All posts tagged: FBI

FBI Arrests OpenAI Employee Suspected of Planting a Surveillance Bug

FBI Arrests OpenAI Employee Suspected of Planting a Surveillance Bug

Published by skeptic

The FBI arrested an OpenAI employee and charged him with planting a surveillance device in an executive conference room to record the company’s plans for its artificial intelligence, the company and FBI confirmed on Tuesday. The US Department of Justice identified the employee as 35-year-old Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi Arabian citizen and legal permanent resident of the US, who joined OpenAI’s product team in July 2025. He was fired and arrested on Oct. 9 on suspicion of violating US law by using “an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications.” The charge comes with a possible five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. In a statement, Jay Clayton, director of national intelligence, said that the incident underscores the importance of US success in AI development as “a national security prerogative.”  The complaint, filed in the Northern District of California, says Alfozan allegedly placed a “thumb-sized development board with a detachable camera sensor, digital microphone and microSD storage.” It was wrapped in toilet paper and stuck into a TV port. A second recording device …

An OpenAI Employee Allegedly Used a Chatbot to Help Plant a Recording Device at the Office

An OpenAI Employee Allegedly Used a Chatbot to Help Plant a Recording Device at the Office

Published by skeptic

An engineer at OpenAI allegedly concealed an audio recording device in a piece of toilet paper and attached it behind a monitor inside an executive conference room at one of the company’s San Francisco offices, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday. Abdulrahman Alfozan, who federal prosecutors describe as a 35-year-old Saudi Arabian national and US permanent resident, allegedly spent several weeks querying an unspecified “productivity agent” and an “AI chatbot” to plan his alleged surveillance operation. He used an internal OpenAI tool to ask about meetings scheduled in the targeted conference room. He also appears to have used a chatbot account associated with his spouse to ask various technical questions about setting up a covert audio recording device, according to prosecutors and the court filing. OpenAI’s security team also allegedly found an additional recording device that had not been installed in Alfozan’s bag at the office. Alfozan couldn’t be immediately reached for comment. He made an initial appearance in US district court in San Francisco on Tuesday on one charge of “use of …

Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh groups say FBI data undercounts bias

Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh groups say FBI data undercounts bias

Published by Sam Flores

Get RNS’ thoughtful, essential religion reporting every morning. Sign up for free! (RNS) — Three dozen organizations — including the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Sikh Coalition and the Union for Reform Judaism — have come out against the FBI’s 2026 Hate Crimes report, raising concerns about incomplete and unreliable data. In a statement shared exclusively with Religion News Service, 35 organizations contested the agency’s finding that hate crimes were on the decline, pointing to flawed methodology and an incomplete dataset. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting report, released in August, indicates the number of hate crimes reported to the agency dropped by 7% between 2024 and 2025. “We don’t want people to just run the hate crimes numbers. We want there to be a more complete story of what’s actually threatening our communities,” said Benjamin Suarato, director of advocacy and public affairs at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which led the initiative. “Our safety is very much linked to the safety of other communities.”
 In their statement, the …

AI Is Getting Really Good at Messing With Cybercriminals

AI Is Getting Really Good at Messing With Cybercriminals

Published by skeptic

Welcome to Kernel Panic!, a weekly newsletter by Lily Hay Newman and Matt Burgess from inside the new world of privacy and digital security. To receive this newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up here. Even as AI supercharges digital scamming and cybercrime, it’s also being recruited in the fight to protect potential victims. Governments around the world have consistently struggled to address the global crisis of online crime, grappling with the limitations of attempting to crack down on criminals beyond their borders. This has inspired alternative efforts, like using automation to attempt to go after scammers en masse—perhaps by spamming the spammers to squander their resources. Now, AI platforms are turning these types of experiments into real tools in the fight against cybercrime. For the last two years, the Australian company Apate, named after the Greek goddess of deception, has been building a system that diverts phone scammers onto calls with AI bots that are trained to keep conversations going as long as possible without, of course, ever actually falling for the scam. …

