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Submission + - How the US Military Exposed the Tools That Let Authorities Break Into Phones (reason.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) really doesn't want the public to know what it's doing with Cellebrite devices, a company that helps law enforcement break into a locked phone. When it announced an $11 million contract with Cellebrite last month, ICE completely redacted the justification for the purchase.

The U.S. Marine Corps has now done the opposite. It published a justification to a public contracting platform, apparently by mistake, for a no-bid contract to continue putting Cellebrite's UFED/InsEYEts system in the hands of military police. The document is marked "controlled unclassified information" with clear instructions not to distribute it publicly. UFED/InsEYEts "includes capabilities exclusive to Cellebrite and not available from any other company or vendor," the document claims, before going on to list specific capabilities for breaking into specific devices.

Reason is posting the document below, with phone numbers redacted.

Submission + - ICE buying eye-scanning tech to deport and remove people from a foot away (9news.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued a notice to purchase licenses for mobile artificial intelligence-powered iris recognition technology to aid in deportations and removals.

The mobile software from BI2 Technologies can identify individuals from 10 to 15 inches away using a smartphone app, according to the the Massachusetts-based company. It then connects with a second product that includes a database.

ICE posted a Wednesday announcement for a sole source purchase order to BI2 Technologies for licenses to both BI2's Inmate Recognition & Identification System and the Mobile Offender Recognition & Identification System for "enforcement and removal operations."

Steve Beaty, a computer science professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, explained iris biometric capabilities.

"In general, it's quite accurate," Beaty said. "The iris is the part of your eye that everybody sees — the color has stripes in it and they are unique to an individual."

Beaty said recent technological advances have made iris scanning more accessible and affordable.

"The innovation is now that it's much less expensive that it can be done on less expensive devices such as phones," Beaty said. "In the past it was kind of a big standalone machine that these sorts of things could be used on."

The system compares iris scans to existing databases of photos. Beaty says that can come from a criminal database or even from photos scraped from social media profiles.

"Facial recognition companies have scraped the internet for photos," Beaty said.

But in Colorado, law enforcement agencies couldn't use the technology the same.

Democratic state Rep. Jennifer Bacon co-sponsored a 2022 Colorado law requiring police agencies to disclose their facial recognition plans and prohibiting its use as the sole basis for arrests or investigations.

"The way that we saw facial recognition working was with one to identify and match, versus profiling," Bacon said. "That's two different things."

She expressed concerns about ICE's intended use.

"The notion that ICE is going to use it to do some of those things actually scares me a little bit because that's what we were, in fact, trying to get ahead of," Bacon said.

Bacon outlined specific worries about potential civil rights violations.

"We had a lot of conversations about how law enforcement cannot use it to profile, how law enforcement cannot use it to circumvent due process, how law enforcement cannot use it to circumvent First Amendment rights," she said.

She emphasized the need for safeguards given the high stakes involved.

"When you get it wrong, people's due process are violated," Bacon said. "We're talking about jail time, we're talking about how much one earns. We're talking about if someone can rent an apartment, and so we want to be sure that we can protect our communities from bad decisions."

She questioned underlying assumptions and bias built into artificial intelligence systems too.

"How does one determine what an illegal immigrant looks like or is?" Bacon said. "In America we believe in innocence before proven guilty and so the tools that we have need to also act upon those values as well," she said.

Federal regulation of facial recognition technology differs significantly from state oversight though.

"That's why the states are worried about it," Beaty said.

Beaty noted that this particular software has been used by sheriff's departments elsewhere in the country, primarily as a way to help run jails.

But he raised questions about data handling and privacy protections.

"Let's say my iris is taken and I haven't committed a felony, which I have not," he said. "Where does the data go?Does it stay on the phone? And how long will it be on the phone?"

He highlighted a key concern with biometric data collection.

"Another concern about all biometrics is it's something we cannot change," Beaty said. "Our fingerprints, our faces in general, certainly irises, retinas, we can't change. If it is misreported, then we have a huge problem," he said.

Submission + - The uproar over Vogue's AI-generated ad isn't just about fashion (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Sarah Murray recalls the first time she saw an artificial model in fashion: It was 2023, and a beautiful young woman of color donned a Levi’s denim overall dress. Murray, a commercial model herself, said it made her feel sad and exhausted.

The iconic denim company had teamed up with the AI studio Lalaland.ai to create “diverse” digital fashion models for more inclusive ads. For an industry that has failed for years to employ diverse human models, the backlash was swift, with New York Magazine calling the decision “artificial diversity.”

“Modeling as a profession is already challenging enough without having to compete with now new digital standards of perfection that can be achieved with AI,” Murray told TechCrunch.

