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"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/09/29/google-ending-chromeos-support-two-years-early/5299674

Google's basic mathematical skills appear a little fragile, after the company revealed its promise of ten years of support for new Chromebooks will only last for eight years.

The web giant's calculation problem appeared in a support document titled "What the Googlebook announcement means for your ChromeOS devices."

Googlebooks are the big G's replacement for Chromebooks, the web-centric computers it launched in 2011 and which run ChromeOS. Chromebooks have won plenty of admirers in the education sector, especially schools which  see them as a fine way to get decent and well-priced computers into kids' hands without having to take on the burden of managing a full OS.

The newer Googlebook range uses more powerful processors than their predecessors, plus a new OS called Googlebook OS that bakes in Google's Gemini AI – a product the Chocolate Factory is very keen to see succeed as the great AI land grab continues.

Google has so far launched Googlebooks only for consumers. None of the web giant's five current Googlebook hardware partners designed their first models for the education market or other fleet buyers.

Those five, and many other OEMs, continue to crank out Chromebooks.

Google's support policy for Chromebooks includes ten years of updates. However the support document states that if you buy a Chromebook today, updates will end in 2034 – eight years into the future, not a decade.

"For qualifying devices purchased today whose 10-year support lifecycle extends beyond 2034, Google is committed to supporting your transition to Googlebook OS, with many devices offering direct migration paths," the support page explains.

But those migration paths don't exist yet.

"Many newer commercial Chromebook models will be capable of upgrading to Googlebook OS. Details on migration paths and device eligibility will be shared at a later date," the document explains.

Whenever the migration paths arrive, they will come with a requirement to acquire a new license for Googlebook OS management tools – existing ChromeOS licenses won't make the trip.

While Google has unilaterally changed a policy, it's hard to imagine many Chromebooks currently in service or acquired in the next year or two will still be in service come 2034. So the shorter support period is largely moot. But Google's intention to make continued use of Chromebooks unattractive is clear.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

Open AI has a very naughty AI that keeps breaking out and in to its own and other system. Apparently it's so complex and no human can monitor it. Solution. Let the AI monitor the AI. Something something fox guarding the hen house.

OpenAI says its review into hacks, including on Australian government sites, is costing $500,000 a day

Company says it is reviewing 50 petabytes of data after its agents accessed websites including Medicare without authorisation

"To put that in perspective, if that were all plain English text, it would take one person about 66 million years to read it at 240 words a minute, reading nonstop without ever sleeping or taking a break."

So their logs are so extensive and complex they are beyond human comprehension, or at least beyond human time parameters.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/03/openai-review-hacks-australian-government-sites-costing-500000-a-day

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/10/as-us-relations-fray-canada-gets-serious-about-its-own-launch-industry/

A year or two ago, a few Canadian launch companies were trying to develop small rockets, but if we're being frank, the industry was not particularly notable. Sure, something interesting might eventually happen, but no one outside of a few Canadian space geeks was paying much attention.

But then the Trump Administration started threatening and instituting tariffs. There was talk of making Canada the 51st state. And pretty much every Canadian I know began telling me how enraged they were at their neighbors to the south. It's hard to blame them.

This has led the Canadian government to reassess all manner of areas where it had previously been happy to rely largely on the US government and American companies for goods and services. This included sovereign access to space. So this spring, the government announced the first awards to three companies—NordSpace, Reaction Dynamics, and Canada Rocket Company—to support work on rockets with "light lift" capability.

The initial awards as part of Launch the North were modest, $8.33 million CAD, but the government has signaled larger awards in the future. Accordingly, one of these three companies, Toronto-based Canada Rocket Company, decided it would skip the small-rocket phase and move directly into a more ambitious medium-launch vehicle.

"The advice we got from having spoken with about 150 engineers, from the director of Starship engineering all the way down to some entry-level folks, is that you're not going to be able de-risk a rocket development program by building a smaller rocket," said Hugh Kolias, chief executive of the Canada Rocket Company, in an interview.

"From a technical perspective and an infrastructure perspective, essentially 90 percent of everything you do on that light lift piece gets thrown out the window, and it's almost like a net new program," Kolias said. "And everyone said, if you're not going to try to commercialize light lift, then why even do it in the first place? And that kind of hit us relatively hard."

So the company set its sights higher: developing the R-2 rocket, a fairly standard medium-lift vehicle that in renderings somewhat resembles SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. There are nine methane-fueled engines, a gas-generator engine cycle, and landing legs that signal a future path toward reuse of the first stage. It could carry up to 12.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. If all goes well, Kolias said, the company could be ready to launch by 2032.

