An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting an American for allegedly providing U.S. border authorities with a passcode that wiped the contents of his phone, according to an indictment and media reports. This is thought to be the first known case in the United States where federal prosecutors have charged someone for the alleged destruction of data using a so-called "duress" password built into a phone's software. According to The Guardian, which covered the story earlier this week following the court's first hearing on Monday, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick is fighting the charges. Tunick's attorneys said that it was unlawful for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize his phone as he arrived back in the U.S. last year, and that any evidence -- including the alleged wiping of his phone -- should be thrown out.
The case centers on a feature included in GrapheneOS, a custom Android operating system that runs in place of the software on most modern Google Pixel devices. Tunick's attorneys confirmed GrapheneOS was running on his phone. The software feature allows the device owner to set a passcode that deliberately wipes the contents of that device if entered instead of the user's unlock passcode. Tunick's case also raises ongoing questions about what constitutional rights can be invoked at the border, which the U.S. government has long asserted is not U.S. soil until a person is authorized to enter. Bill Budington, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Runa Sandvik, a digital security expert who works to protect at-risk people as the founder of security consultancy firm Granitt, told TechCrunch that they had not seen similar cases involving the use of duress passwords.
"I have not seen this before, though I've discussed the potential scenario with activists and journalists over the years," said Sandvik. "I think this case serves as a reminder that authorities may argue you knowingly destroyed data, so it's better to not have that data on you when you cross certain borders."
"With a little planning ahead of time, you can always download the data you need once you get to where you're going," said Sandvik.
Looks like moving the user’s TCC db to /private/var/containers/Data/ProtectedSystem/[UUID]/Data/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/ was not the only change in the whole privacy castle of macOS 27. (What btw was a great move as now attackers with full disk access permissions can’t modify your privacy settings)
macOS 27 quietly ships a new privacy mechanism I hadn’t seen documented anywhere: it extends the com.apple.macl protection that has always guarded sandboxed apps’ ~/Library/Containers/<bundle-id>/Data folders to a hand-picked set of non-sandboxed apps’ ~/Library/Application Support/<name> folders too. I noticed it by accident — Firefox’s profile folder was suddenly inaccessible from Terminal, while MacPass, a password manager sitting right next to it, was wide open. That asymmetry didn’t sit well with me, so I pulled the thread. It ends in a hardcoded app allowlist baked into /usr/libexec/sandboxd (thx @ciphwall for the hint), meant to be updated live via XProtect.
On Wednesday, an a pro-privacy account called “Orwell Day” shared a video on X-formerly-Twitter of a man discovering a Flock license plate reader embedded inside an otherwise innocent roadside speedometer. Operated by the local Sheriff’s department, the device was cleverly hidden to be undetectable to approaching road and pedestrian traffic.
“What lurks on the back of it?” the man behind the camera asks as he approaches the device. “Look at that. Someone did some custom metal fabricating and decided to put a Flock camera, a mobile one, anywhere they want to put it, in the speedometer.”
They are hiding Flock cameras now, secret compartment found in speed radar box pic.twitter.com/4kkeRsKufi
That particular unit is operated by police in Volusia County, Florida, encompassing the suburbs north of Orlando. However, it’s not unthinkable that the practice might spread to other locales as the public backlash against ALPRs grows — and it’s growing fast.
So far, the privacy advocates behind the website DeFlock.org note that 53 US cities have ended their previous ALPR contracts with Flock. (Some municipalities are turning to alternative ALPR providers like Axon.)
In cities where local leaders aren’t ready to cut the cord, however, citizens are taking matters into their own hands, sawing down Flock towers, sabotaging their solar charging panels, or paint bombing the camera’s sensors.
While that kind of direct action has forced some municipalities to reconsider their Flock contracts, others are doubling down. Now, it seems some towns are getting crafty, secreting the now-infamous surveillance devices in roadside objects to throw saboteurs off their trail.
It’s not without precedent. In 2025, the Associated Press reported that US Border Patrol officers were hiding ALPRs and other surveillance devices inside traffic barrels, allowing them to monitor thousands of drivers throughout the US for “suspicious travel patterns.”