Two years later, her worries have compounded. Brands continue to experiment with AI-generated models, to the consternation of many fashion lovers. The latest uproar came after Vogue’s July print edition featured a Guess ad with a typical model for the brand: thin yet voluptuous, glossy blond tresses, pouty rose lips. She exemplified North American beauty standards, but there was one problem — she was AI generated.

The internet buzzed for days, in large part because the AI-generated beauty showed up in Vogue, the fashion bible that dictates what is and is not acceptable in the industry. The AI-generated model was featured in an advertisement, not a Vogue editorial spread. And Vogue told TechCrunch the ad met its advertising standards.

To many, an ad versus an editorial is a distinction without a difference.

TechCrunch spoke to fashion models, experts, and technologists to get a sense of where the industry is headed now that Vogue seems to have put a stamp of approval on technology that’s poised to dramatically change the fashion industry.

Submission + - YouTube vs AI slop (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: YouTube is inundated with AI-generated slop, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Instead of cutting down on the total number of slop channels, the platform is planning to update its policies to cut out some of the worst offenders making money off “spam.” At the same time, it’s still full steam ahead adding tools to make sure your feeds are full of mass-produced brainrot.

In an update to its support page posted last week, YouTube said it will modify guidelines for its Partner Program, which lets some creators with enough views make money off their videos. The video platform said it requires YouTubers to create “original” and “authentic” content, but now it will “better identify mass-produced and repetitious content.” The changes will take place on July 15. The company didn’t advertise whether this change is related to AI, but the timing can’t be overlooked considering how more people are noticing the rampant proliferation of slop content flowing onto the platform every day.

The AI “revolution” has resulted in a landslide of trash content that has mired most creative platforms. Alphabet-owned YouTube has been especially bad recently, with multiple channels dedicated exclusively to pumping out legions of fake and often misleading videos into the sludge-filled sewer that has become users’ YouTube feeds. AI slop has become so prolific it has infected most social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Last month, John Oliver on “Last Week Tonight” specifically highlighted several YouTube channels that crafted obviously fake stories made to show White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a good light. These channels and similar accounts across social media pump out these quick AI-generated videos to make a quick buck off YouTube’s Partner Program.

Gizmodo reached out to YouTube to see if it could clarify what it considers “mass-produced” and “repetitious.” In an email statement, YouTube said this wasn’t a “new policy” but was a “minor update” effort to confront content already abusing the platform’s rules—calling such mass-produced content “spam.”

Submission + - US judge rules copyrighted books are fair use for AI training (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: A federal judge has sided with Anthropic in a major copyright ruling, declaring that artificial intelligence developers can train models using published books without authors’ consent.

The decision, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, sets a precedent that training AI systems on copyrighted works constitutes fair use. Though it doesn’t guarantee other courts will follow, Judge William Alsup’s ruling makes the case the first of dozens of ongoing copyright lawsuits to give an answer about fair use in the context of generative AI.

It’s a question that has been raised by creatives across various industries for years since generative AI tools exploded into the mainstream, allowing users to easily produce art from models trained on copyrighted work — often without the human creators’ knowledge or permission.

AI companies have been hit with a slew of copyright lawsuits from media companies, music labels and authors since 2023. Artists have signed multiple open letters urging government officials and AI developers to constrain the unauthorized use of copyrighted works. In recent years, companies have also increasingly reached licensing deals with AI developers to dictate terms of use for their artists’ works.

Submission + - Content providers working to identify and flag AI generated music (theverge.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: A new category of infrastructure is quietly taking shape that’s built not to stop generative music outright, but to make it traceable. Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery. The goal isn’t just to catch synthetic content after the fact. It’s to identify it early, tag it with metadata, and govern how it moves through the system.

“If you don’t build this stuff into the infrastructure, you’re just going to be chasing your tail,” says Matt Adell, cofounder of Musical AI. “You can’t keep reacting to every new track or model — that doesn’t scale. You need infrastructure that works from training through distribution.”

Startups are now popping up to build detection into licensing workflows. Platforms like YouTube and Deezer have developed internal systems to flag synthetic audio as it’s uploaded and shape how it surfaces in search and recommendations. Other music companies — including Audible Magic, Pex, Rightsify, and SoundCloud — are expanding detection, moderation, and attribution features across everything from training datasets to distribution.

The result is a fragmented but fast-growing ecosystem of companies treating the detection of AI-generated content not as an enforcement tool, but as table-stakes infrastructure for tracking synthetic media.

Rather than detecting AI music after it spreads, some companies are building tools to tag it from the moment it’s made. Vermillio and Musical AI are developing systems to scan finished tracks for synthetic elements and automatically tag them in the metadata.

