A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors' crimes--and then escape. It was a perfect June evening in New York when I received my first email from the source who would ask me to call him Red Bull. He was writing from hell, 8,000 miles away. A summer shower had left a rainbow over my Brooklyn neighborhood, and my two children were playing in a kiddie pool on the roof of our apartment building. Now the sun was setting, while I--in typical 21st-century parenting fashion, forgive me--compulsively scrolled through every app on my phone. The message had no subject line and came from an address on the encrypted email service Proton Mail: "vaultwhistle@proton.me." I'm currently working inside a major crypto romance scam operation based in the Golden Triangle," it began. "I am a computer engineer being forced to work here under a contract." "I've collected internal evidence of how the scam works--step by step," the message ...

Controversial gunshot-detection company ShotSpotter has deployed more than 25,000 microphones across 170 cities worldwide. This week, WIRED and South Side Weekly revealed the company may continue to provide gunshot data to police in cities even after contracts have ended. Internal emails seen by the publications suggest ShotSpotter sensors may have stayed online despite law enforcement deals having expired, raising questions about what will happen to 2,500 microphones in Chicago when its contract runs out at the end of the year. Elsewhere, Change Healthcare finally admitted to paying a ransom to the AlphV hackers, also known as BlackCat, that extorted the medical company. Weeks ago, WIRED revealed the attackers were paid 22 million, one of the largest ransomware payments ever. However, in a statement this week the company admitted for the first time that it paid the ransom as part of its effort "to do all it could to protect patient data from disclosure."

Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines spoke to Congress on Tuesday about an incident on April 6, 2023, when she claims to have been held for ransom at San Francisco State University. 'SO TRAUMATIC' – Riley Gaines tells Congress she was assaulted, held for ransom at San Francisco State University. 'THERE FOR A REASON' - LSU students deemed Good Samaritans in tragic death of Madison Brooks, mother says. DEEP CHALLENGE - What do retail investors need to know about AI investing? OPINION - AI can revolutionize the doctor's office.

This week, David Plotz, John Dickerson, and Emily Bazelon discuss the $787.5 million settlement of the Dominion Voting v. Fox News defamation lawsuit; the political game being played with raising the U.S. debt ceiling; and the Russian detention of American journalist Evan Gershkovich. Here are some notes and references from this week's show: Matthew Iglesias for Slow Boring: "Medicaid work requirements are cruel and pointless" John Dickerson for CBS News Prime Time: "U.S. ambassador says she visited detained Wall Street Journal reporter" Drew Hinshaw, Joe Parkinson, and Brett Forrest for the Wall Street Journal: "'You Are Completely Alone': Inside the Infamous Russian Prison Holding Evan Gershkovich" Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "What Everyone Should Know about the Shingles Vaccine (Shingrix)" Carrie Blazina and Drew Desilver for the Pew Research Center: "House gets younger, Senate gets older: A look at the age and generation of lawmakers in the 118th Congress" Here are this week's chatters: Emily: Julie Bosman, Mitch Smith, Jesse McKinley, and Jay Root for the New York Times: "Hundreds of Miles Apart, Separate Shootings Follow Wrong Turns" and Timothy Bella for the Washington Post: "Cheerleaders leaving practice were shot after one got in wrong car, teen says" John: Ellie Zolfagharifard for the Daily Mail: "'Here there be robots': Artist draws stunning medieval map of Mars showing off its huge craters and vast canyons"; Mars and its Canals by Percival Lowell; and Kaushik Patowary for Amusing Planet: "How Astronomer Percival Lowell Mistook His Own Eye For Spokes on Venus" David: City Cast DC podcast: "D.C.'s Rat-Hunting Dogs And Other Rat Solutions" (Host Bridget Todd, Producer Julia Karron) Listener chatter from Nancy Hall: Joe Mahr and Megan Crepeau for the Chicago Tribune: "Stalled Justice: Delays in the Cook County courts" For this week's Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, John, and David discuss the dilemma posed by the months-long absence of Dianne Feinstein from the U.S. Senate. In the next Gabfest Reads, David talks with Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri about her latest book, Alexandra Petri's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up).

