshire.

    The Granite State — whose motto is “Live Free or Die — requires law enforcement to purge license plate data after 3 minutes. New Hampshire is one of only three states where Flock does not operate.

    What’s next for these cameras on state highways? Unclear.

    Over the last several years, lawmakers introduced bills to undo a decade-old legal interpretation that prohibited automated license plate readers from state-maintained roads and highways. Those efforts failed repeatedly over objections by Republican legislators with privacy concerns about the technology.

    In early 2023, a new version of the bill drew support from law enforcement, including Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson and Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone, who testified to lawmakers that the devices were critical tools for fighting crime.

    The legislature approved the measure in October, allowing the devices on N.C. Department of Transportation right-of-ways through a pilot program run by DOT and the State Bureau of Investigation. The SBI, either on its own or on behalf of a local law enforcement agency, would need to enter into an agreement with NCDOT on where to place the devices.

    That will likely mean more ALPR cameras along 80,000 miles of North Carolina streets. But when those new cameras will start appearing — that’s hard to say.

    Despite the law going into effect in January, neither agency has not provided any detail on how they’ll implement it.

    “Discussions and meetings continue” about the pilot project’s implementation, SBI spokesperson Angie Grube said in early April. After The N&O checked in last week, Grube said the agency had nothing to announce.

    As of Thursday, NCDOT has yet to receive any requests to install the devices, according to spokesperson Aaron Moody.

    Related stories from Charlotte Observer

    Tyler Dukes is an investigative reporter for The News & Observer who specializes in data and public records. In 2017, he completed a fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Prior to joining the N&O, he worked as an investigative reporter at WRAL News in Raleigh. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University and grew up in Elizabeth City.

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  • The Next US President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers

    The Next US President Will Have Troubling New Surveillance Powers

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    The ability of the United States to intercept and store Americans’ text messages, calls, and emails in pursuit of foreign intelligence was not only extended but enhanced over the weekend in ways likely to remain enigmatic to the public for years to come.

    On Saturday, US president Joe Biden signed a controversial bill extending the life of a warrantless US surveillance program for two years, bringing an end to a months-long fight in Congress over an authority that US intelligence agencies acknowledge has been widely abused in the past.

    At the urging of the agencies and with the help of powerful bipartisan allies on Capitol Hill, the program has also been extended to cover a wide range of new businesses, including US data centers, according to recent analysis by legal experts and civil liberties organizations that were vocally opposed to its passage.

    Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, allows the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), among other agencies, to eavesdrop on calls, texts, and emails traveling through US networks, so long as one side of the communication is foreign.

    Americans caught up in the program face diminished privacy rights.

    While the government requires a foreign target to commence a wiretap, Americans are often party to those intercepted conversations. And although US attorney general Merrick Garland insisted in a statement on Saturday that the updates to the 702 program “ensure the protection of Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” and that the government never intentionally targets Americans, the government nevertheless reserves the right to store their communications and access them later without probable cause.

    “Section 702 is supposed to be used only for spying on foreigners abroad,” says Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Instead, sadly, it has enabled warrantless access to vast databases of Americans’ private phone calls, text messages, and emails.”

    Under the law, the government can retain communications captured by the 702 program for half a decade or more—indefinitely, so long as the government makes no effort to decrypt them.

    A trade organization representing some of the world’s largest tech companies came out against plans to expand Section 702 in the final hours of the debate, claiming that a new provision authored by House Intelligence Committee members would damage the competitiveness of US technologies, “arguably imperiling the continued global free flow of data between the US and its allies.”

    US intelligence obtains its vast surveillance power through yearly certifications doled out by a secret court. The certifications permit the NSA in particular to force businesses in the US—categorized as “electronic communications service providers,” or ECSPs—to cooperate with the program, collecting data and installing wiretaps on the agency’s behalf.

    Years ago, the government sought to unilaterally expand the definition of ECSP under the law, seeking to compel the cooperation of whole new categories of businesses. That effort was beaten back by the FISA court in 2022, in a ruling that stated only Congress has the “competence and constitutional authority” to rewrite the law.