As the AP reported at the time, the program encompassed states like Arizona, Texas, and Michigan. In many cases, hidden cameras were discovered in locations that were hundreds of miles away from the nearest border.
At the moment, the full scope of covert ALPRs in the US remains to be uncovered. But with over 95,000 of the spy gadgets and counting deployed across the country, the number of hidden cameras is surely much higher than the public is currently aware.
ChatGPT Health is returning with substantially wider access, giving more iPhone users the option to connect information from Apple Health directly to the AI assistant.
The expansion follows a limited test introduced in January. OpenAI is now gradually making the dedicated Health experience available to eligible ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro users in the United States who are at least 18 years old.
Despite the close Apple connection, this is not a feature created by Apple or built directly into the Health app. OpenAI operates the service through ChatGPT, while Apple Health serves as one of the sources users can voluntarily connect.
Once permission is granted, ChatGPT can examine selected health and fitness information stored on iPhone, including activity, sleep, workouts and other measurements collected by compatible apps and devices. Users can then ask questions about changes over time without manually exporting records or uploading screenshots during every conversation.
Image Credit: OpenAI
ChatGPT Health Reaches More iPhone Users
ChatGPT Health originally appeared as a limited early-access experience for a small group of testers. The expanded rollout replaces that narrow availability with support for eligible adult users across the United States, although OpenAI says access may take several weeks to reach every account.
The feature works on the ChatGPT website and iOS app, but connecting Apple Health requires an iPhone. Users also need a recent version of the ChatGPT app before the Health option appears in the sidebar or More menu.
Apple Health is only one part of the system. ChatGPT can also connect to supported medical-record portals, One Medical and Function Health. Bringing those sources together allows the assistant to answer questions using a broader personal context than activity data alone.
A user could ask how sleep duration has changed across several weeks, whether workout frequency declined after a schedule change or how recent laboratory results compare with earlier tests. ChatGPT can also help organize questions before a medical appointment or summarize changes found across connected records.
Information from third-party fitness services can reach ChatGPT through Apple Health when those apps already share their data with the iPhone database. That may include measurements from platforms such as Garmin, Oura, Whoop, Strava and MyFitnessPal, depending on which categories each service makes available.
Not every proprietary score transfers. An app may calculate its own readiness, recovery or sleep score without writing that exact result into Apple Health. ChatGPT can only use the information made available through the connected source and approved by the user.
After synchronization, health information can inform responses throughout ChatGPT rather than remaining limited to conversations opened from the Health tab. The assistant normally asks for permission before using connected information, and users can also add “@Health” to a prompt when they specifically want a response based on their records.
Image Credit: OpenAI
Apple Health Data Gains a Conversational Layer
The appeal of the integration comes from turning a large collection of measurements into questions expressed in ordinary language.
Apple Health can already organize trends, highlights, medications, laboratory results and activity records. ChatGPT adds a conversational layer capable of comparing those categories or explaining them in a more personalized format.
Someone preparing for an annual physical could ask for a summary of meaningful changes since the previous appointment. A runner might request a comparison between training volume, sleep and resting heart rate. Another user could ask which information deserves discussion with a clinician after receiving new laboratory results.
That does not make ChatGPT a doctor. OpenAI says the feature is intended to support medical care rather than diagnose conditions or recommend treatment. Urgent symptoms and emergencies still require professional assistance.
The distinction is especially important because health data can appear more conclusive than it is. A change in heart rate, sleep or activity may have several explanations that cannot be determined from an iPhone record alone. Wearables can identify patterns, but they do not automatically reveal the medical cause behind them.
ChatGPT may help users notice relationships and prepare better questions. It should not be treated as the final authority on whether a symptom is harmless, whether medication should change or whether professional care is unnecessary.
The service is also read-only. ChatGPT can examine approved Apple Health information but cannot alter the original records stored on iPhone. It cannot add a diagnosis, change a medication list or write new measurements back into the Health app.