Submission + - Musk says DOGE will upgrade Air Traffic Control soon (thehill.com) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday said the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will make “rapid safety upgrades” to the air traffic control systems with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

“With the support of President @realDonaldTrump, the @DOGE team will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system,” Musk wrote Wednesday on the social platform X, which he owns.

“Just a few days ago, the FAA’s primary aircraft safety notification system failed for several hours!” he added, likely referring to an outage of the FAA’s Notice to Air Mission system over the weekend.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN over the weekend that the system allows pilots to download flight details ahead of a trip and is required for planes to fly.

Shortly before Musk’s post on Wednesday, Duffy posted on X that he spoke with the DOGE team, who will “plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.”

The Department of Transportation (DOT) did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for more details on what these upgrades could look like.

When asked about the upgrades, a White House spokesperson doubled down on DOGE’s mission.

Submission + - How Life Aboard A Navy Aircraft Carrier Changed When High-Speed Internet Arrived (twz.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: As it battled Houthi threats around the Red Sea last year, the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) also served as a testbed for vastly increasing the level of internet connectivity aboard the Navy’s deployed ships. Now we are learning specific details about how this mammoth change in at-sea connectedness impacted everything from how sailors went about their lives during a grueling deployment to how the ship and its air wing brought its firepower to bear on the enemy.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighters assigned to the carrier offer a case in point for what more shipboard bandwidth — provided by commercial providers like Starlink and OneWeb — can mean at the tactical level. Jets with the embarked Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 took on critical mission data file updates in record time last fall due to the carrier’s internet innovations, a capability that is slated to expand across the fleet.

“This file offers intelligence updates and design enhancements that enable pilots to identify and counter threats in specific operational environments,” the Navy said in an October release announcing the feat. “The update incorporated more than 100 intelligence changes and multiple design improvements, significantly enhancing the aircraft’s survivability and lethality.”

During Lincoln’s cruise, White was transferring at download speeds of 1 gigabyte per second, with 200 megabytes on the upload, he said, provided to the 5,000 sailors on board for personal and work use.

White said there was not one equipment failure aboard Lincoln related to connectivity in the past two years, and that 780 terabytes of data was transferred during the five-and-a-half month cruise.

“I set a goal for a petabyte, but I missed that,” he said. “So there’s room for my relief to excel.”

Lincoln averaged four to eight terabytes of transferred data a day, 50 times greater than the fleet’s current capabilities. His team managed 7,000 IP addresses, with two full-time system administrators, one on during the day and one at night.

To be sure, the system was turned off at the commander’s discretion, particularly when Lincoln was in some of the Red Sea’s weapons engagement zone, and its use always took a backseat to the mission.

“We are not going to get into the details, but this is not counter-detectable,” Lincoln’s commanding officer, Capt. Pete “Repete” Riebe, told WEST attendees. “They did not know our location from what we were using. Now, when we went deep into the weapons engagement zone, we turned it all off. We turned the email traffic off, we turned the WiFi off.”

“Sailors being up on their WiFi, being connected to home, is really what made that doable in this day and age,” he said.

White said the average age of an embarked Lincoln sailor was 20.8, and Riebe noted that to attract young people into service, the Navy needs to recognize the innate connection they have to their devices.

“The next generation of sailors grew up with a cell phone in their hand, and they are uncomfortable without it,” Riebe said. “I don’t necessarily like that, but that’s reality, and if we want to compete for the best folks coming into the Navy, we need to offer them bandwidth at sea.”

Having better connectivity also helped with the ship’s administrative functions, Riebe said, making medical, dental and other work far easier than they have been in the past.

“All of that requires bandwidth, and [White] provided it to the ship, and we’re able to make the ship run more smoothly, more efficiently,” he said.

A sailor who can FaceTime with his family back home carries less non-Navy stress with them as they focus on the life-or-death duties at hand, White said.

“What we tried to do was enable a safe space for those online connections, to allow sailors to continue their continuity of life,” he said. “When it’s time to turn those connections off, the sailors are ready to run to the fire. They are ready to run to the fight, and that is what we saw on Abraham Lincoln.”

This beefed-up bandwidth allowed 38 sailors to witness the birth of their child, while others were able to watch their kids’ sporting events, White said. Several crew members pursued doctorate and master’s degrees while deployed due to better internet, while others were able to deal with personal or legal issues they had left behind back home. One officer was able to commission his wife remotely from the ship.

Submission + - 'Ghost Gun' Linked to Mangione Shows Just How Far 3D-Printed Weapons Have Come (wired.com) 4

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: More than a decade after the advent of the 3D-printed gun as an icon of libertarianism and a gun control nightmare, police say one of those homemade plastic weapons has now been found in the hands of perhaps the world’s most high-profile alleged killer. For the community of DIY gunsmiths who have spent years honing those printable firearm models, in fact, the handgun police claim Luigi Mangione used to fatally shoot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is as recognizable as the now-famous alleged shooter himself—and shows just how practical and lethal those weapons have become.

