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Saturday night two men were arrested near Boston "following a hazardous drone operation near Logan Airport's airspace," according to a police statement. They credit an officer "leveraging advanced UAS monitoring technology" who "identified the drone's location, altitude, flight history, and the operators' position." Recognizing the serious risks posed by the drone's proximity to Logan's airspace, additional resources were mobilized. The Boston Police Department coordinated...

"There are concerns human rights will be breached," reports the BBC, as Wales police forces launch a facial-recognition app that "will allow officers to use their phones to confirm someone's identity." The app, known as Operator Initiated Facial Recognition (OIFR), has already been tested by 70 officers across south Wales and will be used by South Wales Police and Gwent Police. Police said its...

The U.S. wants to limit China's access to advanced AI chips, reports the Wall Street Journal, with new rules to restrict sales in parts of the world. "The rules are aimed at China, but they threaten to create conflict between the U.S. and nations that may not want their purchases of chips micromanaged from Washington. The latest round of curbs could come this month......

America's telecom-regulating Federal Communications Commission "has opened up the entire 6 GHz frequency band to very low-power devices," reports the Register, "alongside other unlicensed applications such as Wi-Fi kits." The FCC said it has adopted extra rules to allow very low-power device operation across the entire 1,200 MHz of the 6 GHz band, from 5.925 to 7.125 GHz, within the US. The agency had...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A sophisticated and ongoing supply-chain attack operating for the past year has been stealing sensitive login credentials from both malicious and benevolent security personnel by infecting them with Trojanized versions of open source software from GitHub and NPM, researchers said. The campaign, first reported three weeks ago by security firm Checkmarx and again on Friday...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The United States Postal Service unveiled a plan to buy a fleet of all-electric mail trucks for its mail carriers back in 2022, of which 3,000 were supposed to be delivered by now. Unfortunately, those plans aren't even close to fruition. The Washington Post reported that defense contractor Oshkosh has only delivered 93 vehicles so far....

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Shaun Golden, the sheriff of Monmouth County, N.J., wants feds to get to the bottom of recent mysterious drone activity in his state. Local officials, including Golden, are urging Gov. Phil Murphy (D) to declare a state of emergency. "We continue to urge our governor to press the federal government to put more resources out...

Healthcare giant Optum has restricted access to an internal AI chatbot used by employees after a security researcher found it was publicly accessible online, and anyone could access it using only a web browser. TechCrunch: The chatbot, which TechCrunch has seen, allowed employees to ask the company questions about how to handle patient health insurance claims and disputes for members in line with the...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Legislation was introduced in the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve, which could serve as a proving ground for the U.S. Treasury. The proposed bill would enable the state to start building a strategic bitcoin reserve by accepting taxes, fees and donations in bitcoin that would be held for a...

An anonymous reader shares a report: BeReal, the in the moment social media platform, is far from its 2022 heyday, but that hasn't stopped one organization from going after it. Austrian advocacy group Noyb has filed a complaint surrounding the platform's data consent banner practices. The organization claims that the banner disappears if users accept that their personal data can inform advertising practices, but...

Photobucket was sued Wednesday after a recent privacy policy update revealed plans to sell users' photos -- including biometric identifiers like face and iris scans -- to companies training generative AI models. From a report: The proposed class action seeks to stop Photobucket from selling users' data without first obtaining written consent, alleging that Photobucket either intentionally or negligently failed to comply with strict...

WP Engine just won a preliminary injunction against WordPress.com parent company Automattic. On Tuesday, a California District Court judge ordered Automattic to stop blocking WP Engine's access to WordPress.org resources and interfering with its plugins. From a report: The preliminary injunction comes after WP Engine, a third-party WordPress hosting service, filed a lawsuit that accused Automattic and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, of "multiple forms...

Over 300 musicians have signed an open letter defending the Internet Archive against a $621 million copyright infringement lawsuit over its preservation of 78 rpm records. The letter, organized by Fight for the Future, opposes the lawsuit filed by major record labels including Universal Music Group and Sony Music. The labels claim the Archive's Great 78 Project, which digitizes shellac discs from the 1890s-1950s,...

The head of America's FCC "has drafted plans to regulate the cybersecurity of telecommunications companies," reports the Washington Post, and the plans could include financial penalties phone network operators with insufficient security — "the first time the agency has asserted such powers under federal wiretapping law." Rosenworcel said the FCC's authority in this matter comes from Section 105 of the Communications Assistance for Law...

China-linked spies may still be lurking in U.S. telecommunications networks — but the breach could be much, much wider. In fact, a "couple dozen" countries were hit by the attack, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing a top U.S. national security adviser. "Chinese government hackers have compromised telecommunications infrastructure across the globe as part of a massive espionage campaign..." Speaking during a...

"The U.S. government on Friday ordered testing of the nation's milk supply for bird flu," reports the Associated Press, "to better monitor the spread of the virus in dairy cows." Raw or unpasteurized milk from dairy farms and processors nationwide must be tested on request starting Dec. 16, the Agriculture Department said. Testing will begin in six states — California, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Oregon...

"TikTok has lost its bid to strike down a law that could result in the platform being banned in the United States," reports CNN. A U.S. federal appeals court just unanimously ruled in favor of the new U.S. law requiring TikTok's China-based owners to either sell the app next month or face an effective ban in the United States. Denying TikTok's argument that the...

The Solana JavaScript SDK "was temporarily compromised yesterday in a supply chain attack," reports BleepingComputer, "with the library backdoored with malicious code to steal cryptocurrency private keys and drain wallets." Solana offers an SDK called "@solana/web3.js" used by decentralized applications (dApps) to connect and interact with the Solana blockchain. Supply chain security firm Socket reports that Solana's Web3.js library was hijacked to push out...

11 years ago his hard drive ended up in a U.K. landfill — with 8,000 bitcoin. It's now worth $800 million... and James Howell wants it back. The Guardian reports that his "bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to launch a hunt for his missing hard drive containing the...

The Carnegie Endowment for Peace, a nonpartisan international affairs think tank, points out that when subsea internet cables were cut in November, Europe was more prepared: Where in the past there were no contingency plans for sabotage, there are now more maritime patrols, an attempt to forge deeper intelligence connections, and the beginnings of a new relationship with the private sector... Even before the...