crackdown
Australian police smash e-bikes in crackdown on unruly teens
Police say at least 25 kids used e-bikes and scooters to evade arrest and intimidate drivers. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Australian police are cracking down on groups of unruly teenagers who they say are using deceptively speedy e-bikes and scooters to engage in "antisocial riding behavior." Their solution: confiscate the popular micromobility devices and crush them. The roundup, dubbed Operation Moorhead, began last week in the suburbs of Perth in southwestern Australia.
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Security News This Week: ICE Can Now Spy on Every Phone in Your Neighborhood
Plus: Iran shuts down its internet amid sweeping protests, an alleged scam boss gets extradited to China, and more. After a federal agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, WIRED surfaced December federal court testimony from the reported ICE shooter, Jonathan Ross. In it, he said he was a firearms trainer and that he has had "hundreds" of encounters with drivers in a professional capacity during enforcement actions. Separately, we looked at how the tactics behind protest policing are moving toward intentional antagonism . If you haven't seen it, here's our guide to protesting safely in the age of surveillance .
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China removes two popular gay dating apps from Apple and Android stores
Apple said in a statement the removal came after an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China. Apple said in a statement the removal came after an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China. Two of China's most popular gay dating apps have disappeared from app stores in the country, raising fears of a further crackdown on LGBT communities. As of Tuesday, Blued and Finka were unavailable on Apple's app store and several Android platforms. Users who had already downloaded the apps appeared to still be able to use them. Both apps were still available for download from their official websites.
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Liberals are catalysts to catastrophe, again
Yoav Litvin is an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer. On September 17, the late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was suspended after remarks he made about the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Days later, he was reinstated following liberal upheaval. In his first appearance back on air, Kimmel read US President Donald Trump's post on Truth Social: "I can't believe ABC fake news gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back." Without missing a beat, Kimmel responded, "You can't believe they gave me my job back. I can't believe we gave you your job back!"
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The looming crackdown on AI companionship
The risks posed when kids form bonds with chatbots have turned AI safety from an abstract worry into a political flashpoint. As long as there has been AI, there have been people sounding alarms about what it might do to us: rogue superintelligence, mass unemployment, or environmental ruin from data center sprawl. But this week showed that another threat entirely--that of kids forming unhealthy bonds with AI--is the one pulling AI safety out of the academic fringe and into regulators' crosshairs. This has been bubbling for a while. Two high-profile lawsuits filed in the last year, against Character.AI and OpenAI, allege that companion-like behavior in their models contributed to the suicides of two teenagers. A study by US nonprofit Common Sense Media, published in July, found that 72% of teenagers have used AI for companionship.
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Democrat moves to block Trump admin from using military drones to monitor protests after LA riots
A House Democrat is moving to block the Trump administration from being able to use military-grade drones to surveil protests in the U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., introduced the bill in response to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reportedly using MQ-9 Reaper drones to monitor the protests in Los Angeles earlier this year. "The U.S. government should never use military drones to spy on its own people. Not under anyone," Gomez told Fox News Digital in a statement. "This bill would stop Trump's abuse of power and get these combat drones out of our neighborhoods." An MQ-9 Reaper flies by on a training mission at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada.
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RFK Jr. Orders HHS to Give Undocumented Migrants' Medicaid Data to DHS
With demonstrations ramping up against the Trump administration, this week was all about protests. With President Donald Trump taking the historic step to deploy US Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles, we dove into the "long-term dangers" of sending troops to LA, as well as what those troops are permitted to do while they're there. Of course, it's not just the military getting involved in the LA protests against the heavy crackdowns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There's also Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which further escalated federal involvement by flying Predator drones over LA. And there are local and state authorities, who've used "nonlethal" weapons and chemical agents like tear gas against protesters.
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Chinese tech firms freeze AI tools in crackdown on exam cheats
Big Chinese tech companies appear to have turned off some AI functions to prevent cheating during the country's highly competitive university entrance exams. More than 13.3 million students are sitting the four-day gaokao exams, which began on Saturday and determine if and where students can secure a limited place at university. This year, students hoping to get some assistance from increasingly advanced AI tools have been stymied. In screenshots shared online, one Chinese user posted a photo of an exam question to Doubao, owned by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance. The app responded: "During the college entrance examination, according to relevant requirements, the question answering service will be suspended".
Trump's Crackdown on Foreign Student Visas Could Derail Critical AI Research
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the US plans to "aggressively revoke" the visas of Chinese students, including those working in critical fields or with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Experts warn the move--along with the Trump administration's broader crackdown on international students--could drain American scientific labs of top STEM talent and upend cutting-edge research in areas like artificial intelligence. "If you were aiming to help China beat the US at AI, the first thing you would do is disrupt the flow of top talent from all around the world into the US," says Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. While it has a population only about a quarter the size of China, "the US has had a huge asymmetric advantage in attracting the cream of the global crop," she adds. Several close Trump allies, including Elon Musk, have argued that attracting the best engineers from around the world is essential for the US to maintain its technological dominance.
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How AI is aiding Trump's immigration crackdown
The United States under President Donald Trump is ramping up use of surveillance systems and artificial intelligence (AI) to track and arrest immigrants, raising fears that risks to accuracy and privacy could put almost anyone in danger of getting caught up in the crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other immigration control agencies are using a suite of AI tools -- such as facial recognition scanners in public areas and robotic dogs patrolling the southern border for human movement -- as part of the crackdown on alleged illegal immigration. Many of the AI tools that immigration agents are using have been in place for years and are a legacy of previous administrations, according to Saira Hussain, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.