Category: 404 Media

A company that makes phone hacking devices claims to have developed a solution that freezes iPhones in a state that lets cops more easily access sensitive data inside them, according to a video obtained by 404 Media.   This is the latest salvo in the never-ending battle between Apple and companies ...

Student journalists, their advisors, and legal advocates say colleagues and administrators are attempting to undermine student reporting on Jeffrey Epstein, Gaza, and other issues that public institutions would rather not have their reputations connected to. Public records obtained by 404 Media show administrators taking meetings with parents and alumni when ...

A lawyer used ChatGPT to generate briefs that included completely made-up witnesses and testimony while representing a man accused of shooting his wife. When he was caught by the judges, the lawyer blamed it on his own “stupidity.”  “It’s little comfort to know that my stupidity is what brings us ...

One of the most heated discussions occurring on X at the moment is about the ethics of a GitHub project in which a person is running Saw-like “torture” and “pain” experiments on a series of locally hosted large language models, causing a series of effective altruists and people who believe ...

The Trump administration is using an anti-drug trafficking grant program from the 1980s to force cities around the country to funnel their ongoing collection of automated license plate reader data into large federal surveillance centers that fall under the White House’s jurisdiction, according to public records and court documents reviewed ...

Surveillance isn’t just about who is collecting the data. Surveillance is, of course, also about who that data ends up with. A great story from Jason today looks at that with Flock and other automatic license plate reader (ALPR) data: some local cops are being forced to feed their ALPR ...

Abusive, sexually explicit deepfakes have only become easier to make and more widespread in the last nine years. Since we first covered deepfakes when they appeared in 2017, they’ve never been the stuff of dark web sites or shadowy networks. They’re found on social media networks, through basic web searches, ...

The United States Postal Service is running a pilot program to put cameras in its mail carrier trucks that continuously scan roads and signs, map roadways and sidewalks, and improve “community safety,” according to a letter posted by a labor union and a statement from the agency to 404 Media. ...

A thing I’ve been saying over and over is that surveillance companies can’t be trusted to regulate themselves or to make privacy decisions themselves, because one company’s red line is another company’s business opportunity. Today we’re investigating a company that saw Flock was not offering facial recognition and saw a ...

Scientists have identified two new contenders for the world’s loudest bird—the bare-throated bellbird and the red-legged seriema—both of which can exceed 120 decibels, which is louder than a jackhammer, according to a study published on Tuesday in Evolution.  These two bird species are now in the same league as the ...