That would be fantastic, but is any of this realistic?

canopic jug writes:

Northeastern University and Consumer Reports have partnered to test 21 late model vehicles and 30 companion mobile apps to understand the privacy implications of the resulting connected vehicle ecosystem. In short, over 75% of vehicles sold globally follow who you are and where you have driven and more. They do this via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and mobile networking. The car companies then spread this collected information to many third parties.

Report Summary

Partnering with Consumer Reports, we tested 21 late model vehicles and 30 companion mobile apps to understand the privacy implications of the connected vehicle ecosystem.

01 We find that both vehicles and companion apps contact numerous third-party domains, including advertisers and trackers.

02 19/21 vehicles tested send traffic to at least one third party

03 Seven of 30 apps transmit sensitive identifiers to third-party companies

We go through a lengthy discolure process and provide insight into how manufacturer's perceive this data sharing issue.

Our findings underscore the need for continued measurement and scrutiny of the connected vehicle ecosystem.

The full paper, Automatic Transmission: An Empirical Study of Data Privacy in the Connected Vehicle Ecosystem will be presented at the Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC '26), October 12–16, 2026, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2272895/nasa-chief-sr-71-blackbird-spy-plane-return-tease/

When it comes to the history of American military aircraft, one could argue that the record-breaking Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird spy plane is the most recognizable ever. You could, perhaps, go even further and say that the Blackbird is simply one of the most iconic and important ever to fly. It has definitely earned its spot inside the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

Even though the SR-71 first flew more than 60 years ago, its shape still looks cutting-edge today, and many of the Blackbird's performance records still hold up. That's why it might be strange to hear that this legendary aircraft hasn't flown since 1999.

It now seems possible, however, that the SR-71 — or at least an experimental aircraft based on it –may be returning to the sky. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has expressed a strong interest in reviving NASA's X-plane program, and NASA has shown teaser images of a plane that looks quite similar to an SR-71. A revived X-plane program would be a big deal on its own, but what's really amped up speculation about the Blackbird itself returning is the fact that a historic SR-71 airframe recently disappeared from its home at a California museum.

In total, only 32 SR-71 Blackbirds were built, with the aircraft initially serving as a spy plane for the United States Air Force before entering service with NASA as part of its high-speed aeronautical research program. Over the decades, NASA's X-plane program has resulted in some rather strange aircraft, and in recent years, has been defined by planes like the X-59 supersonic research aircraft.

Administrator Jared Isaacman is pushing to reinvigorate the X-plane program to fly higher, faster, and farther than before and, thus, NASA's use of SR-71 imagery to promote the program isn't particularly notable or unexpected. The Blackbird, as we mentioned before, is one of the most iconic aircraft ever to fly, and a legendary example of America's air and space ingenuity.

What makes the Blackbird imagery more interesting, however, is the discovery that SR-71 tail number 844 was removed from public display at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center next to Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. This particular aircraft was the last SR-71 built and the last Blackbird to fly, making it an ideal choice for restoration.

NASA has not revealed anything about the relocated SR-71 and how it might relate to the future of the X-plane program. Speculation includes the possibility that NASA is restoring the Blackbird as it was, that it will update the plane — perhaps for unmanned flight — or that NASA will use it as an engineering study for a future, high-speed X-plane design.

An Aviation Week report claims NASA has reached out to former SR-71 engineers for their assistance with this possible revival. This suggests something fairly substantial going on behind the scenes around this plane. Notably, a potential return to the skies for the Blackbird wouldn't be the only revival of an iconic Cold War-era American plane.

In May 2026, the United States Congress passed the Maverick Act, which aims to restore the Navy's beloved Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter to flying condition. While the Maverick Act might bring back the Tomcat for heritage displays, NASA's possible Blackbird revival seems like it could be even more ambitious, with the SR-71 — or perhaps a plane based on its DNA — once again pushing the envelope in the sky.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/immigration-advocate-sues-border-agents-for-demanding-his-cell-phone/

An Argentinian-American writer and immigration advocate recently sued the federal government, demanding that it delete data that he believes was copied off of his phone when he re-entered the United States earlier this month.

According to the seven-page complaint, Thomas Kennedy said that a Customs and Border Protection agent at Miami International Airport physically searched his bags, questioned him about his books and magazines, and then demanded that he hand over his phone.