Users retain control over which Apple Health categories are shared. Someone may allow access to steps, workouts and sleep while withholding reproductive health, medications or other sensitive information.
That selective approach may be more appropriate than approving every category simply because the option is available. A useful response does not always require a complete health history.
Image Credit: OpenAI
Privacy Becomes the Central Decision
Connecting Apple Health to ChatGPT creates a different privacy relationship from using health features entirely within the Apple ecosystem.
Apple designs the Health app around on-device protections and user-controlled permissions. ChatGPT Health requires selected information to synchronize with OpenAI systems so the company can analyze it and generate personalized responses.
OpenAI says connected Apple Health data, medical records and conversations using that information are not used to train its foundation models or target advertising. The company also applies additional encryption and isolation protections to health information.
Users can disconnect Apple Health at any time. OpenAI says synchronized data from the disconnected source will be deleted from its systems within 30 days.
Previous conversations are handled separately. Information already included in ChatGPT conversation history remains until those chats are deleted, even after the Apple Health connection is removed.
Memory introduces another consideration. Conversations using Health can create memories when ChatGPT memory is enabled, although OpenAI says memories are not generated directly from synchronized health data. Temporary Chat or separate project memory can reduce how much personal context continues across future conversations.
The new Health experience should also not be confused with the existing ChatGPT integration inside Apple Intelligence. Siri and Writing Tools can use ChatGPT for certain requests without requiring the dedicated ChatGPT app or a connected account.
ChatGPT Health is a separate OpenAI service with its own account, permissions, privacy controls and health-data connections. Using ChatGPT through Siri does not automatically give OpenAI access to Apple Health.
That separation gives users a meaningful choice. They can continue keeping health information inside Apple apps, share only selected categories with ChatGPT or connect medical records for a more comprehensive view.
The expanded rollout makes one of the most personal databases on iPhone available to conversational AI. Its usefulness will depend not only on the quality of the answers, but also on whether users understand exactly which information they are sharing and where it goes after leaving the device.
A medida temporária tem como objetivo colmatar as lacunas existentes até que seja estebelecido um novo enquadramento jurídico de longo prazo para prevenir e combater o abuso sexual infantil online, avança o Conselho da UE, sendo aplicável até ao dia 3 de abril de 2028.
Sometimes in business, the first to market isn’t ultimately the most successful.
That’s the reality for surveillance company Flock Safety, a now-infamous firm working to blanket the United States in automatic license plate readers known as ALPRs, which are basically AI-integrated cameras that interface to form wide-reaching webs of surveillance.
If you’ve heard of Flock, there’s a good chance it’s from one of the hundreds of decentralized local protests against the company’s devices currently raging across the country, or from a wave of negativepress coverage.
According to data compiled by the anti-Flock site DeFlock.org, at least 53 municipalities have shredded their contracts with Flock over concerns that federal officials were accessing data collected by the company. Unfortunately for privacy activists and citizens concerned about police surveillance, that doesn’t necessarily mean ALPRs are going away — just that they’re increasingly being supplied by Flock’s competitor.
With Flock suffering some major brand damage as the face of ALPRs, the company Axon has emerged as a strong runner up. The publication Gadget Review observes that in cities like Denver, officials are ending controversial contracts with Flock in order to make room for Axon, which provides a remarkably similar surveillance architecture — just without the specter of federal overreach.
While Axon might lack the toxic name recognition that currently hampers Flock, the police tech company has plenty of controversy of its own.
Back in 2024, Axon was panned for the release of “Draft One,” a ChatGPT-integrated piece of software that transcribed law enforcement body cam audio into police reports. As critics noted at the time, the technology was widely prone to hallucinations, and large language models remain particularly susceptible to racial bias.
Prior to that, Axon faced significant backlash for its announcement that it would deploy drones armed with tasers into schools, as part of a hare-brained scheme to combat the school shooting epidemic which continues to plague the US. (They were also implicated in lighting a guy on fire.)
