ICE can now spy on every phone in your neighborhood

After a federal On Wednesday, an officer shot and killed Renee Good, 37, in Minneapolis. WIRED surfaced in December in federal court of the reported ICE shooter, Jonathan Ross. He said he was a firearms trainer and that he had had “hundreds” of encounters with drivers in a professional capacity during enforcement actions. Separately, we looked at how tactics behind protest policing shift toward intentional antagonism. If you haven’t seen it, here’s our guide to safe protesting in the age of surveillance.

Meanwhile, the AI-powered chatbot Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, was everywhere this week because the platform expanded access to digital “undressing” capabilities which allow users to generate nude images of people and then post them on the social media platform WIRED review found Grok generating graphic content– including violent sexual images and videos, as well as media depicting apparent minors – which are available on Grok’s official website and are even more explicit than X’s content. All of this has led researchers and activists to ask why Grok and X are still available in Apple and Google app stores when companies removed other “nudify” apps for violating their terms. On Friday, X appeared to take steps to limit who can generate images with Grok to paying, “verified” users. But in practice, the chatbot is still used to create sexualized images of “undressing” on the platformeven if the functionality is no longer as accessible as before.

If you, like billions of other people around the world, are a WhatsApp user, we have tips on end-to-end encrypted communication app features that can improve its privacy and security even more. Additionally, although invasive spyware is still relatively rare, it continues to proliferate around the world. guide to protecting your smartphone.

And there’s more! Every week, we round up security and privacy news that we haven’t covered in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Documents obtained by 404 Media shed new light on how surveillance tools Tangles and Webloc from a company called Penlink can provide information to ICE agents after the agency contracted those services in September. Social media and phone surveillance platforms can be used to monitor neighborhoods or blocks for cell phones and track devices over time, potentially revealing where people live, work and visit. Penlink purchases vast amounts of commercial location data to augment and expand the network.

“This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an uncontrollable agency. This granular location information paints a detailed picture of who we are, where we go, and who we spend time with,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media.

Over the past two weeks, thousands of Iranians have demonstrated against the country’s brutal regime and leaders, calling for reforms after protests over poor economic conditions began. In response to growing unrest, the country’s supreme leader indicated tough measures potential enforcement measures can happen. As part of the country’s response, he triggered a total internet outage: As of January 9, Iranians have been without connection for more than 24 hours. Reports indicate that people were unable to access social media, leaving them without contact with family members and preventing them from using ATMs and bank cards.

This is not the first time that Iran has cut off the Internet for millions of people. The country, which built the technical capacity to digitally isolate itself from the global Internet for years, previously cutting connections in 2025, 2022And 2019. Often, these internet shutdowns were designed to prevent protesters from communicating with each other and organizing, to limit the dissemination of information, and to prevent the release of video footage showing police brutality. spread around the world. They also cause huge self-inflicted wounds economic damage to Iran.

In October, officials in the United States and United Kingdom sanctioned Cambodian national Chen Zhi and his companyPrince Holding Group, for allegedly running fraudulent forced labor complexes across Cambodia – and a $15 billion fraud operation in the process. This week, Chen was extradited to China from Cambodia. He was shown on television wearing a balaclava and handcuffs as he was escorted off a plane in Beijing. The Guardian reports that the charges against Chen in China are “not immediately clear,” although officials have said his case is part of a broader crackdown on the notorious fraud schemes that have bilked billions of people around the world.

China’s notorious state-backed spy hacker Salt Typhoon allegedly compromised the email accounts of a number of US congressional committee staffers in a campaign detected in December. The attackers targeted the communications of staff of the House of Representatives China Committee as well as those of the Intelligence Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. This incident is just the latest in a wide-ranging series of public and private sector breaches by Salt Typhoon that have given Chinese intelligence services deep insight into U.S. government communications.