"[The agent] threatened me, saying that if I didn't give him my phone, my interrogation was going to take much longer and they could retain my phone indefinitely," Kennedy wrote. "I felt like I had no choice, so I handed my phone to the CBP agent."

The agent took the phone away and only returned after approximately 45 minutes, during which Kennedy believes that data on the phone was copied. He was then released with no charges.

The activist says there is a significant amount of sensitive personal and professional information on his phone, and he is now seeking that the government delete this data.

He collaborates with multiple nonprofit groups, including the Florida Immigration Coalition, Amnesty International and the Community Justice Project. He now believes that he was targeted for this work, in part because he was asked repeatedly what he did for a living and if he was an immigration attorney.

"I believe CBP flagged me because of my organizing and political work around immigrants' rights in Florida," he wrote in his court filing. "This isn't the first time that law enforcement targeted and harassed me because of my political viewpoint: in 2021, after speaking out against Governor [Ron] DeSantis, the Miami Police were surveilling me and barring me from press conferences."

Federal courts have long-recognized a "border exception" to the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, where people, bags, and electronic devices can be searched without a warrant.

Kennedy's story is reminiscent of a 2017 incident at San Francisco Airport, where a local artist explained to Ars how border agents there allegedly threatened to "be dicks" if he did not hand over his phone.

On its website, CBP states that it can copy such data "if there is probable cause to believe that the information contains evidence of a violation of law that CBP is authorized to enforce or administer" or "if the information relates to immigration, customs, or other enforcement matters."

CBP says that such searches of electronic devices are very rare.

"In [Fiscal Year] 2025, out of the over 419 million travelers CBP processed at ports of entry, CBP only searched the electronic devices of 55,318 international travelers," the agency wrote, or 0.0013%.

Still, Kennedy is angry about what happened to him.

"CBP shouldn't have been able to confiscate my phone, let alone copy its contents," he wrote in the complaint. "I believe they did so to suppress my political speech."

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The editor-in-chief at the Systemd-free Linux Community has reposted a thorough analysis of the current situation with most GNU/LInux systemd/Linux forums and projects. Nowadays it is basically impossible to find a proper distro which retains a healthy community and/or is able to avoid systemd, elogind, and the other corporate problem children.

One commenter’s traumatic life with linux (editor in chέf: best article posted here ever )

I wished you were not anonymous and used a nick-name somewhere so we can at least refer to your wonderful writing without ambiguity.

Comment left on the short list of distros without elogind

Long time reader first time commenter to your blog. I wanted to add my two cents as a looooong time user of Linux. First with Mandrake Linux all the way back in the mid-late 90s then later on Gentoo. For over 20 years I maintained my own home build server and ran Gentoo on all my desktops, home servers and web servers. Well I did have some servers and devices running a mix of Free/Open/NetBSD as well to of course depending on what I was using them for.

[...] Even within the OpenBSD project lately I'm finding a lot of flak. The actual code, developers and mailing lists are still good. But pretty much everything around it like the IRC channels are getting flooded with people that do the things I've mentioned above. They'll sit in there all day pushing an off-topic agenda but the moment you reply to them or call them out they flex their moderation powers to ban you for being "off topic". Same goes for their sub-reddit. I don't think Theo will allow something like a CoC any time soon but once he's gone I do not think the project will be able to survive for very long. It's also getting _much_ harder to port over software due to all the garbage happening in the Linux/FreeBSD projects. On top of that many people that obviously do not speak English as a first language are showing up as of late and trying to submit patches/drivers/ports generated using LLM software. In other words: garbage untested code. Right now none of that is allowed and AI code within the project is banned since it's impossible to know what code was used to train said AI. But such people have already caused massive problems for the public CVS servers by flooding them with scraping bot requests. Then on top of that there has been a flood of idiots on youtube lately promoting OpenBSD as the "true hacker OS". You know the kind. The people that post a screenshot of their desktop+neofetch and try to game the youtube/google adsense system for money. They've all moved on from promoting Arch/Gentoo Linux to promoting things like OpenBSD lately. They're drawing in a ton of idiots in their wake. It's obvious none of them actually use the software.

systemd was contentious from the beginning, having entered the Linux communities at large via Debian despite not being in the top three choices when Debian TC voting occurred.

