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.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: You'll now be able to use selfie videos to log into your Google account. It has long been possible to log into Google using your face, via your phone's face unlock or if your passkey login uses biometrics for verification. This is yet another option to get into your account using your face to authenticate your identity, which could be especially useful if you don't have access to the phone or computer you typically use or if you got locked out of your account and none of the other log-in options are working. [...] Google will ask you to turn your head in certain ways during the verification and every time you use the option to log in. The company says it's to fend off impersonation attempts, such as deepfake videos, and prove you're currently in front of the camera. It will, of course, have to save your selfie video and use it for comparison for future logins.The company says it will encrypt your video and only use to help you sign in, but if you ever change your mind, you can delete it from your Google account. It's worth noting the option is currently unavailable for Workspace accounts, child accounts and those enrolled in Google's Advanced Protection Program. You can set it up and give it a try at g.co/signin-selfie.

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BrianFagioli writes: 1Password has launched a Claude integration that allows the AI agent to sign in to websites using credentials stored in a 1Password vault. The password manager says Claude never sees the password or one-time code. Instead, users approve each request, and 1Password injects the credentials directly into the target website while locking down access to the rest of the vault. The design appears safer than simply handing passwords to an AI model, but it does not remove every risk. Once Claude is authenticated, it may still be able to view private data, change settings, place orders, or perform other actions available inside the account. Users may want to limit the feature to low-risk tasks until browser-based agents become more predictable.

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"Are you armed?!" the police officer screamed. "Get out of the car!" A writer for the car-news site The Drive describes how "a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement... led to me and my wife being surrounded by police, hands on their guns, in a Kohl's parking lot in suburban Minnesota." After dropping off our Amazon returns, we'd just gotten back in the Range Rover and reversed maybe two feet out of the spot when four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in... The Plymouth Police Department had been tracking me for days using Flock license plate cameras, waiting for the right moment to strike, because they thought I'd stolen the Range Rover. And the reason I was ID'd as a dangerous car thief was a simple data error made 2,000 miles away in California, creating an edge case within an edge case that Flock's AI camera network was unable to handle... "The plates on this car are stolen," Officer Ganshyn said... This made absolutely no sense. Car companies keep meticulous track of the fleets they loan out to the media. The vehicles all have special manufacturer or dealer plates that are logged every time one enters or exits... 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. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle... Flock's AI tech wasn't registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town... I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in [Range Rover manufacturer] JLR's media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure — 34 ## DTM — and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock's system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call. Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I'd probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: "You're lucky we're in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would've come at you with guns drawn." Ironically, even the original license plate wasn't stolen either, the article points out. It was reported misplaced during a Los Angeles photo shoot, and "The corporation had to report the plate as lost to law enforcement," according to the police report — and even then, the plate "was reported as NJ 34DTM instead of NJ 3403DTM." The author's conclusion? "Once these systems have you in their crosshairs, there's pretty much only one way it can go... A simple data-entry error, magnified and broadcast nationwide by a growing surveillance network operated through an opaque partnership between a private company and public agencies, led police to identify me as a car thief and set up a sting to take me down. I mean, they even had a drone flying overhead during the 'bust'... "Thank God our kids weren't with us." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.

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Meta is rolling out an update that will disable the camera on its smart glasses if the device detects that someone has tampered with or destroyed the privacy LED. "The update is meant to address modders who have taken actions such as physically drilling into the LED light," reports The Verge. "Meta has previously tried to discourage tampering with the LED light. For example, starting with its second generation glasses, blocking the light with tape or other objects will trigger a prompt asking users to uncover the recording light. However, many modders have found various workarounds for that particular measure."

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A criminal complaint against alleged Scattered Spider member Peter Stokes revealed that Microsoft can associate Windows activity with a persistent "Global Device ID," which investigators used to link his PC to online activity connected to a hack. While unique device IDs are common, the case has raised privacy concerns because the identifier can apparently persist across updates, has no simple opt-out, and may allow Microsoft to connect a Windows installation to activity on third-party services. PCMag reports: Last week, the U.S. announced it had extradited 19-year-old Peter Stokes from Europe for allegedly being a member of the notorious hacking group Scattered Spider. But the case stands out because Microsoft played a key role in linking Stokes to the suspected hacking crimes, according to an unsealed criminal complaint. Stokes allegedly hacked an unnamed luxury jewelry retailer in May 2025 while using a VPN. The 39-page criminal complaint shows the FBI used Microsoft records to discover that his IP address was associated with a Microsoft device identifier known as Global Device ID (GDID). "According to a Microsoft representative, a Global Device Identifier in the Windows ecosystem is a persistent, device-level identifier designed to uniquely identify an installation of a Windows operating system on a device, either a physical device (e.g., a mobile phone or laptop) or virtual machine, across certain Microsoft services and scenarios," the complaint explains. The global device ID isn't exactly surprising, given that it's standard practice to assign a unique ID to each account or device so a tech provider can recognize and distinguish between them. But the complaint reveals Microsoft can associate the GDID with third-party services and the timing as well, giving Redmond a way to theoretically track a user's online activity. In other words, Redmond might be able to track the online activity of your Windows PC without third-party browser cookies. Stokes was discovered exploiting a web development tool called ngrok to bypass the jewelry retailer's network defenses. The complaint says Microsoft had records showing that on May 12, 2025, at 19:21 UTC, the GDID associated with Stokes' computer "accessed, among other ngrok pages, 'https://dashboard[.]ngrok.com/signup,' the ngrok page to set up an ngrok account." The document adds that Microsoft records also showed the GDID accessing "multiple sites" from servers at Tzulo, a web hosting provider, to help pull off the hack. Hence, the fact that federal investigators used the Microsoft identifier to nab a suspected hacker is raising concerns that it could be abused for other surveillance purposes. "Microsoft Windows is surveillance software," cybersecurity expert Matthew Hickey alleged in a tweet.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic quickly removed a tracker secretly monitoring Claude Code users in China after a security researcher exposed the hidden code and condemned the spyware-like tracking as a "serious breach of user trust." Last week, a web developer known as "Thereallo" was researching privacy issues in Claude Code and was shocked to find that the AI firm was using "prompt steganography" to hide code that tracks Chinese users "in plain sight." This code wasn't malicious, but it was sending information to Anthropic that most users wouldn't detect, relying on shorthand markers to quietly flag users' timezone, proxy, and potential connection to Chinese AI labs that Anthropic has accused of distillation attacks. On X, Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar confirmed that the tracker was added to Claude Code as an "experiment" in March. According to Shihipar, the code "was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation." Regarding the former, The Washington Post found unauthorized retailers have sold access to free models for $1 a month, and pro subscriptions that can cost $100 monthly sell for "as little as $12." Supposedly, Anthropic has "actually been meaning to take this down for a while," Shihipar said of the hidden code, because engineers have "landed stronger mitigations since then." Privacy advocates were not happy with the explanation, though, warning that the code is evidence that Anthropic is willing to cross lines to surveil users. That's perhaps especially surprising, considering that Anthropic riled the Trump administration by refusing to allow the US government to use Claude to surveil US users. The AI firm has since sued the White House over the clash. The Post suggested that the tracker incident is a sign that US firms like Anthropic are taking "increasingly aggressive measures" to block Chinese AI firms from copying their models. A more defensive stance has apparently become critical. In the past year, Chinese firms have "consistently matched" US firms' model capabilities "within months," the Post reported. Most recently, "a new, free AI model from Chinese company Zhipu AI was better at finding computer vulnerabilities than Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 model, which was released in May," the Post reported.

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