Overall, privacy advocates now face an added challenge: not just of slowing Flock’s advance, but in making the case that there are no good ALPRs, regardless of what company’s logo is slapped on the surveillance pole.
Critics say they’re far too easily abused to prey on unsuspecting victims, even garnering them the pejorative nickname of “pervert glasses.” Wired also found in June that Meta silently added a facial recognition system to its glasses’ software — yet another privacy nightmare in the making — but hadn’t activated it.
Now, an inventive group of activists calling themselves Everyone Hates Elon took matters into their own hands by transforming a Meta AI glasses ad featuring Jenner into a cleverly subversive statement. Specifically, they seem to have added a lenticular overlay on top of a London bus stop ad that transforms her visage into a terrifying bug-eyed monster — but only when seen from a specific angle.
As a video that’s making its rounds on social media demonstrates, standing right in front of the ad shows Jenner’s face as the black-and-white demon, with a bold type caption that reads: “We’re always watching.”
Users were quick to point out that the addition was referencing John Carpenter’s 1988 dystopian sci-fi epic “They Live,” in which the protagonist finds a pair of sunglasses that reveal subliminal messages hidden all over the world, in billboards and other media. They also expose a race of bug-eyed aliens that masquerade as humans, much like Jenner in the tampered-with Meta ad.
“Meta has spent years tracking us online,” an Everyone Hates Elon spokesperson told online arts magazine Hyperallergic. “Now it wants to track us in the real world too.”
As its name suggests, Everyone Hates Elon was formed last year to voice opposition to Elon Musk for his disastrous attempts to gut US government budgets, as well as spouting far-right talking points and racist rhetoric. It has run guerrilla poster campaigns that call Musk a “bellend,” and parody Tesla’s latest vehicle as “the Swasticar,” which can go “from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds.”
The group has also taken aim at Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and president Donald Trump’s extensive relationship with deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
Meta’s glasses are a natural target for the activists’ latest campaign given how easily they’re exploited for highly questionable behavior.
“Meta and Ray-Ban’s new AI glasses can be used to secretly record women and young people for sexual reasons,” the spokesperson told Hyperallergic. “Simply put, that’s abuse.”
“Billionaires could fund cures for cancer — so why are they funding glasses for perverts instead?” the group asked rhetorically.
These days, it’s hard to say which technological “innovation” US citizens hate more: AI data centers or Flock surveillance poles.
The American revulsion with the former is well known. The latter, however, has seen an even more shocking rise in resistance, as the number of people hacking down, blinding, or otherwise sabotaging Flock cameras has reached a level best described as “countless.”
Those who cut down Flock surveillance devices are regarded as folk heroes, garnering huge defense campaigns aided by the rapid growth of the online anti-Flock community.
Amidst immense pressure from the public, the company is starting to back down on its quest to create a law enforcement-led surveillance state. On Friday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that Flock was officially ending its “human distress detection” pilot program, an always-on audio surveillance tool that monitored public places for sounds of “screaming.”
“This feature was designed to help identify potential violent incidents in areas where other public safety tools were less effective,” Flock explained in a recent blog post. “The feature was only available to a small number of customers as part of a limited trial, and was never broadly released. After careful consideration and community consultation, we decided to remove the feature.”
On top of the obvious privacy concerns that come with a high-powered audio surveillance device, the feature raised major questions around civil liberties, given that law enforcement could use the program as a pretense to swarm any community on a whim.
Yet, as the EFF observes, the threat posed by Flock’s audio surveillance devices is far from over. The company still has thousands of audio devices installed in communities throughout the US, where they often appear without warning at the behest of local law enforcement.
Still, that such a scattered yet ferocious public pressure campaign can help force a company to abandon a pilot like this is noteworthy. The cancellation speaks to the power a collective can have when they focus their efforts on a single target.
According to the EFF, Flock’s decision demonstrates that “public pressure can sometimes work to influence both companies and lawmakers that control a city’s purse strings to discontinue or divest from harmful products.”
“Flock’s decision to end ‘distress detection’ for human voices is a win,” the group added.
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