All posts tagged: National Security

US Customs and Border Protection Quietly Revokes Protections for Pregnant Women and Infants

US Customs and Border Protection Quietly Revokes Protections for Pregnant Women and Infants

Published by skeptic

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has quietly rescinded several internal policies that were designed to protect some of the most vulnerable people in its custody—including pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and people with serious medical conditions. The decision, outlined in a memo dated May 5 and signed by acting commissioner Pete Flores, eliminates four Biden-era policies enacted over the last three years. These policies were intended to address CBP’s long-standing failures to provide adequate care for detainees who are most at risk—failures that have, in some cases, proved fatal. The May 5 memo was distributed internally to top agency leadership but was not announced publicly. CBP justified the rollback by stating in the memo–titled Rescission of Legacy Policies Related to Care and Custody–that the policies were “obsolete” and “misaligned” with the agency’s current enforcement priorities. Together, the now rescinded policies laid out standards for detainees with heightened medical needs—requiring, for instance, access to water and food for pregnant people, ensuring privacy for breastfeeding mothers, and mandating diapers and unexpired formula be stocked in holding …

Protecting Your Phone—and Your Privacy—at the US Border

Protecting Your Phone—and Your Privacy—at the US Border

Published by skeptic

Lauren Goode: I think Katie should go first. She’s the boss. Katie Drummond: So as you all know, because I can’t stop talking about it, I recently returned from France, and one thing in particular that I am now pathologically fixated on, that I am recommending to all of you, if you want to feel just so good, if you want to just feel so good when you sit down and eat, is French butter. And so I ate so much butter last week. My entire family was obsessed with the butter. All we did was eat butter. We got home over the weekend, I went to a specialty grocery store, and I purchased French butter. And I have now been eating the French butter in the privacy of my own residence, and it’s just been a very lovely thing. I got some nice bread, I got my French butter, I’m watching the country fall apart, and I’m very well nourished, and that is my recommendation for the week. Go get some French butter. You …

Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages

Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages

Published by skeptic

The US Treasury Department was initially alone in providing the court a timeline of the messages that it was able to retrieve. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had received a preservation memo on March 26, his acting general counsel said, as well as advice regarding his fundamental duty to preserve records. Resultingly, “images were taken from the phones of Secretary Bessent and Mr. [Daniel] Katz,” Bessent’s chief of staff. The messages begin at 1:48 pm EST on March 15, 2025. “The Atlantic article was about a chat that took place the 11th through the 15th,” Anthony says, “so pretty much everything was gone—from the only defendant who gave us clear and specific information about what they were able to save.” The Department of Defense told the court last month that its attorneys were “in the process” of complying with the agency’s preservation rules and that Secretary Hegseth’s communications team had been asked to forward the Signal messages to an official DOD account. Pressed by the court for further details last week, the DOD said Monday that …

Don’t Join the Autocrats! | Michael McFaul

Don’t Join the Autocrats! | Michael McFaul

Published by skeptic

I just mailed off the final chapter of my new book on competition between autocratic and democratic great powers in the twenty-first century, focused on China, Russia, and the United States. It draws on lessons from the cold war to argue that the world’s democratic camp, anchored by the United States, has not just more collective economic and military power than its autocratic camp, anchored by China and Russia, but better ideas about how to govern. And yet by the time the book comes out in October I am not sure which side the US will be on. In words and actions, President Trump seems to have more affinity with the autocrats than with the democrats—and particularly with the most belligerent, imperial autocrat in the world today, Vladimir Putin.   In previous eras of great power competition between autocratic and democratic countries, up to just a few months ago, the US’s allegiances were never seriously in question. The US government was not, of course, always firmly on the side of democracy: often it demonstrated indifference to—even sometimes actively impeded—other …

DOGE Is Trying to Gift Itself a 0 Million Building, Court Filings Show

DOGE Is Trying to Gift Itself a $500 Million Building, Court Filings Show

Published by skeptic

The DOGE-affiliated acting president of the United States Institute of Peace, a Congressionally funded, independent think tank, has moved to transfer the agency’s $500 million headquarters building to the General Services Administration free of charge, according to court documents revealed in a recently filed lawsuit. Tensions at USIP have been escalating for weeks, starting when the Trump administration fired the agency’s 10 voting board members on March 14 and USIP staffers denied DOGE representatives access at the front door. Three days later, DOGE employees made their way into the building, reportedly using a physical key from a former security contractor. The dramatic confrontations culminated in a full takeover, with former State Department official Kenneth Jackson assuming the role of president. As of this past Friday, most USIP staffers have received termination notices. Former USIP officials have since filed a lawsuit against Jackson, DOGE, Donald Trump, and other members of the Trump administration, seeking an immediate intervention “to stop Defendants from completing the unlawful dismantling of the Institute,” according to the complaint. While US district judge …

Even More Venmo Accounts Tied to Trump Officials in Signal Group Chat Left Data Public

