sam.biddle
@theintercept
.com / sambiddle
@protonmail
.com / Signal username for tips: sambiddle.99 (Please only contact me via a personal, non-work device!)
Several children were caught breaking into one of the many Baltimore City pools that remain closed with their gates chained. The break-in was caught on Monday. Footage details the children breaking in, setting up "camp", and entering the water along with a scooter.
We’ve launched a new “Web” filter that shows only text-based links, just like you might filter to show other types of results, such as images or videos. The filter appears on the top of the results page alongside other filters or as part of the “More” option, rolling out today
I found a guy on eBay selling boxes of Cold War-era photo slides from old Pentagon presentations for a buck each so I stocked up. Working on getting them scanned this week/will share the finished product. There are a couple sets from USAF, one from the Navy, and one from NORAD
Emails I obtained via FOIA request show Elon Musk's Twitter/X was selling user data for government surveillance at the exact same time it was fighting government surveillance in court
It is stunning to me how many people are taking this testimony seriously after he suggested UFOs come from another dimension and were covered up by Mussolini and the Vatican. This is nutcase stuff.
I've said this before but I think one of the best ways to tell whether a software privacy feature is effective is whether it's upsetting people who work in advertising
If you thought Apple couldn't eliminate more data / cookies along comes Safari 16.4.
Server set FIRST PARTY cookies now max 7 days (conditions described in original PR below).
This aimed squarely at Google Tag Manager but affects every server-side proxy.
It's War on the web.
Google Photos' terms of service says you can't use it to "harm" other people. Israel is reportedly using Google Photos facial recognition to round up Palestinians to interrogate, sometimes via brutal beatings and torture. Is this allowed? Google won't say.
From May 2022: "The United States condemns actions that block or degrade access to the Internet in Ukraine, which sever critical channels for sharing and learning information, including about the war."
NEW: The Georgia Army National Guard is using mobile phone tracking to geofence high schools in the state and target teens with military recruiting ads — and then follow them back home
Important takeaway from this (genuinely stunning, extremely important) reporting is that the value of military "AI" systems like this doesn't lie in decision-making, but in the ability to use the sheen of computerized "intelligence" to justify the actions you already wanted
After noticing Facebook approved an ad calling for the assassination of a pro-Palestinian political activist,
@7amleh
took out 19 test ads that explicitly advocated for ethnic violence against Palestinians. Facebook approved every single one
We've created a demo of an AI that can predict the future at a superhuman level (on par with groups of human forecasters working together).
Consequently I think AI forecasters will soon automate most prediction markets.
demo:
blog:
My pet conspiracy theory is the CIA did its big web redesign from a few years ago in order to use a font for the FOIA library that will make you go insane if you try to read it for more than 10 seconds, like a cursed tome from a Lovecraft story
I think it's worth being reminded what previous stance the United States has taken on foreign governments deliberately cutting internet access to civilian populations
🚨🔴 PRCS: We have completely lost contact with the operations room in
#Gaza
Strip and all our teams operating there due to the Israeli authorities cutting off all landline, cellular and internet communications. We are deeply concerned about the ability of our teams to continue
@shashj
This is a genuine question, as someone who has appreciated following your work and posts here: If a military knows that a given airstrike is going to kill civilians, and it proceeds, in what sense are their deaths not deliberate?
The defense industry has historically been a proving ground for many of the systems we rely on today. These institutions are often leaders in emerging technologies, and we believe it’s better to understand how their approach will impact our lives.
I think one of the biggest recent missteps in tech coverage (and I include myself in this) was uncritically using the term "AI" to mean basically whatever the marketing departments at software companies selling "AI" products want it means. It benefits no one but them.
@shashj
Are you saying "deliberate" does not mean "intentional"? I'm truly struggling to understand a conception of intentionality or deliberateness that doesn't mean "causing a thing I know will happen to happen."
NEW: Dataminr, an official Twitter partner, helped the US Marshals surveil abortion rights protests following the overturn of Roe v Wade, according to FOIA documents I obtained
Fascinating to see the mass scraping of European user activity described as an attempt to "understand the EU’s rich cultural, social and historical contributions"
Unfortunately, our plans to train our AI models to understand the EU’s rich cultural, social and historical contributions remain paused while EU regulators remain unable to agree how the law should be applied. As Mark and Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, recently warned, the EU risks
A light just went off in Linda Yaccarino's office informing her it's time to tweet "X is a great place to connect with your friends who also enjoy recreational activities! 😀🏈🏓"
1. Ever wonder what the rest of the Mona Lisa looks like?
Got
@Adobe
Firefly to help fill out the background for me with the power of AI
Here's what the backgrounds of the most famous paintings in the world look like with AI:
If you own a phone or computer you should read the ODNI report ASAP, the extent to which data previously only available via governmental spy agency dragnets can now be simply purchased without any legal oversight is a genuine societal crisis.
