DOGE May Have Misused Social Security Data, DOJ Admits

Law enforcement authorities successful the United States person for years circumvented the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment by purchasing information connected US residents that would different request to beryllium obtained by a warrant. Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement seemingly thinks it tin disregard long-standing law extortion by warrantlessly breaking down doors to apprehension people, according to a caller whistleblower complaint—despite caller national rulings that doing truthful violates the Fourth Amendment.

Such is the quality coming retired of Minneapolis this week, wherever protesters and the national authorities continued their standoff—even arsenic ICE plans to physique retired a deportation web spanning Minnesota and 4 different states. And contempt the Department of Homeland Security’s claims that simply naming an ICE cause publically is akin to “doxing,” a WIRED reappraisal of LinkedIn recovered that agents are often doxing themselves. Of course, having entree to someone’s idiosyncratic accusation tin person consequences: A study this week recovered that radical are little apt to question aesculapian attraction owed to ad-tech surveillance and ICE enforcement activities.

Immigration authorities aren’t conscionable raiding people’s homes without a judge-signed warrant—they’re besides looking for drugs. Customs and Border Protection this week enactment retired feelers for a “quantum sensor” that’s susceptible of detecting fentanyl that ties into an “AI database.”

In non-immigration news, a researcher precocious discovered an unsecured database containing 149 cardinal login credentials. The usernames and passwords look linked to accounts for everything from Gmail, Facebook, and Apple to authorities systems astir the world. The researcher who recovered the database, Jeremiah Fowler, believes the stolen logins were collected by infostealing malware. The database, which was accessible to anyone connected the internet, has since been taken offline.

TikTok, meanwhile, has begun collecting adjacent much information connected its users—including precise determination data—after the societal video app was sold to US investors.

But that’s not all. Each week, we circular up the information and privateness quality we didn’t screen successful extent ourselves. Click the headlines to work the afloat stories. And enactment harmless retired there.

DOGE May Have Misused Social Security Data, DOJ Admits

The Trump medication this week admitted successful tribunal documents that operatives with the alleged Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) whitethorn person shared information from the Social Security Administration (SSA) with an extracurricular radical that seeks to “overturn predetermination results successful definite states,” according to a January 16 Department of Justice tribunal filing. However, it is not wide to the DOJ whether the unnamed “DOGE Team members” really shared the information with the group, which was unidentified successful the tribunal records.

The filing, which seeks to “correct” erstwhile testimony, besides says DOGE operatives “were utilizing links to stock information done the third-party server ‘Cloudflare,’” which is “not approved for storing SSA information and erstwhile utilized successful this mode is extracurricular SSA’s information protocols.” The filing further says that Steve Davis, a high-ranking advisor to Elon Musk, was copied connected a March 3, 2025, email that included an attached password-protected record containing the names and addresses of astir 1,000 people, which was taken from SSA systems of record. The SSA was not capable to determine, however, whether Davis accessed the file, which remained inaccessible to existent SSA workers arsenic of the day of the tribunal filing.

The FAA Is Creating No-Fly Zones Around DHS Operations

The Federal Aviation Administration has taken the antithetic measurement of including "Department of Homeland Security facilities successful mobile assets" successful a "no-fly zone" announcement, 404 Media reports. The announcement restricts "unmanned aircraft," which would see commercialized drones utilized to seizure aerial footage, from being utilized wrong 3,000 feet horizontally and up to 1,000 feet of altitude supra DHS assets. According to 404 Media, radical caught violating the restrictions could look transgression charges, civilian penalties, oregon adjacent suffer their authorization to alert drones successful the future.

Under Armour Investigating Data Breach Claims After Leak of Millions of Customer Records

If you're breaking retired your thermals successful mentation for this weekend's elephantine wintertime storm, you mightiness privation to cheque to spot if you bought it from Under Armour. TechCrunch reports that the covering and fittingness app institution is investigating a imaginable information breach aft a hacker posted millions of lawsuit records online. The information breach notification tract Have I Been Pwned informed 72 cardinal individuals by email astir the leak and says that the dataset included names, email address, genders, dates of birth, approximate location, and accusation related to purchases. An Under Armour spokesperson told TechCrunch that the institution was alert of claims astir the breach, had engaged "external cybersecurity experts" for help, and did not person grounds that the contented affected systems to process payments oregon store lawsuit passwords.

Microsoft Confirms It Hands Out Bitlocker Encryption Keys to Cops

When you encrypt your laptop’s hard drive, you apt expect that means lone you, the computer’s owner, volition beryllium capable to decrypt it astatine volition and entree your data. If you travel Microsoft’s proposal of storing your decryption cardinal successful the unreality for easier betterment of your information if you suffer the cardinal oregon hide your password to unlock it, past you you’ll request to update your information expectations: Microsoft has confirmed that it often hands retired those decryption keys to instrumentality enforcement astatine an agency’s request, giving them afloat entree to the machine’s secrets. Forbes recovered an lawsuit erstwhile Microsoft complied with an FBI petition for decryption keys for a machine successful Guam that was portion of a fraud investigation. Microsoft went connected to corroborate to Forbes that it receives astir 20 requests for Bitlocker keys a twelvemonth from instrumentality enforcement and often complies. The institution added that it can’t comply, however, erstwhile the cardinal is stored lone locally by the user—an instructive enactment for cypherpunks everywhere.

Iranian State TV Hijacked to Air Anti-Regime Protest Message

The Iranian authorities has unopen disconnected the country’s net for weeks amid protests that person swept the country. But anti-regime voices this week recovered different mode to scope the country’s populace: an evident hacking cognition hijacked the country’s authorities TV outer to aerial a connection successful enactment of protesters, thousands of whom person died amid the caller uprising. The clip, which featured the lad of the erstwhile ruler of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, called connected subject and information forces to articulation protesters and combat the regime. “Don’t constituent your weapons astatine the people,” 1 graphic successful the broadcast read. “Join the federation for the state of Iran.” According to immoderate reports, the unauthorized connection lasted arsenic agelong arsenic 10 minutes earlier the authorities TV transmission resumed its mean programming.