MIT to Become Hotbed of AI Video Surveillance
It’s a lot : According to information obtained by The Tech , MIT is spending over $3 million on more than 500 AI surveillance cameras in academic buildings, residence halls, and outdoor areas along Memorial Drive. Installation of the new cameras, along with the wiring and infrastructure that will support them, began November 2025 and will likely continue until September…
On Flock License Plate Tracking Cameras
A recent story of a writer who was mistakenly identified, tracked, and arrested using data from Flock cameras has gone viral. The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM , not 34 10 DTM . But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM .
The Future of Age Verification: Your Face Never Leaves Your Device
As age verification laws expand worldwide, organizations face growing pressure to protect users' privacy while meeting regulatory requirements. Incode explains how on-device age estimation verifies age without transmitting or storing facial images, reducing biometric privacy risks while supporting compliance. [...]
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Washing Up on Cape Cod Beach
Lots of articles about this . As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.
Fake Coding Tests Deliver OtterCookie-Aligned Malware Hidden in SVG Flag Images
North Korean threat actors linked to the Contagious Interview campaign have been observed employing steganography in SVG image files to conceal malicious payloads as part of a campaign using fake job postings and coding challenges. "Any user who ran the project ended up with a four-stage payload aligned with OTTERCOOKIE: a browser credential and crypto wallet stealer, a file…
Protecting Privacy in an AI Era
Daniel Solove argues in the Wall Street Journal (alternate link ) that giving people control of their personal data is not an effective way to regulate privacy in this era. Instead, we need to hold companies accountable for their actions, similar to what we do with food and drug companies. Measures such as rigorous data minimization, fiduciary duties, liability for negligent…
A Video Screen That Is Also a Camera
Amazing : Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, however, managed to create a new type of pixel that can simultaneously do both. This hypercharged pixel, called a Fourier pixel, can generate and sense arbitrary light fields and tap into a pixel’s full potential for carrying information by manipulating light’s intensity, oscillation phases, and polarization.…
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking (virtually) at the Policy-Relevant Privacy Research Workshop in Calgary, Canada, on Monday, July 20, 2026. I’m speaking at Boston Leadership Exchange in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on Wednesday, July 22, 2026. I’m speaking at Cognitive Security Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
AI Surveillance and Social Progress
In the near future, AI -powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private. And if we do something wrong—shoplift, litter, jaywalk, you name it—the system will notice, retain it, tie it to your official government record, communicate that fact to you, and provide real-time alerts to any relevant…
European Parliament Member Investigating Spyware Was Hacked With Pegasus
A new report from the Citizen Lab has revealed that former Member of the European Parliament Stelios Kouloglou had his mobile device repeatedly hacked with the notorious Pegasus spyware while serving on a committee that was tasked with investigating the abuse of such commercial surveillance tools in the bloc. "Through forensic analysis of his device, we found that the…
ConsentFix and ClickFix: How Microsoft 365 Accounts are Hijacked in 3 Seconds
ConsentFix and ClickFix attacks steal Microsoft 365 tokens in seconds using fake prompts and OAuth flows. Learn how these MFA bypass tactics work and how to defend against them. [...]
Cybersecurity Mission Creep in the US
Interesting paper: “ Cybersecurity Mission Creep .” Abstract: Cybersecurity is experiencing mission creep. Policymakers are casting more and more problems as issues of cybersecurity. So reframed, wildly different policy issues, from misinformation, to child social media safety laws, to antitrust regulations, to alleged journalist misconduct, to anti-sex trafficking…
Papa Johns Surveillance-Based Advertising
Papa Johns is spying on people’s buying activities to predict when they are low on food: The pizza chain recently tapped NBCUniversal, Instacart and the dentsu-owned media agency Carat for help reaching consumers when they’re low on groceries—and thus more likely to be swayed by a mouth-watering ad. The idea is to reach hungry consumers by “knowing what…
The Realities of AI Video Surveillance
The Financial Times has a good article on how AI is changing the capabilities of video surveillance, with information from both Israel/Iran and Russia. I wrote about this sort of thing a few years ago, how AI enables mass spying in the way that computers and networks enabled mass surveillance. The interesting development in the article is that AI allows people to ask natural…
Can Clothes Make You Invisible to Facial Recognition?
Does life feel Orwellian sometimes? One researcher has a solution for you: graphic tees that confuse the neural networks in surveillance cameras.
