Politics
CBP Seizes Shipment of T-Shirts Featuring Swarm of Bees Attacking a Cop
Customs and Border Protection seized a shipment of t-shirts from a streetwear brand that sells an “Eliminate ICE” t-shirt and multiple shirts critical of police and capitalism. Among the shirts seized was a design that features a swarm of bees attacking a police officer. Emails seen by 404 Media indicate that the shirts are going to be shipped back to China or will be “destroyed.”
Renewable power reversing China’s emissions growth
China has been installing renewable energy at a spectacular rate and now has more renewable capacity than the next 13 countries combined, and four times that of its closest competitor, the US. Yet, so far at least, that hasn't been enough to offset the rise of fossil fuel use in that country. But China's emissions have now dropped over the past year, showing a 1 percent decline compared to the previous March. The decline is largely being led by the power sector, where growth in renewables has surged above rising demand.
Wisconsin judge argues prosecutors can’t charge her with helping a man evade immigration agents
Her lawyers argue that she enjoys legal immunity for official acts she performs as a judge. They cite last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in President Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case that found that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” and are presumptively entitled to immunity for all official acts.
xAI’s Grok suddenly can’t stop bringing up “white genocide” in South Africa
Oklahoma education standards say students must identify 2020 election 'discrepancies'
New academic standards in Oklahoma call for the teaching of "discrepancies" in the 2020 election results, continuing the spread of a false narrative years after it was first pushed by President Trump and his allies.
Transportation Secretary Slammed After Admitting He Made A Telling Switch To Wife's Recent Flight
He switched his wife's Newark Liberty International Airport flight to one out of LaGuardia Airport.
Privacy
The Kids Online Safety Act Will Make the Internet Worse for Everyone
This bill sets up a censorship regime disguised as a “duty of care,” and it will do what previous versions threatened: suppress lawful, important speech online, especially for young people.
The list of harms in KOSA’s “duty of care” provision is so broad and vague that no platform will know what to do regarding any given piece of content. Forums won’t be able to host posts with messages like “love your body,” “please don’t do drugs,” or “here’s how I got through depression” without fearing that an attorney general or FTC lawyer might later decide the content was harmful. Support groups and anti-harm communities, which can’t do their work without talking about difficult subjects like eating disorders, mental health, and drug abuse, will get caught in the dragnet.
Amid surveillance concerns, Dearborn approves $720K for police access to real-time videos
Dearborn City Council recently unanimously approved $720,000 for a five-year contract for police to use Axon's Fusus program that gains access to the private camera feeds of businesses and individuals who opt into the program.
New Tor Oniux tool anonymizes any Linux app's network traffic
It achieves this by placing each app in its own network namespace with no access to the host's interfaces, and instead attaching a virtual interface (onion0) that routes through Tor using onionmasq.
This setup ensures leak-proof, kernel-enforced Tor isolation for any Linux app.
License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows
Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company whose cameras are installed in more than 5,000 communities in the U.S., is building a product that will use people lookup tools, data brokers, and data breaches to “jump from LPR [license plate reader] to person,” allowing police to much more easily identify and track the movements of specific people around the country without a warrant or court order. It's already being used by some law enforcement agencies.
Infosec
‘Aggressive’ hackers of UK retailers are now targeting US stores, says Google
Alphabet’s Google warned on Wednesday that hackers responsible for paralyzing disruptions of UK retailers are turning their attention to similar companies in the United States.
Alphabet warns of ‘Scattered Spider’, network of hackers reportedly behind cyber-attack against UK retail giant M&S. Online operations at M&S, one of the best-known names in British business, have been frozen since 25 April.
These actors are aggressive, creative, and particularly effective at circumventing mature security programs.
Hackers from the Scattered Spider ecosystem have been behind a slew of disruptive break-ins on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2023, hackers tied to the group made headlines for hacking the casino operators MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment.
After latest kidnap attempt, crypto types tell crime bosses: Transfers are traceable
Crypto abduction attempts continue to rock France.
Waymo recalls 1,200 robotaxis following low-speed collisions with gates and chains
Rogue communication devices found in Chinese solar power inverters
Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers.
Rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues. Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers.
The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Google introduces Advanced Protection mode for its most at-risk Android users
Advanced Protection is Google’s latest answer to mercenary malware sold by NSO Group.
It provides:
- The inability to connect to 2G networks
- No automatic connections to insecure Wi-Fi networks
- Memory Tagging Extension to prevent use-after-free exploits and other memory-corruption attacks
- Automatically locking when offline for extended periods
- Automatically powering down a device when locked for prolonged periods
- Intrusion logging
- JavaScript protections
New Intel CPU flaws leak sensitive data from privileged memory
A new "Branch Privilege Injection" flaw in all modern Intel CPUs allows attackers to leak sensitive data from memory regions allocated to privileged software like the operating system kernel. cThe exploit can achieve peak leak rates of 5.6 KB/sec at 99.8% accuracy.
ARM is not affected.
Intel released microcode updates that mitigate the flaw.
The firmware-level mitigations introduce a 2.7% performance overhead, while software mitigations have a performance impact between 1.6% and 8.3%, depending on the CPU.
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