The world's largest pest control group is piloting the use of facial recognition software as a way to exterminate rats in people's homes. Rentokil said it had been developing the technology alongside Vodafone for 18 months. The surveillance technology, which is already being tested in real homes, tracks the rodents' habits and streams real-time analysis using artificial intelligence. A central command centre can then help to decide where and how to kill the rats caught on camera. Rentokil's chief executive, Andy Ransom, told the Financial Times: "With facial recognition technology you can see that rat number one behaved differently from rat number three.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based cyber-security methodologies have been developed in response to this unprecedented challenge to help AI information security teams tackle data breaches and cyber security threats. According to a Capgemini Research Institute poll, almost 69% of businesses feel AI plays an active role in combating various types of cybercrimes. Changes in cyber-attacks are rising day by day as technology advances in both directions, and it continues to expand at a rapid pace. Hundreds of billions of time-varying signals must be evaluated depending on the size of your organization in order to correctly quantify risk. As a result, businesses are considering implementing artificial intelligence in cybersecurity. The cyber-world is vast and deep.

They have the sort of names that only teenage boys or aspiring Bond villains would dream up (REvil, Grief, Wizard Spider, Ragnar), they base themselves in countries that do not cooperate with international law enforcement and they don't care whether they attack a hospital or a multinational corporation. Ransomware gangs are suddenly everywhere, seemingly unstoppable – and very successful. In June, meat producer JBS, which supplies over a fifth of all the beef in the US, paid a £7.8m ransom to regain access to its computer systems. The same month, the US's largest national fuel pipeline, Colonial Pipeline, paid £3.1m to ransomware hackers after they locked the company's systems, causing days of fuel shortages and paralysing the east coast. "It was the hardest decision I've made in my 39 years in the energy industry," said a deflated-looking Colonial CEO Joseph Blount in an evidence session before Congress. In July, hackers attacked software firm Kaseya, demanding £50m.

Fox News correspondent Claudia Cowan joins'Your World' with the details from San Francisco This is a rush transcript from "Your World with Neil Cavuto" June 8, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: How about some good news to kick off things, like herd immunity happening in a lot of parts of this country, including in San Francisco, where close to eight out of 10 residents older than 12 years old have already had at least one vaccination shot? It reads similarly in other cities, like Philadelphia, 67.4 percent have been vaccinated, in Denver, close to 70 percent, in San Diego, north of 65 percent, and, in New York City, more than 52 percent. And this is "Your World." And FOX on top of vaccinations that are surprisingly robust across a country that is rapidly leading the world in finally putting a spike in this horrific, horrific disease. Now, the implications of all of this are being weighed in the medical community, as well as the political community, as to how much longer term this means we get to, well, herd immunity, if we even need to get to that, technically, at the rate we're going. Let's go to Claudia Cowan following all of this in San Francisco -- Claudia. The City by the Bay is on the cusp of herd immunity, which means that the coronavirus is having trouble finding new hosts. The city is reporting that nearly 80 percent of teens and adults have been vaccinated with at least one dose against COVID-19, while 68 percent are fully vaccinated. The number of new cases is the lowest since the city shut down in March of 2020. And no one has died of COVID in over a month. San Francisco pushed people to get the shot while infections hospitalizations and death rates were low. Officials believe that made a world of difference. While there is some debate over what exactly constitutes herd immunity, one expert says the numbers here are among the best in the country. MONICA GANDHI, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO: And there are places, like in the Bay Area, that are up to 76, 77 percent. So, we are doing great in terms of high vaccination rates, high immunity, low cases, low hospitalizations, low deaths, low test positivity rate.

Losses to the tune of billions are experienced due to the rise of cyber-attacks in the automotive industry, and they are becoming progressively worse as more auto manufacturers join the autonomy space. Industry experts argue that autonomy is the future of the automotive industry, mainly because driverless cars are safer, more comfortable, and more convenient than regular cars. However, there is a downside to this technology: susceptibility to cyber-attacks. Attacks range from physical to long-range digital attacks. As we know, a new cyber-attack vector is born every time new development occurs in the tech space.

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines for Nov. 7 are here. Check out what's clicking today in entertainment. A travel influencer says his Instagram page was recently hacked and held for ransom and wants his story to be a cautionary tale to others. Claudio Copiano Jr., with his account globalvagabonds, shares his travel experiences around the world with his more than 28,000 followers. The San Diego resident has traveled throughout the United States and 30 other countries so far, according to KGTV.