The U.S. has been using drones more and more frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks. They have been highly effective on the battlefield, but have raised legal and ethical issues. The U.S. has been using drones more and more frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks. They have been highly effective on the battlefield, but have raised legal and ethical issues. Today in the skies over New Mexico, Air Force students are practicing for the kill.

US law enforcement has sentenced seven criminals who were part of an online fraud ring which duped victims out of their cash through romance, shopping and job opportunity scams. On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said that Chief U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. of the Southern District of Mississippi sentenced seven citizens for their roles in online fraud schemes, which included counterfeit checks, "mystery shopper" websites and fake work-from-home jobs. According to Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, all seven were members of a "large scale" international fraud ring which also used online dating sites as a platform to coax lonely hearts out of their money. In addition, fraudulent mystery shopper and personal assistance job opportunities were ran, in which victims -- believing they had legitimate work -- would be sent checks and instructions for various assignments. The checks, which were counterfeit, would bounce after the criminal ring received funds from victims, destined to be laundered in the US before transferring over to Nigeria.

Three military veterans once involved in the U.S. drone program have thrown their support behind a Yemeni man's legal fight to obtain details about why his family members were killed in a 2012 strike. The former soldiers' unusual decision to publicly endorse the lawsuit against President Obama and other U.S. officials adds another twist to Faisal bin Ali Jaber's four-year quest for accountability in the deaths of his brother-in-law and nephew, who he believes needlessly fell victim to one of the most lethal covert programs in U.S. history. The former enlisted service members told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a recent filing that they believe the 2012 drone strike serves as a case study of how mistakes frequently occur in the nation's targeted-killing program, where life-or-death decisions are based upon top-secret evidence. The veterans say they "witnessed a secret, global system without regard for borders, conducting widespread surveillance with the ability to conduct deadly targeted killing operations." Though the veterans did not disclose any personal knowledge of the strike that is alleged to have killed Jaber's relatives, they claim the military frequently labels the deaths of unknown victims as "enemy kills."

A 53-year-old man died Wednesday after his Tesla Model S crashed into a tree and burst into flames on a highway about 25 miles south of Amsterdam. Technical personnel from the company joined Dutch investigators at the scene "to establish the facts of the incident," including to confirm whether the car's Autopilot feature was engaged at the time. A Tesla spokesperson reportedly said: "We are undertaking a full investigation and will share our findings as soon as possible." While there has been no other official public statement from the company so far, Dana Hull, a reporter for Bloomberg, said on her Twitter page that Tesla confirmed the car's self-driving feature "was not engaged at any time." Updated from @TeslaMotors: "Thus far, we can confirm from the car's logs that Autopilot was not engaged at any time" https://t.co/RKEX3zkEB1 The cause of the accident in the Netherlands is still not known.

For some of the drunk drivers, speeders and red-light runners of Orange County, the most powerful person to know wasn't a judge, a prosecutor or a defense attorney. It was a low-level paper pusher who rarely saw the inside of a courtroom, authorities say. In 2010, word began spreading quietly through the seamier corners of the O.C's vibrant car enthusiast scene that there was someone working inside the county courts who, for a price, could make a criminal charge or ticket disappear. Over the five years or so that followed, Juan Lopez Jr. forged electronic records to close out more than 1,000 cases in ways that were favorable to the accused, according to a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday. Lopez, prosecutors allege, took advantage of his unchecked access to the court computer system to fabricate electronic trails of justice that was never delivered.

The 7.1 trillion gallons of torrential rainfall that a storm dumped on Louisiana in August, leading to a flooding disaster that killed at least 13 people and caused more than 1 billion in damage, had a direct link to human-caused global warming, a new study finds. In short, while these events are still rare -- on the order of about once every 1,000 years at the local level -- they used to be far more infrequent, the study, released Wednesday, concludes. Scientists studying the storm using readings from rain gauges as well as powerful computer models have determined just how unlikely the rains were, teasing out the component of the event that was likely human-caused. Like many other studies examining extreme events in recent years, the new research, which has been submitted to the online journal Hydrology and Earth Systems Discussions, points to the conclusion that global warming is an increasingly influential player when it comes to tipping the odds in favor of extreme events. This is particularly the case when it comes to extreme heat and heavy precipitation events, the researchers say.

September 8, 1966 was the day Science Fiction on television changed forever. It was the day Star Trek entered our public consciousness. In many ways, Star Trek was the right show, at the right time, this despite the fact that only after its initial run of 79 episodes, and a legendary letter writing campaign by its fans to try to save it, it was canceled by NBC for poor ratings. It came at a moment in our country's history when we were enjoying unprecedented technological advances and yet were experiencing social and political turmoil that threatened to rip apart the fabric of our nation and also potentially destroy our way of life as we knew it. This disparity between technology and humanity were themes that would define Star Trek in its various incarnations for the next fifty years -- and perhaps, if its fans see to make it so, for decades more.

Darktrace, the U.K. cybersecurity startup whose backers include Autonomy founder Mike Lynch's Invoke Capital, has closed 65 million in fresh funding. The new round was led by global investment firm KKR, with participation from existing investor Summit Partners and new investors TenEleven Ventures and SoftBank. I understand the new investment gives the 2013-founded company a valuation of more than 400 million, while in a call Lynch told me the new backing was a typical growth round and will be used for further international expansion and for R&D. In particular, he said Darktrace is developing technology to help companies respond to not only human-written cyberattacks but also the pending threat of machine-learning-based attacks that, in classic sci-fi-comes-true-fashion, will increasingly see AI battling it out with AI on behalf of the good and bad folks, respectively. But let's step back and take a look at what Darktrace offers today.

If Japan, home to the world's largest public debt, wanted to save a bundle, it would close the Bank of Japan. Auctioning off its giant neo-baroque headquarter buildings around the nation and pink-slipping roughly 4,900 full-time employees would cheer Moody's and Standard & Poor's and plug holes in the national balance sheet. That's not going to happen, of course. But imagine if the BOJ had closed shop 17 years ago, right after it first cut interest rates to zero, and turned its function over to a computer program. Would the artificial-intelligence version of the BOJ be any closer to 2 percent inflation than the well-compensated humans occupying its buildings?

Editor's Note: Last month, Dark Reading editors named Deep Instinct the most innovative startup in its first annual Best of Black Hat Innovation Awards program at Black Hat 2016 in Las Vegas. As you reach for a water bottle, you don't pause to analyze its material, size or shape in order to determine whether it's a water bottle. Instead, you immediately reach for it, with complete confidence in its identification. If I show the same water bottle to any traditional computer vision module, it will easily recognize it. If I partially obstruct the image with my fingers, then traditional computer vision modules will have difficulty recognizing it.