Tradecraft in the Information Age
July 12 2025Long article on the difficulty (impossibility?) of human spying in the age of ubiquitous digital surveillance.
Read moreSurveillance Used by a Drug Cartel
July 3 2025Once you build a surveillance system, you can’t control who will use it:
A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone...
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What LLMs Know About Their Users
June 25 2025Simon Willison talks about ChatGPT’s new memory dossier feature. In his explanation, he illustrates how much the LLM—and the company—knows about its users. It’s a big quote, but...
Read moreSurveillance in the US
June 20 2025Good article from 404 Media on the cozy surveillance relationship between local Oregon police and ICE:
In the email thread, crime analysts from several local police departments and the...
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Self-Driving Car Video Footage
June 19 2025Two articles crossed my path recently. First, a discussion of all the video Waymo has from outside its cars: in this case related to the LA protests. Second, a...
Read moreParagon Spyware Used to Spy on European Journalists
June 13 2025Paragon is an Israeli spyware company, increasingly in the news (now that NSO Group seems to be waning). “Graphite” is the name of its product. Citizen Lab caught...
Read moreSurveillance Via Smart Toothbrush
May 29 2025The only links are from The Daily Mail and The Mirror, but a marital affair was discovered because the cheater was recorded using his smart toothbrush at home when...
Read moreUS as a Surveillance State
May 2 2025Two essays were just published on DOGE’s data collection and aggregation, and how it ends with a modern surveillance state. It’s good to see this finally being talked about. EDITED TO...
Read moreDIRNSA Fired
April 7 2025In “Secrets and Lies” (2000), I wrote:
It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
It’s something a bunch of us were saying...
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