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Category: Law/Crime

OpenAI hacked Australia’s health service and confessed months later — by email

OpenAI hacked Australia’s health service and confessed months later — by email

Wired reports: Australia is investigating whether OpenAI broke the law after an agent hacked into its health statistics portal in the first widely known incident of an AI agent hacking a government website. The Australian government is reviewing whether it should involve the federal police after the agent accessed non-public files from the social and health services agency, Services Australia, in June. Australia only found out about the incident when OpenAI alerted the government on September 10—almost three months after…

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Autonomous AI hacks raise thorny questions of legal accountability

Autonomous AI hacks raise thorny questions of legal accountability

The Associated Press reports: The Justice Department has a long history of investigating and prosecuting hackers who break into a private company’s network. But what happens when the hackers aren’t human? That’s the question at the center of a public policy debate roiling Silicon Valley and Washington following disclosures by leading tech companies that their artificial intelligence models went rogue and hacked into other organizations. The attacks have generated calls even from within the industry for greater oversight and regulation,…

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From 16,000 to 185 to zero: Trump’s claims of illegal voting in Nevada turn out to be baseless

From 16,000 to 185 to zero: Trump’s claims of illegal voting in Nevada turn out to be baseless

The New York Times reports: When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work. On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen. “As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens,” Greg D. Ott, a deputy…

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Can the energy giants be held responsible for extreme weather?

Can the energy giants be held responsible for extreme weather?

Ross Andersen writes: In late June 2021, the ghost of summertime future visited the Pacific Northwest. For three days, a heat dome hovered over Multnomah County, Oregon, broiling Portland’s drizzly landscape of evergreens and ferns with temperatures of 116 degrees Fahrenheit—much hotter than any resident, even the centenarians, had ever experienced there. Along the rocky ocean shore, sea stars and clams cooked alive in the tide pools. The heat buckled highway lanes and melted the cables that route power to…

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MIRI endorses Bernie Sanders’ Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026

MIRI endorses Bernie Sanders’ Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026

Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) states: MIRI has been warning about the extinction threat from superintelligent AI for over two decades. Only recently has this danger become known in the policy world, and the proposed policies for dealing with the threat have to date been piecemeal and insufficient. The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act of 2026 is the first piece of legislation we’ve seen that stands a chance at stopping this threat. The Act is excellent but not perfect, and we…

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How Stephen Miller turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation

How Stephen Miller turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. diplomat arrived in West Africa in mid-June with little fanfare, hopscotching along the Atlantic coastline for scheduled visits with senior government officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Togo and Gabon, whose president greeted him inside an opulent seaside palace. The American, a career State Department official named Christian Ehrhardt, was an unlikely diplomatic VIP. For nearly two decades, he served as an officer in the agency’s security branch, focusing on embassy protection,…

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‘NAZA’: Exposing Israel’s killing machine in Gaza

‘NAZA’: Exposing Israel’s killing machine in Gaza

Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor write: Over the past three years, we conducted night-time interviews on the rooftops of Tel Aviv with 24 Israeli soldiers who played an active role in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Most of them were intelligence officers, working behind screens and participating remotely in the mass killing of Palestinians. Their testimonies form the basis of “NAZA,” a new documentary we directed — produced by The Guardian and James Wilson and executive produced by Jonathan Glazer —…

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Fox News, NYT, AP and other media outlets jointly condemn Trump’s media ban

Fox News, NYT, AP and other media outlets jointly condemn Trump’s media ban

Politico reports: More than 50 media organizations signed an amicus brief backing POLITICO, CNN and MS NOW in their lawsuit against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, an unusual display of solidarity across the industry in calling for the immediate reversal of his media ban. The brief was signed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the White House Correspondents’ Association and 49 other media organizations. That list runs the ideological gamut, from Fox News to Vox Media, and…

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The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way

The FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way

By William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden and Kirsten Berg This story was originally published by ProPublica In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling…

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A shooting in Austin exposes the terror of ICE’s ‘shadow surge’

A shooting in Austin exposes the terror of ICE’s ‘shadow surge’

Texas Monthly reports: The Crestview-Wooten neighborhood, where on Sunday an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, wears its identity proudly. There’s a Mexican market on one block, a supermercado on the next, and paleterias, a panaderia, and Latino-owned salons and body shops nearby. It sits just south of Rundberg and the trend-resistant “Taco Mile,” named for its concentration of authentic taco joints. North Austin neighborhoods have been seeing increased ICE activity for months. Locals have…

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How the American revolt against Flock cameras mirrors the Boston Tea Party of 1773

How the American revolt against Flock cameras mirrors the Boston Tea Party of 1773

A license plate recognition camera is seen in Boulder. Colo., on March 5, 2026. Matthew Jonas/MediaNews Group/Boulder Daily Camera via Getty Images By G. Patrick O’Brien, University of Tampa A grassroots revolt against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, has gained momentum across the United States. ALPRs are AI-powered cameras that capture images of all passing vehicles. The camera systems turn details into datapoints searchable by anyone with access to the information. Today, there are more than 130,000 ALPRs on…

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Tennessee woman falsely charged with bank theft in North Dakota, sues for $10m over AI facial recognition

Tennessee woman falsely charged with bank theft in North Dakota, sues for $10m over AI facial recognition

The Guardian reports: A Tennessee woman who was falsely charged with bank theft in North Dakota and jailed for six months has sued for $10m in damages, alleging in a federal lawsuit that Fargo police improperly relied on an artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition system to wrongly accuse her. Angela Lipps, 50, was arrested at gunpoint by US marshals at her home in Tennessee while babysitting her neighbor’s four children in July 2025. The mother of three and grandmother of…

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Did OpenAI carry out the biggest IP heist of all-time?

Did OpenAI carry out the biggest IP heist of all-time?

The Hollywood Reporter reports: VCR recordings. Book digitization. The use of existing code to build a new operating system. The legality of some of the most consequential technology and products in the last century have come down to a singular question: Are they protected under fair use, the legal doctrine allowing the use of copyrighted works without a license? Now, that question has become the central battleground in landmark lawsuits between publishers, studios and recording companies against artificial intelligence companies…

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Trump’s widening attacks on the First Amendment

Trump’s widening attacks on the First Amendment

Adam Serwer writes: On the first day of his second term in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order on free speech stating that his administration would ensure that “no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” He has gone on to violate that order many times. Trump announced today on his social-media network, Truth Social, that he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White…

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Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children

Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children

The Guardian reports: Stephen Miller is leading an unprecedented and intense White House drive across a host of government departments to accelerate the removal of undocumented immigrant children from the US, using tactics that critics say are cruel and racist and, in some cases, flout federal law, the Guardian has learned. As deputy chief of staff at the White House, focused on immigration policy, Miller is seen as the mastermind and enforcer behind Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration agenda. He is…

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Alligator Alcatraz’s tiny cages were probably even tinier

Alligator Alcatraz’s tiny cages were probably even tinier

The American Prospect reports: The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security released a scathing report last Friday about the shuttered Florida concentration camp built on an abandoned airstrip known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” concluding the camp failed to meet numerous health and safety standards, and that the use of “small metal enclosures” was “unprecedented” and posed “significant risks to detainee health and safety.” The report included photos, taken by OIG inspectors during an “unannounced” visit in…

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