NEW: After a Google employee circulated a letter and petition against the company's military work with Israel, he was confronted by HR over allegations his email sympathized with terrorism
BREAKING: Mission Local has learned that San Francisco police this morning traveled to Emeryville to make an arrest in the April 4 killing of tech exec Bob Lee.
The alleged killer also works in tech and purportedly knew Lee.
From
@esksf
NEW: It turns out Heat Initiative, that brand new organization pressuring Apple to implement its abandoned 2021 proposal to scan everyone's photos for child abuse imagery, is part of a massive US political dark money network
Calling people "weird" is such feminine behavior. Textbook sex difference: Men engage in open conflict; women police conformity. It's honestly disorienting to hear male politicians use the line.
Look, maybe UFOs are real, I have no idea. But what I do know is that people who advocate for the existence of global Vatican conspiracies tend to be non-credible.
This is a particularly galling bit of ignorance for an outspoken Russia hawk! Like, maybe the Caucasus might be a little piece of world history worth boning up on if you're going to make a name for yourself weighing in on Russian invasions, you know
@lmatsakis
Thank god American brands would never employ deeply exploitative, brutally crushing labor practices and I can remain feeling nationally superior, I typed into my MacBook
I have had at least 5 friends (including my husband, who runs troll accounts as a hobby harassing certain obv state actors) that they don't get crypto scams anymore (which used to flood Twitter) or they got all their troll accounts taken down. Noticeable change happening.
Accept no imitations: I spoke with the original Guccifer 1.0, the man who brought us George Bush's private paintings, Hillary's private email address, and perhaps the Trump presidency. It's his first interview since leaving prison.
Exclusive: Two of Israel's leading weapons manufacturers, whose missiles and drones are currently being used on Gaza, are required to purchase cloud services from Amazon and/or Google via Project Nimbus, according to government procurement documents
NEW: I found a federal contract document that shows U.S. Special Operations Command wants to use deepfakes for global disinformation/deception campaigns
The U.S. government has spent years warning the technology could destabilize democratic societies
NEW: Evangelical Christians are fusing War on Terror counterinsurgency techniques w/ advanced surveillance tools to track down sex workers at regular events called the “Skull Games.” The intelligence they collect is then handed over to police.
The IDF is posting air strike warnings to Palestinians via Facebook—but internet access across Gaza has been decimated, with fiber optic cables blown apart by air strikes and ISP offices leveled
NEW: In an internal Meta threat assessment I obtained, WhatsApp engineers warned users are vulnerable to government spying that unmasks who's talking to who. Employees later speculated Israel may be exploiting this to target and kill across the Gaza Strip
Wow, this is genuinely concerning. Also, for no reason at all here's a link to NASA's own website discussing how the DoD helped design the Space Shuttle so it could carry out military missions
23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link. Site traffic doesn’t change this likelihood: news sites with a high level of site traffic and those with less are about equally likely to contain broken links.
The Army is buying ad-based smartphone location data in order to (among other things) help it find foreigners writing “negative” posts about the top brass, according to an unredacted copy of a surveillance contract we obtained
NEW: An Israeli volunteer group says it's established back channels to Big Tech social media platforms to help remove "inflammatory" posts about the war in Gaza; its organizers include an ex-Knesset member
The idea that charging sad, lonely, isolated people $1/minute to talk to what is basically a sophisticated magic 8 ball is somehow meaningfully helping them is really insane and beyond bleak
You might see a lot of cranks talking about this, so it's important to point out that *Meta* is the one blocking access to news content, not the Canadian government, because they're protesting a law that would require them to pay news outlets
The underlying logic of this bill is so strange to me—imagine trying to explain to someone why it's not OK for someone in China to buy and freely use this kind of data about you but OK for another American to do the same
After Google's logo disappeared from the sponsors section of the recent "IT for IDF" conference, its organizers claimed the company had been listed in error.
But I reviewed an internal Google document listing the company as the event's sponsor.