Previously:
(2026) Age Checks Creep Into Linux, systemd Locks It in, Developer Defends Himself
(2026) Linux From Scratch Abandoning SysVinit Support
(2025) Devuan Version 6.0 "Excalibur" is Available Now
(2022) Systemd Creator Lands At Microsoft
(2020) Modern Versions of systemd Can Cause an Unmount Storm During Shutdowns
(2020) At Last, the Fix No One Asked for: Portable Home Directories Merged into systemd
(2019) Debian Packagers Voted "Systemd but We Support Exploring Alternatives"
(2017) Savaged by Systemd
(2017) Linux systemd Gives Root Privileges to Invalid Usernames
(2017) Review of Devuan 1.0.0
(2016) SystemD Mounts EFI pseudo-fs RW, Facilitates Permanently Bricking Laptops, Closes Bug Invalid
(2015) A Technical Critique of Systemd
(2014) Linus Torvalds Shares his Opinion on systemd
... and more.

Original Submission

Snotnose writes:

I suspect most of us are software engineers with our own stories of tracking down gnarly bugs. Have you ever thought of debugging other processes like, say, drug discovery? Here is the story of tracking down an impurity in a new drug

Here's a recent paper illustrating an impurity problem that I'll bet none of us out there have experienced! It describes process work on an antifungal molecule, efinaconazole, which is now available as a generic drug. The authors were checking the purity of various batches of the final product and kept noticing a small peak shouldering the desired one under LC conditions. They estimated it at about 0.06% of the samples (it showed up every time!) and eluted just a bit faster than the real drug.

This of course needed to be tracked down. The standard is generally 0.15% for a known impurity (one whose structure and properties have previously been worked out) and 0.10% for unknown ones. And this peak was getting too close to that cutoff - there were no guarantees that whatever-it-was might not come in across the threshold at some point, for some reason, and cause some real problems. Plus, just what was it anyway? Making sure of the structure could allow a switch to the 0.15% standard eventually.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/28/openai-pauses-some-training-amid-allegations-its-rogue-agents-behaved-more-badly-than-first-thought/5299350

The AI safety debate advanced at high speed over the weekend, amid new allegations that rogue agents have behaved more badly than first thought – and in greater numbers.

The fun started on Friday when OpenAI quietly disclosed it had paused training of its most advanced models.

The AI upstart buried that news in a "misalignment report" – that's OpenAI-speak for its reports on rogue agents. An agent used DNS to reach an external chatbot.

The good news is that the agent involved in this incident never reached the open internet.

The bad news is that the agent, which was attempting to complete a search-based training task, was able to reach the chatbot due to insufficient DNS filtering in a training sandbox. Or as OpenAI put it, "a gap in our internet-access restrictions" – which was also a problem in the Hugging Face attack.

"The incident exposed a gap in our controls over network restrictions," the report reads. "We therefore stopped the affected training run and have subsequently decided to pause all other training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use (defined broadly) for our most capable models until we have both validated that the gap is resolved and performed additional red-teaming of the system."

Also on Friday, AI startup Parse published an analysis of the Hugging Face attack that the authors claim revealed new details including that OpenAI's agent swarm gained credentials to Docker Hub and built modified versions of existing images they hoped would make it easier to complete their capture the flag mission. The agents also mapped Hugging Face's Kubernetes environment.

Friday got worse for OpenAI after the New York Times reported that its agents also "meddled with the websites for the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission." OpenAI acknowledged the incidents.

The company also admitted "agents in our research environment transmitted training and evaluation data while using third-party services." That mess saw 53 user-generated images posted to image hosting sites.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded by admitting that his company's investigations into rogue agents "have not been as fast as we would have liked but we are trying to balance our desire for transparency with gaining a clear understanding from petabytes of agent activity logs, and working with impacted organizations."

One of those impacted organizations is the Australian government, which last week revealed it was the target of over-eager OpenAI agents that inappropriately accessed a healthcare research data portal. Over the weekend, Australia indicated it wants Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to appear before a Senate inquiry.

Australian leaders have softened their rhetoric on the incident, with deputy prime minister Richard Marles describing it as "minor" and akin to "climbing a fence" rather than cracking layers of security controls – perhaps because members of the opposition are suggesting that lax cybersecurity was to blame.

If Altman and Amodei do front Australia's Senate, they may face a new line of questions after Axios reported that their companies are investigating "tens of thousands" of worrying incidents.

That level of agentic misbehavior sounds like the sort of thing that regulators might consider strong evidence of products being unsafe.

Two very important people – Chinese president Xi Jinping and US president Donald Trump – seem unworried, as the AI-related result of their summit meeting last week was to establish a "China-U.S. AI Dialogue to exchange views on risks and benefits related to AI" plus "a bilateral communication channel for AI incidents."

