fjo3 shares a report from Reason Magazine: Effective January 1, 2027, providers of computer operating systems in California will be required to implement age verification. That's just part of a wave of state and national laws attempting to limit children's access to potentially risky content without considering the perils such laws themselves pose. Now, not a moment too soon, over 400 computer scientists have signed an open letter warning that the rush to protect children from online dangers threatens to introduce new risks including censorship, centralized power, and loss of privacy. They caution that age-verification requirements "might cause more harm than good." The group of computer scientists from around the world cautions that "those deciding which age-based controls need to exist, and those enforcing them gain a tremendous influence on what content is accessible to whom on the internet." They add that "this influence could be used to censor information and prevent users from accessing services."

"Regulating the use of VPNs, or subjecting their use to age assurance controls, will decrease the capability of users to defend their privacy online. This will not only force regular users to leave a larger footprint on the network, but will leave a number of at-risk populations unprotected, such as journalists, activists, or domestic abuse victims." It continues: "We note that we do not believe that trying to regulate VPN use for non-compliant users would be any more effective than trying to forbid the use of end-to-end encrypted communication for criminals. Secure cryptography is widely available and can no longer be put back into a box."

"If minors or adults are deplatformed via age-related bans, they are likely to migrate to find similar services," warn the scientists. "Since the main platforms would all be regulated, it is likely that they would migrate to fringe sites that escape regulation." With data on everyone collected in order to restrict the activites of minors, data abuses and privacy risks increase. "This in itself increases privacy risks, with data being potentially abused by the provider itself or its subcontractors, or third parties that get access to it, e.g., after a data breach, like the 70K users that had their government ID photos leaked after appealing age assessment errors on Discord."

Instead of mandated age restrictions, the letter urges lawmakers to consider the dangers and suggest regulating social media algorithms instead. They also recommend "support for parents to locally prevent access to non-age-appropriate content or apps, without age-based control needing to be implemented by service providers."

Security researchers say a highly sophisticated iPhone exploitation toolkit dubbed "Coruna," which possibly originated from a U.S. government contractor, has spread from suspected Russian espionage operations to crypto-stealing criminal campaigns. Apple has patched the exploited vulnerabilities in newer iOS versions, but tens of thousands of devices may have already been compromised. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from Wired's report: Security researchers at Google on Tuesday released a report describing what they're calling "Coruna," a highly sophisticated iPhone hacking toolkit that includes five complete hacking techniques capable of bypassing all the defenses of an iPhone to silently install malware on a device when it visits a website containing the exploitation code. In total, Coruna takes advantage of 23 distinct vulnerabilities in iOS, a rare collection of hacking components that suggests it was created by a well-resourced, likely state-sponsored group of hackers.

In fact, Google traces components of Coruna to hacking techniques it spotted in use in February of last year and attributed to what it describes only as a "customer of a surveillance company." Then, five months later, Google says a more complete version of Coruna reappeared in what appears to have been an espionage campaign carried out by a suspected Russian spy group, which hid the hacking code in a common visitor-counting component of Ukrainian websites. Finally, Google spotted Coruna in use yet again in what seems to have been a purely profit-focused hacking campaign, infecting Chinese-language crypto and gambling sites to deliver malware that steals victims cryptocurrency.

Conspicuously absent from Google's report is any mention of who the original surveillance company "customer" that deployed Coruna may have been. But the mobile security company iVerify, which also analyzed a version of Coruna it obtained from one of the infected Chinese sites, suggests the code may well have started life as a hacking kit built for or purchased by the US government. Google and iVerify both note that Coruna contains multiple components previously used in a hacking operation known as "Triangulation" that was discovered targeting Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in 2023, which the Russian government claimed was the work of the NSA. (The US government didn't respond to Russia's claim.)

Coruna's code also appears to have been originally written by English-speaking coders, notes iVerify's cofounder Rocky Cole. "It's highly sophisticated, took millions of dollars to develop, and it bears the hallmarks of other modules that have been publicly attributed to the US government," Cole tells WIRED. "This is the first example we've seen of very likely US government tools -- based on what the code is telling us -- spinning out of control and being used by both our adversaries and cybercriminal groups." Regardless of Coruna's origin, Google warns that a highly valuable and rare hacking toolkit appears to have traveled through a series of unlikely hands, and now exists in the wild where it could still be adopted -- or adapted -- by any hacker group seeking to target iPhone users. "How this proliferation occurred is unclear, but suggests an active market for 'second hand' zero-day exploits," Google's report reads. "Beyond these identified exploits, multiple threat actors have now acquired advanced exploitation techniques that can be re-used and modified with newly identified vulnerabilities."