Even More Venmo Accounts Tied to Trump Officials in Signal Group Chat Left Data Public

Published by skeptic

Venmo did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment. In a statement given to WIRED in response to questions about the Waltz and Wiles accounts, spokesperson Erin Mackey said, “We take our customers’ privacy seriously, which is why we let customers choose their privacy settings on Venmo for both their individual payments and friends lists—and we make it incredibly simple for customers to make these private if they choose to do so.” “From my perspective, as a veteran, everyone is entitled to use the applications and services they feel are necessary to live their lives,” says Tara Lemieux, a 35-year veteran of the US intelligence community including the National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security, and supporting agencies. “That said, when you post anything in those third-party applications and you don’t understand how that information can be shared or exploited, you are taking a risk for our nation—and that’s not acceptable.” For Lemieux, while public transactions on Venmo might appear harmless, foreign intelligence services—particularly signals intelligence agencies—look for patterns: who’s paying whom, how often, …

Mike Waltz Left His Venmo Friends List Public

Mike Waltz Left His Venmo Friends List Public

Published by skeptic

Many of the accounts appear to belong to local and national politicians and political operatives ranging from US representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas to a former mayor of Deltona, Florida, as well as venture capitalists, defense industry entrepreneurs, and executives like Christian Brose, the president of defense tech giant Anduril. (Crenshaw’s office and Anduril did not respond to requests for comment.) One of the most notable appears to belong to Wiles, one of Trump’s most trusted political advisers. That account’s 182-person friend list includes accounts sharing the names of influential figures like Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, and Hope Hicks, Trump’s former White House communications director. While none of the Venmo transactions for the account listed for Waltz, Wiles, or Barrett were publicly visible, it appears that none of them had opted out of sharing their contact list, allowing their friend lists to remain visible to the public. After WIRED reached out to the White House for comment, both Waltz and Wiles appeared to change their Venmo privacy settings to hide their friend lists. …

US Charges 12 Alleged Spies in China’s Freewheeling Hacker-for-Hire Ecosystem

US Charges 12 Alleged Spies in China’s Freewheeling Hacker-for-Hire Ecosystem

Published by skeptic

Only rarely does the West get a glimpse inside the vast hacker-for-hire contractor ecosystem that enables China’s digital intrusion campaigns worldwide. Now a new set of criminal charges against a dozen Chinese men, including two government officials, accuses them of a vast espionage campaign that included breaching the US Treasury, and goes as far as revealing the internal communications of some of those alleged hackers, their tools, and their business relationships. The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced the indictments of 12 Chinese individuals accused of more than a decade of hacker intrusions around the world, including eight staffers for the contractor i-Soon, two officials at China’s Ministry of Public Security who allegedly worked with them, and two other men who were allegedly part of the Chinese hacker group APT27 or Silk Typhoon, which prosecutors say was involved in the breach late last year of the US Treasury. “Today, we are exposing the Chinese government agents directing and fostering indiscriminate and reckless attacks against computers and networks worldwide, as well as the enabling companies …

Top US Election Security Watchdog Forced to Stop Election Security Work

Top US Election Security Watchdog Forced to Stop Election Security Work

Published by skeptic

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen all of its election security work and is reviewing everything it has done to help state and local officials secure their elections for the past eight years, WIRED has learned. The move represents the first major example of the country’s cyber defense agency accommodating President Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud and online censorship. In a memo sent Friday to all CISA employees and obtained by WIRED, CISA’s acting director, Bridget Bean, said she was ordering “a review and assessment” of every position at the agency related to election security and countering mis- and disinformation, “as well as every election security and [mis-, dis-, and malinformation] product, activity, service, and program that has been carried out” since the federal government designated election systems as critical infrastructure in 2017. “CISA will pause all elections security activities until the completion of this review,” Bean added. The agency is also cutting off funding for these activities at the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center, a group funded by …

China’s Salt Typhoon Spies Are Still Hacking Telecoms—Now by Exploiting Cisco Routers

China’s Salt Typhoon Spies Are Still Hacking Telecoms—Now by Exploiting Cisco Routers

Published by skeptic

When the Chinese hacker group known as Salt Typhoon was revealed last fall to have deeply penetrated major US telecommunications companies—ultimately breaching no fewer than nine of the phone carriers and accessing Americans’ texts and calls in real time—that hacking campaign was treated as a four-alarm fire by the US government. Yet even after those hackers’ high-profile exposure, they’ve continued their spree of breaking into telecom networks worldwide, including more in the US. Researchers at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future on Wednesday night revealed in a report that they’ve seen Salt Typhoon breach five telecoms and internet service providers around the world, as well as more than a dozen universities from Utah to Vietnam, all between December and January. The telecoms include one US internet service provider and telecom firm and another US-based subsidiary of a UK telecom, according to the company’s analysts, though they declined to name those victims to WIRED. “They’re super active, and they continue to be super active,” says Levi Gundert, who leads Recorded Future’s research team known as Insikt Group. “I …