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    Dell Cameron

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  • Biden signs bill to reauthorize FISA warrantless surveillance program for two more years

    Biden signs bill to reauthorize FISA warrantless surveillance program for two more years

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    President Biden this weekend a bill that reauthorizes a controversial spying program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Section 702 of FISA, which has now been extended for two more years, allows for warrantless intelligence gathering on foreign targets. While its focus is on the communications of targets located outside the US, that includes any exchanges with people stateside, meaning Americans’ records can get swept up in these collections too.

    The Senate vote on reauthorizing Section 702 came down to the wire. It was set to expire on Friday at midnight, but was recently given an extension until April 2025, according to , lest it lapse while disagreements over proposed amendments dragged on. Section 702’s extension period was also shortened, cutting it down to two years instead of the previous five. Congress did ultimately miss the deadline on Friday, but it passed with a 60-34 vote, reported. The White House issued a statement not long after saying the president “will swiftly sign the bill into law.”

    Section 702 was first signed into law in 2008 and has been renewed twice already, allowing US intelligence agencies to use data from internet and cell phone providers without a warrant to keep tabs on foreign targets’ communications.

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    Cheyenne MacDonald

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  • Big Tech Says Spy Bill Turns Its Workers Into Informants

    Big Tech Says Spy Bill Turns Its Workers Into Informants

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    A trade organization representing some of the world’s largest information technology companies—Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft among them—say its members are voicing strong opposition to ongoing efforts by the Biden administration to dramatically expand a key US government surveillance authority.

    The US Senate is poised to vote Thursday on legislation that would extend a global wiretap program authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Passed by the House of Representatives last week, a provision contained in the bill—known as the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA)—threatens to significantly expand the scope of the spy program, helping the government to compel the assistance of whole new categories of businesses.

    Legal experts argue the provision could enable the government to conscript virtually anyone with access to facilities or equipment housing communications data, forcing “delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utilities providers,” among others, to assist US spies in acquiring access to Americans’ emails, phone calls, and text messages—so long as one side of the communication is foreign.

    A global tech trade association, the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), is now urging Congress not to pass RISAA without removing a key provision “dramatically expanding the scope of entities and individuals covered” by the program, known as Section 702. Changes to the 702 program included in the House bill, ITI says, would only serve to send customers in the US and abroad fleeing to foreign competitors, convincing many that technology in the US is far too exposed to government surveillance.

    The group’s membership includes several major equipment manufacturers, such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Broadcom, as well as large cloud storage providers like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce. “ITI’s position is that the provision should be removed,” the group’s communications director, Janae Washington, tells WIRED. “Our positions are based on member consensus.”

    The individual ITI member companies WIRED contacted for their comment on the legislation did not immediately respond or declined to comment.

    The provision under fire stems from a ruling handed down by the US government’s secret surveillance court—the FISA court—that oversees the 702 program. The program is designed to target the communications of foreigners, including calls and emails to and from US citizens. To this aim, the federal statute specifies that the government may compel the assistance of businesses that fall into the category of what it calls “electronic communications service providers,” or ECSPs.

    Companies like Google and AT&T have typically fallen into this category as direct providers of the services being wiretapped; however, the US government has also moved in recent years to interpret the term more broadly as part of an effort to expand the roster of entities whose assistance it’s allowed to compel.

    The FISA court, in a decision backed by its own review body, pushed back against the expanded definition, telling the government that what constitutes an ECSP remains “open to reconsideration by the branches of government whose competence and constitutional authority extend to statutory revision.”

    More concisely: The court reminded the government that only Congress has the power to rewrite the law.