OpenAI is amending its Pentagon contract after CEO Sam Altman acknowledged it appeared "opportunistic and sloppy." On Monday night, Altman said the company would explicitly restrict its technology from being used by intelligence agencies and for mass domestic surveillance. The Guardian reports: OpenAI, which has more than 900 million users of ChatGPT, made the deal almost immediately after the Pentagon's existing AI contractor, Anthropic, was dropped. [...] The deal prompted an online backlash against OpenAI, with users of X and Reddit encouraging a "delete ChatGPT" campaign. One post read: "You're now training a war machine. Let's see proof of cancellation."

In a message to employees reposted on X, the OpenAI CEO said the original deal announced on Friday had been struck too quickly after Anthropic was dropped. "We shouldn't have rushed to get this out on Friday," Altman wrote. "The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy." Upon announcing the deal, OpenAI had said the contract had "more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic's."

[...] However, observers including OpenAI's former head of policy research, Miles Brundage, have queried how OpenAI has managed to secure a deal that assuages ethical concerns Anthropic believed were insurmountable. Posting on X, he wrote: "OpenAI employees' default assumption here should unfortunately be that OpenAI caved + framed it as not caving, and screwed Anthropic while framing it as helping them." Brundage added: "To be clear, OAI is a complex org, and I think many people involved in this worked hard for what they consider a fair outcome. Some others I do not trust at all, particularly as it relates to dealings with government and politics."

In his X post, he also wrote that he would "rather go to jail" than follow an unconstitutional order from the government. "We want to work through democratic processes," Brundage wrote. "It should be the government making the key decisions about society. We want to have a voice, and a seat at the table where we can share our expertise, and to fight for principles of liberty."

The Supreme Court of the United States declined to review a case challenging the U.S. Copyright Office's stance that AI-generated works lack the required human authorship for copyright protection, leaving lower court rulings intact. The Verge reports: The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court's decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can't be copyrighted. In 2019, the U.S. Copyright Office rejected Thaler's request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn't include "human authorship," disqualifying it from copyright protection.

After Thaler appealed the decision, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in 2023 that "human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright." That ruling was later upheld in 2025 by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. As reported by Reuters, Thaler asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling in October 2025, arguing it "created a chilling effect on anyone else considering using AI creatively." The U.S. federal circuit court also determined that AI systems can't patent inventions because they aren't human, which the U.S. Patent Office reaffirmed in 2024 with new guidance. The UK Supreme Court made a similar determination.

Linn County, Iowa has adopted what may be one of the nation's strictest local zoning ordinances for data centers, requiring detailed water studies, formal water-use agreements, 1,000-foot residential setbacks, noise and light limits, and infrastructure compensation. "But seated beneath a van-sized American flag hanging from the rafters of the drafty Palo Community Center gymnasium, residents asked for even stronger protections," reports Inside Climate News. "One by one, they approached the microphone at the front of the gym to voice concerns about water use, electricity rates, light pollution, the impacts of low-frequency noise on livestock, and the county's ability to enforce the terms of the ordinance. Some, including Dorothy Landt of Palo, called for a complete moratorium on new data center development."

Landt asked: "Why has Linn County, Iowa, become a dumping ground for soon-to-be obsolete technology that spoils our landscape and robs us of our resources? While I admire the efforts of the Board of Supervisors to propose a data center ordinance, I would prefer to see all future data centers banned from Linn County." From the report: The county is already home to two major data center projects, operated by Google and QTS. Both are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa's second-largest city, and are therefore subject to its laws. The new ordinance would apply only to unincorporated areas of the county, which make up more than two-thirds of its geographic footprint. [...] In drafting the ordinance, [Charlie Nichols, director of planning and development for Linn County] and his staff drew on the experiences of communities nationwide, meeting with local government officials in regions that have seen massive booms in data center development, including several counties in northern Virginia, the "data center capital of the world."

