A new EPIC report says data brokers, ad-tech surveillance, and ICE enforcement are among the factors leading to a "health privacy crisis" that is eroding trust and deterring people from seeking care. When immigration agents enter hospitals and private companies are allowed to buy and sell data that reveals who seeks medical care, patients retreat, treatment is delayed, and health outcomes worsen, according to a new report that describes a growing "health privacy crisis" in the United States driven by surveillance and weak law enforcement limits. The report, published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), attributes the problem to outdated privacy laws and rapidly expanding digital systems that allow health-related information to be tracked, analyzed, breached, and accessed by both private companies and government agencies. EPIC, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on privacy and civil liberties, based its findings on a review of federal and state laws, court rulings, agency policies, technical research, and documented case studies examining how health data is collected, shared, and used across government and commercial systems. "Unregulated digital technologies, mass surveillance, and weak privacy laws have created a health privacy crisis," the report says.

'We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet'--Trump's Mass Deportations Will Only Grow From Here Militias and far-right extremists believed they would be central to Trump's mass deportation plans. When Donald Trump won a second term as US president a year ago, members of violent militias and far-right extremist groups who had spent years boosting the lie that the 2020 election was rigged were ready to assist the president with delivering on one of his main campaign promises: mass deportations. "I'm willing to help," Richard Mack, a former sheriff who founded the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, told WIRED at the time, claiming he was in touch with Tom Homan, the man Trump installed as his "border czar." Tim Foley, head of the Arizona Border Recon, which describes itself as a "non-government organization," also told WIRED he was in contact with administration officials. William Teer, then head of the far-right Texas Three Percenters militia, wrote a letter to Trump offering his help.

Modeling complex human behavior, such as voter decisions in national elections, is a long-standing challenge for computational social science. Traditional agent-based models (ABMs) are limited by oversimplified rules, while large-scale statistical models often lack interpretability. We introduce FlockVote, a novel framework that uses Large Language Models (LLMs) to build a "computational laboratory" of LLM agents for political simulation. Each agent is instantiated with a high-fidelity demographic profile and dynamic contextual information (e.g. candidate policies), enabling it to perform nuanced, generative reasoning to simulate a voting decision. We deploy this framework as a testbed on the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, focusing on seven key swing states. Our simulation's macro-level results successfully replicate the real-world outcome, demonstrating the high fidelity of our "virtual society". The primary contribution is not only the prediction, but also the framework's utility as an interpretable research tool. FlockVote moves beyond black-box outputs, allowing researchers to probe agent-level rationale and analyze the stability and sensitivity of LLM-driven social simulations.

Plus: China sentences scam bosses to death, Europe is ramping up its plans to build a "drone wall" to protect against Russian airspace violations, and more. If you're traveling to a country and, once you arrive, realize it's in the midst of a Gen Z-fueled revolution, what do you do? If you're Harry Jackson, a travel vlogger, you run straight into the action. This week, WIRED spoke with Jackson, who recounted his time documenting the overthrow of Nepal's government for his social media channels and the millions of people who watched his videos. Tile tracking tags can be a useful way to find your lost keys, wallet, or pets.

In today's episode, our host Zöe Schiffer is joined by WIRED's senior politics writer Jake Lahut to run through five of the best stories we published this week--from how the Trump administration is creating and sharing memes to make fun of deportations, to NASA's ambitious goal to put nuclear reactors on the moon. Then, Zöe and Jake dive into why users kind of hated OpenAI's GPT-5 release. Mentioned in this episode: OpenAI Scrambles to Update GPT-5 After Users Revolt by Will Knight The Trump Administration Is Using Memes to Turn Mass Deportation Into One Big Joke by Tess Owen Trump Family–Backed World Liberty Financial Sets Up 1.5 Billion Crypto Treasury by Joel Khalili Inside the'Whites Only' Community in Arkansas by David Gilbert Why the US Is Racing to Build a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon by Becky Ferreira Join us live in San Francisco on September 9th. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link.