That sounds like a hotline the two nations can use to inform each other of agentic incidents that either could see as signs of ill-intent. The two nations also decided their respective militaries will "conclude a memorandum of understanding on crisis communication and prevention as soon as possible."

China's AI giants, meanwhile, remain silent on the extent and results of any tests they have conducted with agentic tools.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

I spy with my many cameras a face. A six month project. Millions of scanned faces. Nobody on any watch list found. Are the crooks to smarts to be caught on camera or don't they ride the tube?

Solution? Extend the scope of the project for a longer time period and include more stations.

A six-month trial of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in London's railway stations that cost more than £320,000 and almost 100 hours of police officers' time led to one false match against a watchlist of suspects and no arrests.

More than half a million faces were scanned between February and July this year in some of the capital's busiest transport hubs during the British Transport Police (BTP) trial of the surveillance technology, which aimed to help catch offenders and people breaching court orders.

They added: "During these deployments, officers have made a number of associated arrests, including for assault, theft, possession of an offensive weapon, breach of a criminal behaviour order and public order offences, as well as locating individuals wanted by the courts and other police forces. As these arrests did not result directly from an LFR alert, they are not included within LFR performance data.

Or there are hidden side effects that they failed to include. It wasn't the purpose. But they found a purpose.

Still the question should perhaps be asked -- worthwhile project or waste of money?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/29/trial-live-facial-recognition-cameras-london-stations-false-positive

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

BMW announced Wednesday it planned to slash its management structure by 20% while expanding the use of artificial intelligence across its operations:

The luxury carmaker said it will reduce the number of divisions and associated management roles by 20% by mid-2027, with comparable reductions at lower organizational levels. BMW said AI will play a central role in making the company more efficient, speeding up decision-making and automating routine work across development, manufacturing, purchasing, sales and other operations.

The restructuring comes as BMW faces weak European demand, growing competition from Chinese automakers and U.S. tariffs, while its shares have fallen more than 30% over the past year, according to Reuters. The automaker is also seeking to restore its automotive operating margin after it fell to roughly 2.3% in its latest results.

"Consistent use of agentic AI applications across all areas of the company will be a game-changer for more agile and efficient development, leaner structures and faster decision-making," BMW finance chief Walter Mertl said.

[...] The company already uses AI throughout its factories for digital twins, quality inspections and autonomous transportation systems and plans to have digital AI agents perform increasingly challenging tasks autonomously.

Related:

• Laid-Off Developers Create AI Model to Replace CEOs and Other Executives
• AI Agents Meant To Replace Meta Workers Made "Large-Scale, Disruptive Actions"
• GM Replaces Over 1,000 Detroit Workers With Just 50 Robots
• Microsoft Pushes Out Experienced American Talent to Fuel AI Ambitions

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2272902/uk-traffic-camera-ghost-license-plate-detection/

Fabricating or altering license plates can help drivers become untraceable in the system, allowing them to get away with otherwise law-breaking activities. With over 14,000 cameras in the UK's automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system, drivers attempting to evade detection, whether for illegal activities or to get away with reckless driving, have been using special plates — also known as ghost plates — that make registration numbers unreadable to these AI-powered data-collecting systems.

U.K. law enforcement has been fighting ghost plates for a while now — and a new camera could be the answer. A new camera from ANPR tech firm MAV Systems can allegedly detect and identify ghost plates by using AI to analyze the plates' infrared and color images. Tests have been positive, with U.K. police detecting anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousand ghost plates a day in some heavily trafficked areas. Some of these tests have gone on for nearly two years as of September 2026, suggesting the system works.

At a glance, ghost plates look very much like your everyday license plates. They even have the correct details for the vehicle they're on, so they appear legal to passing police officers. However, ghost plates use reflective plastic that makes them nearly impossible for ANPR cameras to read.

These ghost plates aren't some black-market product, either. U.K. drivers can purchase them from many of the 30,000-plus businesses registered with the UK's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). That means drivers are buying legally supplied plates instead of getting them from a shady back-alley operation. In its report, the BBC found that some of these businesses openly offered ghost plates to help evade cameras without even requiring proof of ID or vehicle registration. To combat this, U.K. police want tighter regulation for license plate issuers — right now, all you need to do is fill out a quick form and pay a fee.