As data center development balloons, many communities that initially zoned the operations as warehouses or standard commercial users are abandoning that practice, Nichols noted. The extreme energy and water demands of data centers simply cannot be accounted for by existing zoning frameworks, he said. "These are generational uses with generational infrastructure impacts, and treating them as a normal warehouse or normal commercial user is just not working." [...] The Linn County, Iowa, ordinance goes one step further than tightening existing zoning rules. Instead, it creates a new, exclusive-use zoning district for data centers, granting county officials the power to set specific application requirements and development standards for projects. No other counties in the state have introduced similar zoning requirements, said Nichols. In fact, few jurisdictions nationwide have. [...]

From its first reading to final adoption, the ordinance has expanded to include language setting light pollution standards, requiring a waste management plan, including the Iowa DNR in the water-use agreement to address potential well interference issues and requiring an applicant-led public meeting before any zoning commission meetings. "I am very confident that no ordinance for data centers in Iowa is asking for more information or asking for more requirements to be met than our ordinance right now," said Nichols at the final reading. The Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance has said that it strongly supports current and future data center development in the area. The new ordinance is not an effective moratorium, Nichols said. He said he "strongly believes" that a data center can be built within the adopted framework.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The B.C. government says this Sunday will be the last time British Columbians have to change their clocks. The province will be permanently adopting daylight time and the March 8 "spring forward" will be the last time change, Premier David Eby announced Monday. "We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks just one more time -- and then never again," Eby said. Residents will have eight months to prepare for Nov. 1, 2026, when the clocks would have been turned back one hour, but will now remain the same. B.C.'s new time zone will be called "Pacific Time," according to the province. Further reading: Permanent Standard Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's largest newspaper, has begun to feature a new byline. On recent articles about an ice carving festival, a medical research discovery and a roaming pack of chicken-slaying dogs, a reporter's name is paired with the words "Advance Local Express Desk." It means: This article was drafted by artificial intelligence. "This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff," reads a note at the bottom of each robot-penned piece, differentiating it from those still written primarily by journalists. The disclosure has done little to stem the backlash that caromed across the news industry after the paper's editor, Chris Quinn, published a Feb. 14 column lamenting that a fresh-out-of-college job applicant withdrew from a reporting fellowship when they found out the position included no writing -- just filing notes to an AI writing tool.

"Artificial intelligence is not bad for newsrooms. It's the future of them," Quinn wrote, adding that "by removing writing from reporters' workloads, we've effectively freed up an extra workday for them each week." [...] Quinn, for his part, says his paper's use of AI to find, draft and edit stories is a success story that others must emulate if they want to survive. "It's a tool," he said in a phone interview last week. "If AI can do part of our job, then why not let it -- and have people do the part it can't do?" He added that the paper's embrace of technology -- including using AI to write stories summarizing its reporters' podcasts and its readers' letters to the editor -- is already boosting its bottom line, helping it retain staff at a time when other newspapers are shrinking or even shutting down. Just 130 miles east of Cleveland, the 240-year-old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said in January that it will close its doors this spring.

Quinn, who has led the Plain Dealer's newsroom since 2013, said its newsroom has shrunk from some 400 employees in the late 1990s to just 71 today. Over the past three years, Quinn has implemented a suite of AI tools with various purposes: transcribing local government meetings, scraping municipal websites for story leads, cleaning up typos in story drafts, suggesting headlines and helping reporters draft follow-ups to articles they've already written. He said he is particularly pleased with an AI tool that turns podcasts by the paper's reporters into stories for the website, which he said generated more than 10 million page views last year. He has documented those efforts in letters to readers and sought their feedback. But the paper's latest experiment -- using AI to turn reporters' notes into full story drafts -- has aroused indignation online and anxiety within the paper's ranks.

The Norwegian Consumer Council, a government funded organization advocating for consumer's rights, released a report on the trend of "enshittification" in digital consumer goods and services, suggesting ways consumers for consumers to resist. But they've also dramatized the problem with a funny four-minute video about the man whose calls for him to make things shitty for people.