In the 24 hours since police released a photo of what they say is Mangione’s gun following the 26-year-old’s arrest Monday, the online community devoted to 3D-printed firearms has been quick to identify the suspected murder weapon as a particular model of printable “ghost gun”—a homemade weapon with no serial number, created by assembling a mix of commercial and DIY parts. The gun appears to be a Chairmanwon V1, a tweak of a popular partially 3D-printed Glock-style design known as the FMDA 19.2—an acronym that stands for the libertarian slogan “Free Men Don’t Ask.”

The FMDA 19.2, released in 2021, is a relatively old model by 3D-printed-gun standards, says one gunsmith who goes by the first name John and the online handle Mr. Snow Makes. But it’s one of the most well-known and well-tested printable ghost gun designs, he says. The Chairmanwon V1 remix that police say Mangione had in his possession when he was arrested in a Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald’s varies from that original FMDA 19.2 design only in that another amateur gunsmith, who goes by the pseudonym Chairmanwon, added a different texture to the gun’s grip.

“For someone who has been building firearms like this for five years, it’s a bit of an odd choice. We’ve been building nicer models,” says Mr. Snow Makes, who hosts an annual ghost gun shooting competition. But he adds that “this is one of the earliest 3D-print Glock styles that was widely tested and successful at creating a reliably functional firearm.”

Authorities in New York charged Mangione on Monday in the December 4 murder of Thompson, alongside weapons charges and other alleged offenses in Pennsylvania. A handwritten “manifesto” police say they found on Mangione's person upon his arrest laments UnitedHealthcare's practices and the US health insurance industry more broadly. Bullet casings discovered at the scene of the shooting outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan were reportedly emblazoned with the words “deny,” “defend,” “depose”—likely criticisms of health care industry practices.

Submission + - AT&T to kill off landline phone service for most people by 2029 (zdnet.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: AT&T customers who still use the carrier's landline service should be prepared to say goodbye sometime in the next five years.

At its 2024 Analysts and Investors Day on Wednesday, the company said that it's "actively working to exit its legacy copper network operations across the large majority of its wireline footprint by the end of 2029." Yep, that means its traditional landlines will largely be gone by that point, at least if the roadmap comes true.

Like many carriers, AT&T has devoted more of its time, money, and resources to its broadband network and wireless services. AT&T in particular has focused on building out its fiber network, which it forecasts will expand to more than 50 million locations in the US by the end of 2029.

The problem with copper lines, argue the carriers, is that they're old, vulnerable to power surges and other electrical issues, and subject to damage from weather and other conditions. Plus, companies like AT&T simply don't want to support traditional landlines when so many people have switched to mobile or broadband services.

Submission + - Trump might create "A.I. Czar" position (axios.com) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: President-elect Trump is considering naming an AI czar in the White House to coordinate federal policy and governmental use of the emerging technology, Trump transition sources told Axios.

Why it matters: Elon Musk won't be the AI czar, but is expected to be intimately involved in shaping the future of the debate and use cases, the sources said.

Behind the scenes: We're told the role is likely but not certain.

Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — who are leading Trump's new outside-government group, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — will have significant input into who gets the role.

Musk — who owns a leading AI company, xAI — has feuded publicly with rival CEOs, including OpenAI's Sam Altman and Google's Sundar Pichai. Rivals worry Musk could leverage his Trump relationship to favor his companies.

The big picture: Trump, partly in response to the enlarged coalition that fueled his victory, plans to be super attentive to emerging technologies.

Trump's transition has vetted cryptocurrency executives for a potential role as the first-ever White House crypto czar, Bloomberg reported last week.

The AI and crypto roles could be combined under a single emerging-tech czar.

Zoom in: The AI czar will be charged with focusing both public and private resources to keep America in the AI forefront.

The federal government has a tremendous need for AI technology, and the new czar would likely work with agency chief AI officers (which were established in President Biden's AI executive order, and could survive Trump).

The person also would work with DOGE to use AI to root out waste, fraud and abuse, including entitlement fraud.

The office would spur the massive private investment needed to expand the energy supply to keep the U.S. on the cutting edge.

The backstory: The idea has been kicking around Trumpworld for several months, as the transition considered structural changes at the White House to prioritize staffing for Trump's priorities.

The model is similar to the National Energy Council that Trump said will be chaired by his designee for Interior secretary, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Trump's Energy nominee, fracking executive Chris Wright, will be a member of the council.

Trump's announcement said the council "will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy."

"This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over longstanding, but totally unnecessary, regulation."

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