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    Dell Cameron

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  • Roku Breach Hits 567,000 Users

    Roku Breach Hits 567,000 Users

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    After months of delays, the US House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend a controversial warrantless wiretap program for two years. Known as Section 702, the program authorizes the US government to collect the communications of foreigners overseas. But this collection also includes reams of communications from US citizens, which are stored for years and can later be warrantlessly accessed by the FBI, which has heavily abused the program. An amendment that would require investigators to obtain such a warrant failed to pass.

    A group of US lawmakers on Sunday unveiled a proposal that they hope will become the country’s first nationwide privacy law. The American Privacy Rights Act would limit the data that companies can collect and give US residents greater control over the personal information that is collected about them. Passage of such legislation remains far off, however: Congress has attempted to pass a national privacy law for years and has thus far failed to do so.

    Absent a US privacy law, you’ll need to take matters into your own hands. DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused company famous for its search engine, now offers a new product called Privacy Pro that includes a VPN, a tool for having your data removed from people-search websites, and a service for restoring your identity if you fall victim to identity theft. There are also steps you can take to wrench back some of the data used to train generative AI systems. Not all systems out there offer the option to opt out of data collection, but we have a rundown of the ones that do and how to keep your data out of AI models.

    Data collection isn’t the only risk associated with AI advancements. AI-generated scam calls are becoming more sophisticated, with cloned voices sounding eerily like the real thing. But there are precautions you can take to protect yourself from getting swindled by someone using AI to sound like a loved one.

    Change Healthcare’s ongoing ransomware nightmare appears to have gotten worse. The company was originally targeted by a ransomware gang known as AlphV in February. But after the hackers received a $22 million payment early last month, a rift appeared to grow between AlphV and affiliate hackers, who say AlphV took the money and ran without paying other groups that helped them carry out the attack. Now, another ransomware group, RansomHub, claims it has terabytes of Change Healthcare’s data and is attempting to extort the company. Service disruptions caused by the ransomware attack have impacted healthcare providers and their patients across the US.

    That’s not all. Each week, we round up the privacy and security news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out there.

    The streaming video service Roku warned customers Friday that 576,000 accounts had been compromised, a breach it discovered in the midst of its investigation of a far smaller-scale intrusion that it dealt with in March. Roku said that rather than actually penetrating Roku’s own network through a security vulnerability, the hackers had carried out a “credential-stuffing” attack in which they tried passwords for users that had leaked elsewhere, thus breaking into accounts where users had reused those passwords. The company noted that in less than 400 cases, hackers had actually exploited their access to make purchases with the hijacked accounts. But the company nonetheless reset users’ passwords and is implementing two-factor authentication on all user accounts.

    Apple sent notices via email to users in 92 countries around the world this week, warning them that they had been targeted by sophisticated “mercenary spyware” and that their devices may be compromised. The notice stressed that the company had “high confidence” in this warning and urged potential hacking victims to take it seriously. In a status page update, it suggested that anyone who receives the warning contact the Digital Security Helpline of the nonprofit Access Now and enable Lockdown Mode for future protection. Apple didn’t offer any information publicly about who the hacking victims are, where they’re located, or who the hackers behind the attacks might be, though in its blog post, it compared the malware to the sophisticated Pegasus spyware sold by the Israeli hacking firm NSO Group. It wrote in its public support post that it’s warned users in a total of 150 countries about similar attacks since 2021.

    April continues to be the cruelest month for Microsoft—or perhaps Microsoft’s customers. On the heels of a Cybersecurity Review Board report on Microsoft’s previous breach by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published a report this week warning federal agencies that their communications with Microsoft may have been compromised by a group known as APT29, Midnight Blizzard, or Cozy Bear, believed to work on behalf of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. “Midnight Blizzard’s successful compromise of Microsoft corporate email accounts and the exfiltration of correspondence between agencies and Microsoft presents a grave and unacceptable risk to agencies,” CISA said in the emergency directive. As recently as March, Microsoft said that it was still working to expel the hackers from its network.

    As ransomware hackers seek new ways to bully their victims into giving in to their extortion demands, one group tried the novel approach of calling the front desk of the company it had targeted to verbally threaten its staff. Thanks to one HR manager named Beth, that tactic ended up sounding about as threatening as a clip from an episode of The Office.