"It's not just your imagination. Digital services are getting worse," the video concludes — before adding that "Luckily, it doesn't have to be this way." The Consumer Council's announcement recommends:

• Stronger rights for consumers to control, adapt, repair, and alter their products and services,
• Interoperability, data portability, and decentralisation as the norm, so the threshold for moving to different services becomes as low as possible,
• Deterrent and vigorous enforcement of competition law, so that Big Tech companies are not allowed to indiscriminately acquire start-ups, competitors or otherwise steer the market to their advantage,
• Better financing of initiatives to build, maintain or improve alternative digital services and infrastructure based on open source code and open protocols,
• Reduce public sector dependence on big tech, to regain control and to contribute to a functioning market for service providers that respect fundamental rights,
• Deterrent and consistent enforcement of other laws, including consumer and data protection law.

The Norwegian Consumer Council is also joining 58 organisations and experts in a letter asking the Norwegian government to rebalance power with enforcement resources and by prioritizing the procurement of services based on open source code. And "Our sister organisations are sending similar letters to their own governments in 12 countries."

They're also sending a second letter to the European Commission with 29 civil society organisations (including the EFF and Amnesty International) warning about the risks of deregulation and calling for reducing dependency on big tech.

Thanks to Slashdot reader DeanonymizedCoward for sharing the news.

"Anthropic may have lost out on doing business with the US government," reports Engadget, "but it's gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store's Top Free Apps leaderboard."

Anthropic's Claude AI assistant had already leaped to the #2 slot on Apple's chart by late Friday," CNBC reported Saturday: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it.
Sunday Engadget reported Anthropic's "very public spat" with the Pentagon "led to a wave of user support that finally allowed Claude to dethrone OpenAI's ChatGPT on the App Store as the most downloaded free app."

. Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "

Saturday afternoon Sam Altman announced he'd start answering questions on X.com about OpenAI's work with America's Department of War — and all the developments over the past few days. (After that department's negotions had failed with Anthropic, they announced they'd stop using Anthropic's technology and threatened to designate it a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security". Then they'd reached a deal for OpenAI's technology — though Altman says it includes OpenAI's own similar prohibitions against using their products for domestic mass surveillance and requiring "human responsibility" for the use of force in autonomous weapon systems.)

Altman said Saturday that enforcing that "Supply-Chain Risk" designation on Anthropic "would be very bad for our industry and our country, and obviously their company. We said [that] to the Department of War before and after. We said that part of the reason we were willing to do this quickly was in the hopes of de-esclation.... We should all care very much about the precedent... To say it very clearly: I think this is a very bad decision from the Department of War and I hope they reverse it. If we take heat for strongly criticizing it, so be it."

Altman also said that for a long time, OpenAI was planning to do "non-classified work only," but this week found the Department of War "flexible on what we needed..." Sam Altman: The reason for rushing is an attempt to de-escalate the situation. I think the current path things are on is dangerous for Anthropic, healthy competition, and the U.S. We negotiated to make sure similar terms would be offered to all other AI labs.

I know what it's like to feel backed into a corner, and I think it's worth some empathy to the Department of War. They are... a very dedicated group of people with, as I mentioned, an extremely important mission. I cannot imagine doing their work. Our industry tells them "The technology we are building is going to be the high order bit in geopolitical conflict. China is rushing ahead. You are very behind." And then we say "But we won't help you, and we think you are kind of evil." I don't think I'd react great in that situation. I do not believe unelected leaders of private companies should have as much power as our democratically elected government. But I do think we need to help them.

Question: Are you worried at all about the potential for things to go really south during a possible dispute over what's legal or not later on and be deemed a supply chain risk...?

Sam Altman: Yes, I am. If we have to take on that fight we will, but it clearly exposes us to some risk. I am still very hopeful this is going to get resolved, and part of why we wanted to act fast was to help increase the chances of that...

Question: Why the rush to sign the deal ? Obviously the optics don't look great.

Sam Altman: It was definitely rushed, and the optics don't look good. We really wanted to de-escalate things, and we thought the deal on offer was good.

If we are right and this does lead to a de-escalation between the Department of War and the industry, we will look like geniuses, and a company that took on a lot of pain to do things to help the industry. If not, we will continue to be characterized as as rushed and uncareful. I don't where it's going to land, but I have already seen promising signs. I think a good relationship between the government and the companies developing this technology is critical over the next couple of years...