Over the past year, Karla Reyes and her team at Anima Interactive have visited the US-Mexico border twice to interview migrants and humanitarians. They come from Latin America, but also South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, each with a shared goal: to cross into the US in search of safety. In January, hours after President Donald Trump's inauguration, thousands of migrants suddenly received notice that their appointments with US Customs and Border Protection--the agency that would help them gain asylum--had been canceled. The administration shut down the CBP One app that allows migrants to apply for asylum. It was the first of many roadblocks the new administration would erect in front of those seeking to immigrate to America.

Texas border town barbeque owner says she was forced to sell her family business after migrants broke in and stole registers, computers and family heirlooms. Gov. Greg Abbott invoking the U.S. and Texas constitutions' invasion clauses won't change anything if illegal immigrants aren't deported, Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump administration official, told Fox News. Abbott announced Tuesday that he invoked the clauses to "defend our state against an invasion" to combat the record-setting wave of illegal immigration occurring along the border. The Texas Republican sent a letter to Texas county judges indicating that he would deploy the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety and build a border wall, among other actions. "If the goal is actually to reduce the harm to Texas, then he needs to start using the invasion authority to return people to Mexico," said Ken Cuccinelli, who served as a Department of Homeland Security acting deputy secretary under former President Trump.

The death of a Sri Lankan woman detained at a central Japan immigration facility has been in the spotlight as the Diet debates a controversial bill to revise the immigration law, with critics fearing the revision will worsen conditions for asylum-seekers in Japan. While ruling parties aim to pass the bill during the current Diet session through mid-June to resolve the long-term detention of foreign nationals facing deportation orders, opposition forces have called for its abolishment as the government has yet to figure out the circumstances surrounding the Sri Lankan's death. Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali, 33, who had been detained since August last year at the Nagoya Regional Immigration Services Bureau in Aichi Prefecture for overstaying her visa, died on March 6 after complaining of a stomach ache and other symptoms from mid-January. In an interim report over the incident released on April 9, the Justice Ministry did not determine the cause of her death, while her supporters allege the tragedy was caused by the insufficient medical treatment provided by the immigration facility. Opposition lawmakers have argued the bill currently being deliberated at the Diet is meant to expand the immigration authority's power and discretion and that similar problems could happen again as long as the cause of the Sri Lankan woman's death remains a mystery.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A coalition of rights groups launched an online petition on Thursday urging IBM Corp to declare that it will not develop technology to help the Trump administration carry out a proposal to identify people for visa denial and deportation from the United States. IBM and several other technology companies and contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton, LexisNexis and Deloitte [DLTE.UL], attended a July informational session hosted by immigration enforcement officials that discussed developing technology for vetting immigrants, said Steven Renderos, organizing director at petitioner the Center for Media Justice. President Donald Trump has pledged to harden screening procedures for people looking to enter the country, and also called for "extreme vetting" of certain immigrants to ensure they are contributing to society, saying such steps are necessary to protect national security and curtail illegal immigration. The rights group said the proposals run counter to IBM's stated goals of protecting so-called "Dreamer" immigrants from deportation. Asked about the petition and whether it planned to work to help vet and deport immigrants, an IBM spokeswoman said the company "would not work on any project that runs counter to our company's values, including our long-standing opposition to discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion."

Immigration activists interrupted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi during a press conference in San Francisco, which she held with DREAMers to reaffirm her support for pro-DACA legislation. Drowned out by protestors, Pelosi responded, "Yes I have ... You don't know what you're talking about." The context: The activists said they protested Pelosi because she and other Democrats are negotiating with Trump and congressional Republicans about a legislative replacement for DACA, the Obama-era order that shielded about 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation, and allowed them to apply for work permits. Worth noting: Pelosi and Chuck Schumer raised DACA with Trump at a White House meeting earlier this month, and have said replacing it will be a top priority in the coming weeks and months.