All posts tagged: privacy

Meta Releases Muse, a Personal AI Agent With Privacy ‘Built Into It’

Meta Releases Muse, a Personal AI Agent With Privacy ‘Built Into It’

Published by skeptic

Meta announced Tuesday the release of Muse, a personal AI agent that people can message to automate digital tasks in a secure cloud environment, all while relying on security and privacy that the company says is “built into it” from the start. Meta says Muse is rolling out today for iOS and Android users in a dedicated Muse app, as well as the website Muse.ai. The company also says users can directly message Muse in WhatsApp to interact with the agent. Meta says users of its AI glasses will soon be able to interact with its Muse agent as well. Meta says people can try out Muse for free, but users who want to automate lots of digital tasks will need one of the company’s AI subscription plans. Muse is Meta’s latest attempt to compete with viral AI agents such as OpenClaw and Instinct, which users can message with to automate digital tasks. Muse is a product of Meta Superintelligence Labs, the AI unit CEO Mark Zuckerberg formed roughly a year ago to catch up …

Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK

Apple and Google Miss Deadline to Block Child Nudity on Their Phones in the UK

Published by skeptic

In June, the UK government told Big Tech it had three months to make taking, viewing, or sharing images of child nudity on their devices impossible. “I expect tech firms to make that happen,” said then prime minister Keir Starmer. “But if they choose not to, then we will act and change the law.” That deadline arrived on Tuesday, and the government says that the likes of Apple and Google have failed. As a result, they will be changing the law to introduce what the UK government claims will be world-first legislation of its kind. While engineers from Apple and Google had been working with the government since June to make changes, “they do not meet the scale of this crisis,” Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media, and sport, told lawmakers on Tuesday as she introduced the legislation. Under the new plan, companies failing to build the child protection solutions into all existing and newly sold smartphones and tablets in the UK would face fines and potential criminal liability for their …

OpenAI Agents Hacked Another Website

OpenAI Agents Hacked Another Website

Published by skeptic

After reporting last week that the surveillance company Flock Safety is building an AI search tool for law enforcement, WIRED reconstructed Flock’s latest search tool from code that the company sends to a police officer’s browser and uncovered key details about how the tool works. OpenAI said this week that its Astra model, which will have a private release soon, is its first model with cybersecurity-related capabilities that the company defines as posing a “critical” risk in public release. Meanwhile, the AI chatbot platforms Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok all suffered outages on Thursday at nearly the exact same time. But while xAI said the Grok outage resulted from issues at a Memphis data center, the causes of OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s outages are unclear. The US has been using a high-energy laser to shoot down drones near the Mexico border as part of an initiative to adopt new-generation directed-energy weapons capable of detecting, tracking, and destroying drones with a concentrated beam of light. And as part of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement inquiry into the identities …

Automakers Want Congress to Ban Chinese-Made Cars, Citing Data Privacy

Automakers Want Congress to Ban Chinese-Made Cars, Citing Data Privacy

Published by skeptic

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobby group for the auto industry, wants an outright ban on Chinese-made cars, parts and software. John Bozzella, the AAI’s CEO and president, sent a letter to congressional leaders this week that asks Congress to ban selling, importing and manufacturing Chinese-made cars, hardware and software. There is currently bipartisan support in Washington to do just that, including the “Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026,” which “prohibits the importation, manufacture, sale, resale, or introduction into US interstate commerce of connected vehicles and related software and hardware components associated with China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.”  In the letter, Bozzella said the Chinese government’s policies are “rooted in a well-documented pattern of unfair trade, subsidies, intellectual property theft and surveillance.” The AAI expressed urgency and asked Congress to enact a ban before ending its session for this year. The AAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Existing automakers selling to US consumers have had their own brushes with regulators over drivers’ privacy. In 2025, the Federal Trade Commission ordered General Motors …

ICE Wants to Know Who Bought a Certain Green Beanie From REI in the Last 2 Years

ICE Wants to Know Who Bought a Certain Green Beanie From REI in the Last 2 Years

Published by skeptic

Did you buy a beanie from REI recently? The Department of Homeland Security might be looking for you. New court filings allege that Homeland Security Investigations agents subpoenaed the outdoor retailer in March, requesting the transaction information for “all persons” in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area who had purchased a specific type of dark green beanie from the company since 2024. REI did not respond to questions about whether it had complied with the request and, if so, how many people are affected. The filings are part of a broader lawsuit by the federal government against 39 people who attended an ICE protest at a church whose pastor also worked as an acting ICE field office director. Both protesters and journalists who were attempting to cover the event, including former CNN host Don Lemon, are now defendants. The subpoena to REI was one of 92 sent as part of HSI’s investigation into the defendants, according to the court filings. Other recipients included social media companies, airlines, telecom providers, a car rental company, and a state …