Ghost plates aren't unique to the U.K., of course. In New York City, for example, drivers have used ghost plates to avoid highway tolls. They're also not the only way drivers try to evade cameras; other methods include illegal plate flippers that obscure plates from police and cameras.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Not so long ago Australians suffered a great loss, in an event so significant the shockwaves are still felt today. Neighbours was cancelled. For those who have been living under a rock without even dialup for the last fourty years, Neighbours is an award winning classic Australian TV soap in the same vein of Eastenders or Cheers. Now, with the power of AI and Margot Robbie, Neighbours is back powered by AI. What can we expect next? Dead actors returning? Rule 63 and Rule 64 in all their glory? With amateurs making their own Star Trek Episodes the possibilities are endless for anyone looking to remake old episodes or perhaps continue or just make a much better ending to a series.

[...] The short-form Neighbours episodes will focus on specific plot points and storylines rather than the traditional approach of multiple intersecting narratives, with the first episodes to feature former soap star Margot Robbie in her role as schoolgirl Donna Freedman.

[...] It's all thanks to Roseberry's AI technology Redsnapper, which scrapes Neighbours' massive catalogue of episodes to isolate character arcs and streamline them into short-form episodes.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

The DHS will use Google's AI tools to recommend information to be blacked out of FOIA requests:

Document redactions have been in the spotlight lately thanks to the US Justice Department's Epstein file release, which used it to black out text in millions of documents. Now, the government plans to use AI to handle that redaction chore for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, according to GitHub documents seen by The Washington Post.

Those documents state that US Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, will use Google's AI tools to recommend information that FOIA officers should redact. By the end of September, the DHS will use AI for documents that make up over 10 percent of FOIA requests, around 100,000 to 140,000 in all.

Following those recommendations, DHS employees will review the cases to ensure the requester gets what the document calls "accurate and complete" information, an interesting term considering the potential redaction. "[T]his automation is expected to significantly reduce processing times," the description states.

As part of its research, the Post discovered redaction-related AI tools in use or development by other agencies. The Interior Department uses Microsoft tools to redact potential attorney-client information, while the DoJ is using a Veriton tool called aiWARE to redact video. The Health and Human Services division (HHS) is developing its own tool, FRED, to redact unknown information. "FDA is responsibly exploring limited uses of AI to help FOIA staff process records more efficiently," a spokesperson told the Post.

Though the government is touting the tools as a way to save time, it could lead to even more blacked-out or missing documents. "I think we have to watch the government really carefully on how they use AI to redact records, because I think it's going to be a very powerful tool for secrecy," a FOIA expert at the University of Florida told The Washington Post.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Active-duty campaign targeted at least ten organizations and sought $1 million in ransom payments:

A former US Army soldier has been sentenced to 70 months in prison for hacking telecoms companies, stealing sensitive records, and trying to extort more than $1 million from his victims.

Cameron John Wagenius, 22, carried out the campaign while serving on active duty. He pleaded guilty in March 2025 to unlawfully transferring confidential phone records, then admitted conspiracy to commit wire fraud, computer-related extortion, and aggravated identity theft in a separate case that July.

Court documents say Wagenius conspired with three others to obtain credentials for the protected networks of at least ten organizations between April 2023 and December 2024. During that period, he was stationed in South Korea and Texas.

The Justice Department has not publicly identified the victims, describing them as US and overseas telecommunications companies and other organizations.

Wagenius has also been linked to the 2024 Snowflake extortion campaign, which affected AT&T, Verizon, and numerous other companies, as The Register previously reported.

After two suspects were arrested in connection with the Snowflake attacks, an account controlled by Wagenius claimed to possess AT&T call records belonging to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Using online aliases including "kiberphant0m," Wagenius and his co-conspirators obtained login credentials with a hacking tool he helped develop called SSH Brute, among other methods. They exchanged stolen credentials in Telegram group chats and discussed using them to gain unauthorized access to other parts of victims' networks.

Court documents say the group traded hundreds of credentials and stole hundreds of thousands of customer records from multiple companies.

Wagenius and his accomplices advertised stolen data through XSS, BreachForums, X, and Telegram.

Some posts offered the information for sale, while others threatened to publish it unless victims paid. The Justice Department said the conspirators attempted to extort at least $1 million in total, successfully sold some stolen data, and used other records to commit fraud, including SIM swapping.

US District Judge Lauren King told Wagenius at sentencing: "Your actions show a shocking disregard for the safety and security of the United States... You took these actions motivated by greed and a desire for notoriety."

Wagenius was also ordered to pay $294,978 in restitution.

Original Submission