WhatsApp rolls out usernames to help users hide their phone number
WhatsApp is finally allowing users to reserve usernames, a privacy feature that lets them hide their phone numbers from people not in their contact list. [...]
WhatsApp is Finally Getting Usernames to Help Keep Phone Numbers Private
WhatsApp on Monday officially announced the start of global reservations of usernames with an aim to protect the privacy of more than three billion users on the messaging platform. The optional feature is designed to help users connect with someone on the service through usernames, as opposed to directly sharing their phone numbers. Username reservations will start rolling out…
Robot Police Officers
We’ve taken one small step towards robot police officers: a drone capable of disarming a suspect: In a June 22 video posted on the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Instagram page, an officer wearing goggles can be seen operating a drone to retrieve a knife from an armed suspect hiding inside a cluttered house. “After not responding to negotiators, a drone was…
The Chinese Control the Majority of Argentina’s Squid Fleet
Chinese companies control nearly two-thirds of Argentina’s own squid fleet.
Meta Is Testing Facial Recognition for Police and Military
We know that ICE wants to deploy eyeglasses with facial recognition that can identify people in real time. Turns out Meta is prototyping the feature with a Pentagon supplier. (Alternate news story.)
Order-tracking app Shop abused to push callback phishing attacks
Threat actors are increasingly abusing Shop, the order-tracking app from Shopify, by adding fake purchase receipts in users' order histories to trick them into providing sensitive data or installing remote access software. [...]
Google releases new privacy controls for activity history, personalization
Google is rolling out new privacy controls for Search services and Google Play, giving you more control over saved history and personalized recommendations. [...]
Professional Athletes and Wearables
I haven’t thought about the privacy issues surrounding professional athletes and wearables. Wearables present serious privacy issues for “Average Joe” consumers, who are entrusting tech companies to safely store and protect their biometric data. Imagine the stakes for a professional athlete, whose entire livelihood could be affected by a single biometric data…
Friday Squid Blogging: Victims of Unregulated Squid Fishing
Dolphins, sharks, turtles, and human workers are all victims of unregulated squid fishing fleets. Another news article . As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Google to use UK and EU user IP addresses for ad personalization
From August 3, 2026, Google will use IP addresses from UK, EEA and Switzerland users for ad measurement and personalization. It lands as the ICO weighs new consent rules, and years after Google itself called using such signals to identify devices "wrong." [...]
UK Social Media Ban for Minors Has Privacy Experts Worried
The UK will ban adolescents under 16 years old from user-to-user social media platforms, despite age verification issues and privacy concerns.
Rokarolla Android Trojan Levels Up to Full Device Control, Persistence
The emerging malware, spread via fake TikTok and Chrome downloads, has evolved by combining banking fraud with extensive device surveillance and remote control.
Flock Cameras Are Being Used for Stalking
There are over a dozen cases around the country where police officers are using the Flock surveillance camera system to obsessively and illegally stalk people . Alternate link .
The FCC Wants to Eliminate Burner Phones
A proposed FCC rule would kill burner phones: phones whose accounts are not attached to a particular person. The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country’s telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil…
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid-Inspired Fluid Pump
This fluid pump was inspired by the way squids propel themselves through the water. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.
Enhanced License Plate Tracking
The surveillance company Leonardo wants more data : A surveillance company plans to add sensors to automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) that would mean the devices, as well as capture the license plate of passing vehicles, would also sweep up unique identifiers of mobile phones, wearables, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices in those cars, potentially letting law…
Friday Squid Blogging: Another Squid
Someone named “Squid” seems to be a “ West Country legend .” As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.
Google Chrome adds session cookie theft protection for all users
Google says the Chrome Device Bound Session Credentials (DBSC) security feature is now generally available and is rolling out to all users to prevent account takeovers. [...]
Chilling Effects
Younger Americans have soured on the second Donald Trump presidency , but they are not protesting it. Despite an unpopular Iran war and an even more unpopular Trump administration , college campus protests nationwide have gone silent . And at many schools, student activism is virtually nonexistent .
FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report
The 2025 Internet Crime Report was published a few weeks ago, but I only just saw it. Lots of interesting statistics. Press release .
Identifying People Using Wi-Fi Routers
Not identifying people based on their use of Wi-Fi routers, but identifying people using Wi-Fi signals . This is accomplished through what is known as WiFi sensing , or the use of WiFi signals to infer information about a physical environment. When radio signals like WiFi travel through a space, they interact with the objects and people around them.