    TechCrunch describes a recording of the conversation, which a ransomware group calling itself Dragonforce posted to its dark-web site in a misguided attempt to pressure the victim company to pay. (TechCrunch didn’t identify the victim.) The call starts like any tedious attempt to find the right person after calling a company’s publicly listed phone number, as the hacker waits to speak to someone in “management.”

    Eventually, Beth picks up and a somewhat farcical conversation ensues as she asks that the hacker explain the situation. When he threatens to make the company’s stolen data available for “fraudulent activities and for terrorism by criminals,” Beth responds “Oh, ok,” in an altogether unimpressed tone. She then asks if the data will be posted to “Dragonforce.com.” At another point, she notes to the increasingly frustrated hacker that recording their call is illegal in Ohio, and he responds, “Ma’am, I am a hacker. I don’t care about the law.” Finally, Beth refuses to negotiate with the hacker with a “Well, good luck,” to which the hacker responds, “Thank you, take care.”

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    Andy Greenberg, Andrew Couts

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  • House Votes to Extend—and Expand—a Major US Spy Program

    House Votes to Extend—and Expand—a Major US Spy Program

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    A controversial US wiretap program days from expiration cleared a major hurdle on its way to being reauthorized.

    After months of delays, false starts, and interventions by lawmakers working to preserve and expand the US intelligence community’s spy powers, the House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years.

    Legislation extending the program—controversial for being abused by the government—passed in the House in a 273–147 vote. The Senate has yet to pass its own bill.

    Section 702 permits the US government to wiretap communications between Americans and foreigners overseas. Hundreds of millions of calls, texts, and emails are intercepted by government spies each with the “compelled assistance” of US communications providers.

    The government may strictly target foreigners believed to possess “foreign intelligence information,” but it also eavesdrops on the conversations of an untold number of Americans each year. (The government claims it is impossible to determine how many Americans get swept up by the program.) The government argues that Americans are not themselves being targeted and thus the wiretaps are legal. Nevertheless, their calls, texts, and emails may be stored by the government for years, and can later be accessed by law enforcement without a judge’s permission.

    The House bill also dramatically expands the statutory definition for communication service providers, something FISA experts, including Marc Zwillinger—one of the few people to advise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—have publicly warned against.

    “Anti-reformers not only are refusing common-sense reforms to FISA, they’re pushing for a major expansion of warrantless spying on Americans,” US senator Ron Wyden tells WIRED. “Their amendment would force your cable guy to be a government spy and assist in monitoring Americans’ communications without a warrant.”

    The FBI’s track record of abusing the program kicked off a rare détente last fall between progressive Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans—both bothered equally by the FBI’s targeting of activists, journalists, and a sitting member of Congress. But in a major victory for the Biden administration, House members voted down an amendment earlier in the day that would’ve imposed new warrant requirements on federal agencies accessing Americans’ 702 data.

    “Many members who tanked this vote have long histories of voting for this specific privacy protection,” says Sean Vitka, policy director at the civil-liberties-focused nonprofit Demand Progress, “including former speaker Pelosi, Representative Lieu, and Representative Neguse.”

    The warrant amendment was passed earlier this year by the House Judiciary Committee, whose long-held jurisdiction over FISA has been challenged by friends of the intelligence community. Analysis by the Brennan Center this week found that 80 percent of the base text of the FISA reauthorization bill had been authored by intelligence committee members.

    “Three million Americans’ data was searched in this database of information,” says Representative Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “The FBI wasn’t even following its own rules when they conducted those searches. That’s why we need a warrant.”

    Representative Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, campaigned alongside top spy agency officials for months to defeat the warrant amendment, arguing they’d cost the bureau precious time and impede national security investigations. The communications are legally collected and already in the government’s possession, Turner argued; no further approval should be required to inspect them.

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    Dell Cameron

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