The United States Inspector General report reviewing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's text messaging mess recommends a single change to keep classified material secure. A United States Inspector General report publicly released today found that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth could have put US troops and military operations at risk by using the consumer messaging service Signal to share sensitive, real-time details in March about a planned attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The IG first shared the classified report with Congress on Tuesday. The report contains only one direct recommendation: that the chief of US Central Command's Special Security Office "review the command's classification procedures for compliance" with Department of Defense regulations "and issue additional procedures, as necessary, to ensure proper portion marking of classified information." The report also references another IG publication about use of "non-DOD-controlled electronic messaging systems" and points to its recommendations that DOD "improve training for senior DOD officials on the proper use of electronic devices."

In June 2021, Dave Zvenyach, director of a group tasked with improving digital access to US government services, sent a Slack message to his team. He'd decided that Login.gov, which provides a secure way to access dozens of government apps and websites, wouldn't use selfies and face recognition to verify the identity of people creating new accounts. "The benefits of liveness/selfie do not outweigh any discriminatory impact," he wrote, referring to the process of asking users to upload a selfie and photo of their ID so that algorithms can compare the two. Face recognition technology has become more accurate, but many systems have been found to work less reliably for women with dark skin, people who identify as Asian, or people with a nonbinary gender identity. Yet Zvenyach's pronouncement also put Login.gov and US agencies using the service at odds with federal security guidelines.

Law enforcement officials investigating Elon Musk's Neuralink over its animal trial program are also scrutinizing the US Department of Agriculture's oversight of the company's operations, after the agency failed to act on violations at other research organizations, according to several people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported on 5 December that the USDA's watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, is investigating Neuralink, a medical device company that is developing brain implants, over potential animal-welfare violations. A federal prosecutor in the civil division at the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California requested the investigation, people familiar with the matter said. Reuters was unable to determine what potential violations are being investigated. The 5 December report identified four experiments in recent years involving 86 pigs and two monkeys that were marred by human errors.

Two years after Los Angeles police leaders set tougher limits on the use of facial recognition technology, a follow-up report found the department lacks a way to track its outcomes or effectiveness. The report, by the LAPD inspector general's office, found that LAPD personnel used facial recognition software in an effort to identify criminal suspects nearly 2,000 times last year. Of those searches, about 55% resulted in a positive match -- meaning that an image of an unidentified suspect was matched through artificial intelligence to a mugshot or other photo of a known person, the report found. On Tuesday, Inspector General Mark Smith told the department's civilian oversight commissioners that the LAPD was largely in compliance with a 2021 policy that set out rules for when and how specially trained officers can use a facial recognition program maintained by the county Sheriff's Department. The county program runs images against a database of roughly 9 million mugshots of people who have been booked into the county's detention facilities -- a far less expansive pool than some third-party search platforms.

U.S. House Representatives Earl Francis Blumenauer and Adam Schiff want further U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scrutiny of Elon Musk's Neuralink following a Reuters report that outlined mistakes in the brain chip company's animal testing program, their offices said on Thursday. Reuters reported on Monday that the USDA's inspector general is investigating Neuralink for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths. Blumenauer and Schiff, two Democrats who are members of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, wrote in a draft letter they will send to the USDA that "the treatment of the animals described in these complaints seems to indicate a distressing lack of oversight." "We are very concerned that this may be another example of high-profile cases of animal cruelty involving USDA-inspected facilities, referenced in previous letters to your agency, where there has not been adequate action from USDA," the lawmakers said in a letter addressed to USDA secretary Thomas Vilsack and Kevin Shea, who oversees the agency's inspection service. Neuralink executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Elon Musk's Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations. Neuralink Corp is developing a brain implant it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments. The federal investigation, which has not been previously reported, was opened in recent months by the US Department of Agriculture's inspector general at the request of a federal prosecutor, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. The inquiry, one of the sources said, focuses on violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which governs how researchers treat and test some animals. The investigation has come at a time of growing employee dissent about Neuralink's animal testing, including complaints that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has resulted in botched experiments, according to a Reuters review of dozens of Neuralink documents and interviews with more than 20 current and former employees.

Poor management of artificial intelligence projects in the Department of Defense could erode the United States' competitive advantage in the emerging technology, the Defense Department's watchdog warned in a July 1 report. The DoD inspector general suggested the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, established to facilitate the adoption of artificial intelligence tools across the department, take several steps to improve project management, including determining a standard definition of artificial intelligence, improving data sharing and developing a process to accurately track artificial intelligence programs. The JAIC missed a March 2020 deadline to release a governance framework. It still plans to do so, according to the report, but that date is redacted in the report. The inspector general started the audit to determine the gaps and weaknesses in the department's enterprise-wide AI governance, the responsibility of the JAIC.

Two Republican congressmembers are seeking a formal investigation into claims that the bidding process for a contentious $10 billion Pentagon contract was rigged in favor of Amazon. The contract in question would give one company full reign over the Defense Department's Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative, or JEDI Cloud, a program that the Pentagon has described as "truly about increasing the lethality of our department." JEDI is part of the DOD's quest to bring military operations into the modern era by partnering with a commercial cloud provider to streamline defense operations, upgrade data analytics programs using artificial intelligence, and provide soldiers with real-time mission data. In a letter to the Defense Department's Inspector General on Monday, House Appropriations committee members Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) and Steve Womack (R-Arkansas) accused military leaders of violating federal law and departmental ethics standards by moving forward with plans to award the JEDI contract to a single company despite extensive criticism from industry leaders and lawmakers. Womack is also chair of the House Budget Committee; Cole chairs an appropriations subcommittee.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds--and if the United States Postal Service has its way, the robots won't stop them, either. Yes, the agency you know best for bringing you junk mail addressed to whomever lived in your apartment before you has caught robofever. It plans to put semiautonomous mail trucks into service in just seven years, and it seems to think it can pull off a shift away from human driving without shedding mail carrier jobs. That's all according to the postal service's Office of the Inspector General, which oversees the agency and last week released a report on its plans to work autonomy into its 228,000-vehicle fleet. Those plans are already in motion: The post office has partnered with the University of Michigan to build what it's calling an Autonomous Rural Delivery Vehicle, which it wants to launch on 28,000 rural routes nationwide as early as 2025.

DENVER – A Department of Veterans Affairs employee who told Congress the agency was using unauthorized wait lists for mental health care in Colorado has resigned, saying he was subjected to retaliation for speaking out. Brian Smothers told The Associated Press Wednesday the VA had opened two separate inquiries into his actions and tried to get him to sign a statement saying he had broken VA rules. Smothers also said the VA reassigned him to an office with no computer access, no significant duties and no social contact. He called the VA's actions punitive and his working conditions intolerable. He said he resigned as of Tuesday.