Prediction Market Betting Is Getting People Banned and Arrested

Prediction Market Betting Is Getting People Banned and Arrested

Published by skeptic

Leah Feiger: All right. Do you guys remember George Santos? Brian Barrett: How could I forget? Zoë Schiffer: Absolutely do, but wow, did not expect we would be talking about him again this soon, I have to say. Leah Feiger: Former US representative expelled from Congress in 2023, accused of fraud and theft, and doing it with such a plum that the story just couldn’t help but take national news by storm. Brian Barrett: I want to be clear too. He wasn’t just accused, he went to jail. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I was going to say very credibly accused. Leah Feiger: Anyways, he’s back in the headlines this week. On Monday we learned that Santos was hit with a lifetime ban from prediction market platform Kalshi, and a $71,000 fine, allegedly for trying to manipulate a bet on whether he’d show up to Trump’s State of the Union. To tell us all the full details, we are joined by WIRED senior correspondent Kate Knibbs. Kate Knibbs: Hi guys, how are you doing? Leah Feiger: Kate, …

This Is Flock’s AI Search Tool for Cops

This Is Flock’s AI Search Tool for Cops

Published by skeptic

Flock tells WIRED that officers cannot run searches using prohibited attributes, including religion and nationality, and that an attempt to search prohibited terms “will be blocked.” Asked what circumstances produce a warning in those two categories instead, the company did not say. When a T-shirt or a bumper sticker draws a warning because the text includes speech with “constitutional protections,” officers are told the search will be logged and that administrators will be notified. Officers then have to tick an acknowledgment box and leave a comment before they’re free to click Continue With Search Anyway. Flock says the warning leaves room for legitimate work, offering as an example a victim who describes a suspect in a biker-gang jacket bearing “a certain gang logo or emblem containing a flag or other insignia.” An officer who proceeds is reported to an administrator at their own department for review. Kate Ruane, who directs the Center for Democracy and Technology’s free expression project, has spent years studying how automated moderation systems work. Political, social, and cultural expression is “an …

More Americans oppose police license plate cameras than support them: survey

More Americans oppose police license plate cameras than support them: survey

Published by skeptic

The growing backlash against surveillance companies like Flock may have reached a tipping point. A new survey has found that more Americans oppose these surveillance cameras than support them. According to a new YouGov survey of 20,000 people across the U.S. that was shared exclusively with The Washington Post, 46% of respondents opposed the company’s surveillance cameras in their communities, while 38% supported them. This is a reversal from last year, when the majority of survey respondents said they were in favor. Flock is one of the more visible surveillance companies, operating more than 120,000 license plate readers across the U.S. that can track the whereabouts of vehicles. The company has been embroiled in controversy following reports of police abusing the cameras’ surveillance, which resulted in dozens of U.S. communities rejecting Flock’s cameras or canceling their contracts amid privacy concerns. The survey also reported that more respondents said the surveillance would not make them feel any safer. When reached by TechCrunch, Flock claimed there was wide support for its surveillance technology, but acknowledged that “support …

Meta Keeps Trying to Fix Glasses Privacy Concerns With New Update

Meta Keeps Trying to Fix Glasses Privacy Concerns With New Update

Published by skeptic

This summer feels like it’s been awash with smart glasses privacy concerns, and Meta’s been in the spotlight for all of it. A new glasses update, the second of the summer, aims to keep up with bad actors who are disabling or covering the smart glass camera lights. But it likely won’t be the last. Alex Himel, head of Meta’s wearables division, posted about the changes yesterday, promising “we’re going to keep rolling out updates like this to make sure the capture LED can reliably alert bystanders when photos or videos are being captured for someone’s gallery.” The firmware update should be automatically applied to Meta’s glasses, but in my experience, the arrival of software updates is hard to predict. Bystander awareness of smart glass camera recording is only one of Meta’s privacy problems, the other being how Meta handles photos and videos in the cloud on Meta’s end. But these concerns about smart glasses don’t only apply to Meta: Google and Samsung are next on deck with their own line of camera-enabled glasses this …

I Asked 100 Companies for My Data. I Got Deletion Notices Instead

I Asked 100 Companies for My Data. I Got Deletion Notices Instead

Published by skeptic

I filed a request with McDonald’s earlier this month to access all of the personal data the fast food company collected about me, and I received a stunning 515-page report a few days later that detailed my app interactions in granular detail and predicted I would never stop eating there. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, I have the legal right to request access to information from large companies that collect personal data. So I was curious what others might have on me, and I spent the next week filing more than 100 requests. The CCPA went into effect in 2020, and three of its key provisions are the right to opt out of the selling of personal information, the right to delete that info, and the right to request a copy for yourself. I focused solely on the latter—access requests—to better understand what data is being collected. Most companies must list two ways for you to file. These are often via a web form, phone number, or email address, as designated in their privacy …