Question: What was the core difference why you think the Department of War accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic?

Sam Altman: [...] We believe in a layered approach to safety — building a safety stack, deploying FDEs [embedded Forward Deployed Engineers] and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the Department of War. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one...

I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did...

Question: Were the terms that you accepted the same ones Anthropic rejected?

Sam Altman: No, we had some different ones. But our terms would now be available to them (and others) if they wanted.

Question: Will you turn off the tool if they violate the rules?

Sam Altman: Yes, we will turn it off in that very unlikely event, but we believe the U.S. government is an institution that does its best to follow law and policy. What we won't do is turn it off because we disagree with a particular (legal military) decision. We trust their authority.
Questions were also answered by OpenAI's head of National Security Partnerships (who at one point posted that they'd managed the White House response to the Snowden disclosures and helped write the post-Snowden policies constraining surveillance during the Obama years.) And they stressed that with OpenAI's deal with Department of War, "We control how we train the models and what types of requests the models refuse." Question: Are employees allowed to opt out of working on Department of War-related projects?

Answer: We won't ask employees to support Department of War-related projects if they don't want to.

Question: How much is the deal worth?

Answer: It's a few million $, completely inconsequential compared to our $20B+ in revenue, and definitely not worth the cost of a PR blowup. We're doing it because it's the right thing to do for the country, at great cost to ourselves, not because of revenue impact...

Question: Can you explicitly state which specific technical safeguard OpenAI has that allowed you to sign what Anthropic called a 'threat to democratic values'?

Answer: We think the deal we made has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic's. Other AI labs (including Anthropic) have reduced or removed their safety guardrails and relied primarily on usage policies as their primary safeguards in national security deployments. Usage policies, on their own, are not a guarantee of anything. Any responsible deployment of AI in classified environments should involve layered safeguards including a prudent safety stack, limits on deployment architecture, and the direct involvement of AI experts in consequential AI use cases. These are the terms we negotiated in our contract.
They also detailed OpenAI's position on LinkedIn: Deployment architecture matters more than contract language. Our contract limits our deployment to cloud API. Autonomous systems require inference at the edge. By limiting our deployment to cloud API, we can ensure that our models cannot be integrated directly into weapons systems, sensors, or other operational hardware...

Instead of hoping contract language will be enough, our contract allows us to embed forward deployed engineers, commits to giving us visibility into how models are being used, and we have the ability to iterate on safety safeguards over time. If our team sees that our models aren't refusing queries they should, or there's more operational risk than we expected, our contract allows us to make modifications at our discretion. This gives us far more influence over outcomes (and insight into possible abuse) than a static contract provision ever could.

U.S. law already constrains the worst outcomes. We accepted the "all lawful uses" language proposed by the Department, but required them to define the laws that constrained them on surveillance and autonomy directly in the contract. And because laws can change, having this codified in the contract protects against changes in law or policy that we can't anticipate.

It started Friday when all U.S. federal agencies were ordered to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's AI technology after contract negotiations stalled when Anthropic requested prohibitions against mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. But later Friday there were even more repercussions...

In a post to his 1.1 million followers on X.com, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth criticized Anthropic for what he called "a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon." Our position has never wavered and will never waver: the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic's models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic... Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of "effective altruism," [Anthropic and CEO Dario Amodei] have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission — a cowardly act of corporate virtue-signaling that places Silicon Valley ideology above American lives. The Terms of Service of Anthropic's defective altruism will never outweigh the safety, the readiness, or the lives of American troops on the battlefield. Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable...

In conjunction with the President's directive for the Federal Government to cease all use of Anthropic's technology, I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security. Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic... America's warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final.
Meanwhile, Anthrophic said on Friday that "no amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position." (And "We will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.") Designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk would be an unprecedented action — one historically reserved for US adversaries, never before publicly applied to an American company. We are deeply saddened by these developments. As the first frontier AI company to deploy models in the US government's classified networks, Anthropic has supported American warfighters since June 2024 and has every intention of continuing to do so. We believe this designation would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government... Secretary Hegseth has implied this designation would restrict anyone who does business with the military from doing business with Anthropic. The Secretary does not have the statutory authority to back up this statement.
Anthropic also defended the two exceptions they'd requested that had stalled contract negotiations. "[W]e do not believe that today's frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America's warfighters and civilians. Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights."