This is stunning and absolutely insane: After providing data to a journalist via public records request—which is to say, they were obtained 100% legally—the city of Los Angeles is now SUING him because they claim they gave more data than intended.
UPDATE on LAPD's photo drop: The city of LA is suing me and the StopLAPDSpying Coalition, alleging that I illegally posses the photos they gave me.
This comes after they demanded I return the flash drive and delete digital copies. See 2nd & 3rd screenshot.
Have you ever wished you could place phone calls on an Android device, but through a paid service that's constantly breaking and might ban you arbitrarily? Your day has come
a VC generating a completely bogus ranking of most dangerous cities (with San Francisco erroneously at
#1
) via ChatGPT is a really incredible encapsulation of a whole lot of things
very funny for Apple to release Mental Health Emotional Wellness OS features and then also a computer you wear on your face to watch ted lasso at the beach
(Of course this contradiction, between professed privacy values and the direct facilitation of surveillance, absolutely applies to Twitter before Musk bought it)
I just opted out of the CBP facial recognition scan to get on an international flight and I can hear all the people behind me speculating about why/how, the main theory is that “I’m in the FBI or something” and showed them a “special badge” (it was my boarding pass)
NEW: Internal company materials from Cruise show the self-driving car company knew its vehicles had trouble driving safely around children and couldn't detect giant holes in the road, but kept on cruising
According to contract documents I reviewed, the plan will not only target high school kids while at school, but will use device identifiers to continue recruitment outreach once they're back home—along with their parents.
I wrote about an under-discussed aspect of the national TikTok freakout: Jacob Helberg, who has been instrumental in driving anti-TikTok fear in Congress, also works at Palantir, which stands to immensely benefit from US/China tensions or conflict
A Russian student sent to summer camp in North Korea says he played video games where hamsters driving tanks had to destroy the White House. NK uses propaganda to influence young minds, a strategy I observed firsthand during my reporting trips.
@sarasidnerCNN
@NewsCentralCNN
Worth pointing out that Snowden materials prove Palantir, where vocal anti-TikTok figures like Jacob Helberg and now (reportedly soon) Mike Gallagher work, helped the NSA conduct exactly the kind of mass surveillance they cite as a reason to ban TikTok
The plan calls for mile-wide geofences, which according to a review of Google Maps means dozens of nearby middle/elementary schools, public parks, athletic facilities, churches, daycare centers, and other facilities where kids congregate could receive militray recruiting ads too
Google has repeatedly claimed that Project Nimbus doesn't involve "weapons"—but a document I obtained states Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems are both obligated to buy their cloud services through Nimbus. Google declined to explain this.
Google told the public its partnership with Saudi Aramco wouldn't touch Aramco's oil/gas business. I looked into it and that's simply not true. Google Cloud is already being used to help Aramco's methane gas pipelines
NEW: Meta is considering stricter censorship of the word "Zionist," a move that could hamper the ability of billions of people to criticize Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza
For instance, Meadowcreek High School in Norcross, GA, one of the targeted schools, is next to a nonprofit that helps low income families/children with disabilities—they'll be within the geofence.
Some more background, in case you're interested: Since 2016, after the ACLU caught Twitter selling geolocation data to police, the company adamantly denied that it allowed platform data to be used for surveillance purposes, and added explicit bans to its developer policy
@pap3rw8
It looks like a news media helicopter, not a police helicopter, my broader point was more about where money winds up in our society, generally speaking.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville is the only place in the US I'm aware of that has a statue of a literal Nazi party and SS member proudly on display
1. Ponzi schemer turned rookie politician
@TTuberville
gives his constituents and
@GovernorKayIvey
@alabamachambers
a lesson in hardball politics.
The Loss of Space Command Headquarters Brings an Alabama City Down to Earth
As president, I will make sure that your right to use and hold Bitcoin is inviolable. Bitcoin is not only a bulwark against totalitarianism and the manipulation of our money supply, it points the way toward a future in which government institutions are more transparent and more
New: A team of university researchers took out a series of Facebook ads for various colleges and found the platform's ad delivery algorithm disproportionately encouraged black users to enroll in crummy predatory for-profit schools
Ever read Ozymandias and find it to be a little "depressing"? With AI, you'll never have to encounter a single remotely uncomfortable or challenging thought ever again! The whole statue is now intact! Look on my works, ye mighty, and feel great!
@DavidNSch
@imillhiser
imagine if—and just hear me out, I realize this sounds like something from a science fiction novel—the water in the pool was cleaned