Kalshi hires former FBI agent to combat money laundering : NPR

Kalshi hires former FBI agent to combat money laundering : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Sean Fern, a former FBI agent, is joining the prediction market platform Kalshi to lead the company’s efforts in fighting money laundering. Provided by Kalshi hide caption toggle caption i Provided by Kalshi Kalshi, a leading prediction market company, has hired a former FBI agent to run its first anti-money laundering team as prediction markets come under increasing legal scrutiny by state and federal regulators. Sean Fern will work closely with law enforcement, regulators and senior staff at Kalshi to keep an eye on suspicious and potentially criminal activity there. The platform has exploded in growth in the past year. According to the firm TickerTracker, Kalshi has crossed $260 billion in bets so far this year, already triple the amount traded in all of 2025. In an interview with NPR, Fern, who worked as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn after his time at the FBI, said his aim is to build defenses against people trying to use the platform to commit financial crimes. “I want to make sure it’s a hard place to launder money …

FBI arrests a ‘most wanted’ fugitive – and sends chilling message to c | World | News

FBI arrests a ‘most wanted’ fugitive – and sends chilling message to c | World | News

Published by Sam Flores

The FBI has arrested one of its ‘most wanted’ fugitives — and sent a stark message to criminals on the run. Officials in the US issued a statement that said FBI agents captured Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre. Images showed the man in custody on an airfield, surrounded by FBI personnel. The FBI made the announcement shortly before midnight on Saturday in the UK. They posted on X at 11:21pm: “Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre is the 10th Ten Most Wanted fugitive captured by this FBI since January 2025. He is the first ever Cyber fugitive on FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Now he’s back in the United States to face justice.” They also sent a chilling message to fugitives: “These criminals can run, but they cannot hide from this FBI.” Aguirre is the first cyber-criminal on the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ list to be snared. The Venezuelan is accused of ‘allegedly leading a large international conspiracy that deploys numerous crews to the United States to steal millions of dollars from financial institutions’ to fund the ‘Tren …

Flydubai flight; Hegseth military changes; FBI cyberattack : NPR

Flydubai flight; Hegseth military changes; FBI cyberattack : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day. Today’s top stories A flydubai plane headed to Tel Aviv yesterday made an emergency landing after one pilot stabbed the other in a possible attempt to crash the plane. Most of the roughly 170 passengers were Israeli. Some passengers entered the cockpit and subdued the attacker after the injured pilot unlocked the door. Another flight crew on board then helped land the plane safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The motive remains unknown. A plane carrying passengers from an earlier flydubai flight that was diverted to Saudi Arabia arrives at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday in Tzafria, Israel. Earlier, their flight from the United Arab Emirates was diverted to Saudi Arabia after a violent altercation in the cockpit. A second plane was sent to Saudi Arabia to retrieve the stranded passengers and return them to Israel. Erik Marmor/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption i Erik Marmor/Getty …

FBI hunting the hackers who stole its employees’ sensitive data : NPR

FBI hunting the hackers who stole its employees’ sensitive data : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building is seen on Sept. 26, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Samuel Corum/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Samuel Corum/Getty Images In a video posted on social media, the assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, Brett Leatherman, vowed Tuesday to hunt down the members of a cybercriminal group going by the name of ShinyHunters, the same group that last week claimed to steal reams of sensitive data from the FBI itself. “You know how to find us, and we know how to find you,” Leatherman said in the video, encouraging the prolific group of loosely connected data extortionists to come forward and share information or face the consequences. “I suggest you reach out first while the choice is still yours.” The FBI says it is “aggressively” investigating the breach and how hackers got ahold of sensitive FBI employment information, including whether the hackers got into third-party software or the FBI’s own internal systems. In a statement emailed to NPR, a FBI spokesperson said the bureau is working “around the clock …

Andrew Bailey, an FBI Deputy Director, Says He’s Leaving the Post After Just Over a Year in the Job

Andrew Bailey, an FBI Deputy Director, Says He’s Leaving the Post After Just Over a Year in the Job

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON (AP) — Andrew Bailey, one of the FBI’s two deputy directors, announced Monday that he was leaving the position after just over a year on the job and would be returning to Missouri to spend time with his family. Bailey was named co-deputy director in August 2025 to serve alongside Dan Bongino at a time of high tensions between FBI and Justice Department leadership over the handling of the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. The appointment was unusual because the FBI for years has had only one person at a time serve as deputy director and because the position, the No. 2 job at the bureau, is typically held by a career agent. An ardent backer of President Donald Trump, Bailey was serving as the Republican attorney general of Missouri when he was picked to be deputy director with Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and popular podcaster who also had not previously worked for the FBI. Bailey remained in his position after Bongino announced his departure and as the FBI in January …