Also Friday, OpenAI announced that "we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman emphasized that the agreement retains and confirms OpenAI's own prohibitions against using their products for domestic mass surveillance — and requires "human responsibility" for the use of force including for autonomous weapon systems. "The Department of War agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the Department of War also wanted. " We are asking the Department of War to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.

CNN reports that images from Iran's capital "have shown cars jammed along Tehran's street, with heavy traffic on major roads after today's wave of attacks by the US and Israel." And though Iran has a population of 93 million, the attacks suddenly plunged Iran into "a near-total internet blackout with national connectivity at 4% of ordinary levels," according to internet monitoring experts at NetBlocks.

CNN reports: Since Iran's brutal crackdown earlier this year, the regime has made progress to allow only a subset of people with security clearance to access the international web, experts said. After previous internet shutdowns, some platforms never returned. The Iranian government blocked Instagram after the internet shutdown and protests in 2022, and the popular messaging app Telegram following protests in 2018.
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced an hour ago that they're "closely monitoring developments" — keeping in contact with countries in the region and so far seeing "no evidence of any radiological impact." They're also urging "restraint to avoid any nuclear safety risks to people in the region."

UPDATE (1 PM PST): Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait "are shifting to remote learning starting Sunday until further notice following Iranâ(TM)s retaliatory strikes on Saturday," reports CNN.

New submitter DeanonymizedCoward shares a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is reportedly in crisis following major budget cuts, layoffs, and furloughs under the Trump administration, says TechCrunch. The agency has now replaced its acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, after a turbulent year marked by controversy and internal turmoil. During his tenure, Gottumukkala allegedly mishandled sensitive information by uploading government documents to ChatGPT, oversaw a one-third reduction in staff, and reportedly failed a counterintelligence polygraph needed for classified access. His leadership also saw the suspension of several senior officials, including CISA's chief security officer. Nextgov also reported that CISA lost another top senior official, Bob Costello, the agency's chief information officer tasked with overseeing the agency's IT systems and data policies. "Last month, CISA's acting director Madhu Gottumukkala reportedly took steps to transfer Costello, but other political appointees blocked it," added Nextgov.

South Korea has reversed a two-decade policy and approved the export of high-precision map data, paving the way for a fully functional Google Maps in the country. Reuters reports: The approval was made "on the condition that strict security requirements are met," the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said.

The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao -- local internet giants which currently dominate the country's market for digital map services. But it will appease Washington, which has urged Seoul to tackle what it says is discrimination against U.S. tech companies. South Korea, still technically at war with North Korea, had shot down Google's previous bids in 2007 and 2016 to be allowed to export the data, citing the risks that information about sensitive military and security facilities could be exposed. "Google can now come in, slash usage fees, and take the market," said Choi Jin-mu, a geography professor at Kyung Hee University. "If Naver and Kakao are weakened or pushed out and Google later raises prices, that becomes a monopoly. Then, even companies that rely on map services -- logistics firms, for example -- become dependent, and in the long run, even government GIS (geographic information) systems could end up dependent on Google or Apple. That's the biggest concern."

President Donald Trump has ordered all U.S. federal agencies to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's AI technology, escalating a standoff after the company sought limits on Pentagon use of its models. CNBC reports: The company, which in July signed a $200 million contract with Pentagon, wants assurances that the Defense Department will not use its AI models will not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans. The Pentagon had set a deadline of 5:01 p.m. ET Friday for Anthropic to agree to its demands to allow the Pentagon to use the technology for all lawful purposes. If Anthropic did not meet that deadline, Pete Hegseth threatened to label the company a "supply chain risk" or force it to comply by invoking the Defense Production Act.

"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY."

"Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic's technology," Trump wrote. "We don't need it, we don't want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic's products, at various levels," Trump said. On Friday, OpenAI said it would also draw the same red lines as Anthropic: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo to staff that he will draw the same red lines that sparked a high-stakes fight between rival Anthropic and the Pentagon: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. If other leading firms like Google follow suit, this could massively complicate the Pentagon's efforts to replace Anthropic's Claude, which was the first model integrated into the military's most sensitive work. It would also be the first time the nation's top AI leaders have taken a collective stand about how the U.S. government can and can't use their technology.

Altman made clear he still wants to strike a deal with the Pentagon that would allow ChatGPT to be used for sensitive military contexts. Despite the show of solidarity, such a deal could see OpenAI replace Anthropic if the Pentagon follows through with its plan to declare the latter a "supply chain risk."

A Greek court has convicted four individuals linked to the marketing of Predator spyware in the wiretapping scandal that shook the country in 2022. The BBC reports: In what became known as "Greece's Watergate," surveillance software called Predator was used to target 87 people -- among them government ministers, senior military officials and journalists. The four who had marketed the software were found guilty by an Athens court of misdemeanours of violating the confidentiality of telephone communications and illegally accessing personal data and conversations.

The court sentenced the four defendants to lengthy jail sentences, suspended pending appeal. Although they each face 126 years, only eight would be typically served which is the upper limit for misdemeanors. One in three of the dozens of figures targeted had also been under legal surveillance by Greece's intelligence services (EYP). Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who had placed EYP directly under his supervision, called it a scandal, but no government officials have been charged in court and critics accuse the government of trying to cover up the truth.

The case dates back to the summer of 2022, when the current head of Greek Socialist party Pasok, Nikos Androulakis - then an MEP - was informed by the European Parliament's IT experts that he had received a malicious text message containing a link. Predator spyware, marketed by the Athens-based Israeli company Intellexa, can get access to a device's messages, camera, and microphone. Its use was illegal in Greece at that time but a new law passed in 2022 has since legalised state security use of surveillance software under strict conditions. Androulakis also discovered that he had been tracked for "national security reasons" by Greece's intelligence services. The scandal has since escalated into a debate over democratic accountability in Greece.

New submitter sabbede shares a report from CNN Politics: A sprawling Chinese influence operation -- accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official's use of ChatGPT -- focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident's social media account taken down. "This is what Chinese modern transnational repression looks like," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI, told reporters ahead of the report's release. "It's not just digital. It's not just about trolling. It's industrialized. It's about trying to hit critics of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] with everything, everywhere, all at once."

Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official focused on emerging technologies, said the report from OpenAI "clearly demonstrates the way that China is actively employing AI tools to enhance information operations. US-China AI competition is continuing to intensify. This competition is not just taking place at the frontier, but in how China's government is planning and implementing the day-to-day of their surveillance and information apparatus."

Apple's iPhone and iPad running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 have become the first consumer mobile devices cleared for NATO-restricted classified data. No special software or settings are required. MacRumors reports: Apple's devices are the first and only consumer mobile products that have reached this government certification level after security testing and evaluation by the German government. iPhones and iPads running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 are now certified for use with classified data in all NATO nations.

In an announcement of the security clearance, Apple touted its security features: "Apple designs security into all of its products from the start, ensuring the most sophisticated protections are built in across hardware, software, and Apple silicon. This unique approach allows Apple users to benefit from industry-leading security protections such as best-in-class encryption, biometric authentication with Face ID, and groundbreaking features like Memory Integrity Enforcement. These same protections are now recognized as meeting stringent government and international security requirements, even for restricted data."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It might look like something from the early days of the internet, with its aggressively grey color scheme and rectangles nested inside rectangles, but FPDS.gov is one of the most important resources for keeping tabs on what powerful spying tools U.S. government agencies are buying. It includes everything from phone hacking technology, to masses of location data, to more Palantir installations.

Or rather, it was an incredible tool and the basis for countless of my own investigations and others. Because on Wednesday, the government shut it down. Its replacement, another site called SAM.gov with Uncle Sam branding, frankly sucks, and makes it demonstrably harder to reliably find out what agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are spending tax payers dollars on.

"FPDS may have been a little clunky, but its simple, old-school interface made it extremely functional and robust. Every facet of government operations touches on contracting at one point, and this was the first tool that many investigative journalists and researchers would reach for to quickly find out what the government is buying and who is selling it, and how these contracts all fit together," Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me.