The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.

The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content,” the entry reads.

The document specifies that JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that “appear to be a unique individual that is recognizable as human but does not exist in the real world,” with each featuring “multiple expressions” and “Government Identification quality photos.”

In addition to still images of faked people, the document notes that “the solution should include facial & background imagery, facial & background video, and audio layers,” and JSOC hopes to be able to generate “selfie video” from these fabricated humans. These videos will feature more than fake people: Each deepfake selfie will come with a matching faked background, “to create a virtual environment undetectable by social media algorithms.”

Last year, Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, expressed interest in video “deepfakes,” a general term for synthesized audiovisual data meant to be indistinguishable from a genuine recording. Such imagery is generated using a variety of machine learning techniques, generally using software that has been “trained” to recognize and recreate human features by analyzing a massive database of faces and bodies. This year’s SOCOM wish list specifies an interest in software similar to StyleGAN, a program released by Nvidia in 2019 that powered the globally popular website “This Person Does Not Exist.” Within a year of StyleGAN’s launch, Facebook said it had taken down a network of accounts that used the technology to create false profile pictures. Since then, academic and private sector researchers have been engaged in a race between new ways to create undetectable deepfakes, and new ways to detect them. Many government services now require so-called liveness detection to thwart deepfaked identity photos, asking human applicants to upload a selfie video to demonstrate they are a real person — an obstacle that SOCOM may be interested in thwarting.

The listing notes that special operations troops “will use this capability to gather information from public online forums,” with no further explanation of how these artificial internet users will be used. The disclosure comes one year after SOCOM revealed in last year’s wish list that it hoped to soon use deepfake videos for online propaganda and information warfare campaigns.

This more detailed procurement listing shows that the United States pursues the exact same technologies and techniques it condemns in the hands of geopolitical foes. National security officials have long described the state-backed use of deepfakes as an urgent threat — that is, if they are being done by another country.

Last September, a joint statement by the NSA, FBI, and CISA warned “synthetic media, such as deepfakes, present a growing challenge for all users of modern technology and communications.” It described the global proliferation of deepfake technology as a “top risk” for 2023. In a background briefing to reporters this year, U.S. intelligence officials cautioned that the ability of foreign adversaries to disseminate “AI-generated content” without being detected — exactly the capability the Pentagon now seeks — represents a “malign influence accelerant” from the likes of Russia, China, and Iran. Earlier this year, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit sought private sector help in combating deepfakes with an air of alarm: “This technology is increasingly common and credible, posing a significant threat to the Department of Defense, especially as U.S. adversaries use deepfakes for deception, fraud, disinformation, and other malicious activities.” An April paper by the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute was similarly concerned: “Experts expect the malicious use of AI, including the creation of deepfake videos to sow disinformation to polarize societies and deepen grievances, to grow over the next decade.”

“There are no legitimate use cases besides deception.”

The offensive use of this technology by the U.S. would, naturally, spur its proliferation and normalize it as a tool for all governments. “What’s notable about this technology is that it is purely of a deceptive nature,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute. “There are no legitimate use cases besides deception, and it is concerning to see the U.S. military lean into a use of a technology they have themselves warned against. This will only embolden other militaries or adversaries to do the same, leading to a society where it is increasingly difficult to ascertain truth from fiction and muddling the geopolitical sphere.” 

Both Russia and China have been caught using deepfaked video and user avatars in their online propaganda efforts, prompting the State Department to announce an international “Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation” in January. “Foreign information manipulation and interference is a national security threat to the United States as well as to its allies and partners,” a State Department press release said. “Authoritarian governments use information manipulation to shred the fabric of free and democratic societies.”

SOCOM’s interest in deepfakes is part of a fundamental tension within the U.S. government, said Daniel Byman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a member of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board. “Much of the U.S. government has a strong interest in the public believing that the government consistently puts out truthful (to the best of knowledge) information and is not deliberately deceiving people,” he explained, while other branches are tasked with deception. “So there is a legitimate concern that the U.S. will be seen as hypocritical,” Byman added. “I’m also concerned about the impact on domestic trust in government — will segments of the U.S. people, in general, become more suspicious of information from the government?”

The post The Pentagon Wants to Use AI to Create Deepfake Internet Users appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

The United States’ secretive Special Operations Command is looking for companies to help create deepfake internet users so convincing that neither humans nor computers will be able to detect they are fake, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept.

The plan, mentioned in a new 76-page wish list by the Department of Defense’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, outlines advanced technologies desired for country’s most elite, clandestine military efforts. “Special Operations Forces (SOF) are interested in technologies that can generate convincing online personas for use on social media platforms, social networking sites, and other online content,” the entry reads.

The document specifies that JSOC wants the ability to create online user profiles that “appear to be a unique individual that is recognizable as human but does not exist in the real world,” with each featuring “multiple expressions” and “Government Identification quality photos.”

In addition to still images of faked people, the document notes that “the solution should include facial & background imagery, facial & background video, and audio layers,” and JSOC hopes to be able to generate “selfie video” from these fabricated humans. These videos will feature more than fake people: Each deepfake selfie will come with a matching faked background, “to create a virtual environment undetectable by social media algorithms.”

The Pentagon has already been caught using phony social media users to further its interests in recent years. In 2022, Meta and Twitter removed a propaganda network using faked accounts operated by U.S. Central Command, including some with profile pictures generated with methods similar to those outlined by JSOC. A 2024 Reuters investigation revealed a Special Operations Command campaign using fake social media users aimed at undermining foreign confidence in China’s Covid vaccine.

Last year, Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, expressed interest in using video “deepfakes,” a general term for synthesized audiovisual data meant to be indistinguishable from a genuine recording, for “influence operations, digital deception, communication disruption, and disinformation campaigns.” Such imagery is generated using a variety of machine learning techniques, generally using software that has been “trained” to recognize and recreate human features by analyzing a massive database of faces and bodies. This year’s SOCOM wish list specifies an interest in software similar to StyleGAN, a tool released by Nvidia in 2019 that powered the globally popular website “This Person Does Not Exist.” Within a year of StyleGAN’s launch, Facebook said it had taken down a network of accounts that used the technology to create false profile pictures. Since then, academic and private sector researchers have been engaged in a race between new ways to create undetectable deepfakes, and new ways to detect them. Many government services now require so-called liveness detection to thwart deepfaked identity photos, asking human applicants to upload a selfie video to demonstrate they are a real person — an obstacle that SOCOM may be interested in thwarting.

The listing notes that special operations troops “will use this capability to gather information from public online forums,” with no further explanation of how these artificial internet users will be used.

This more detailed procurement listing shows that the United States pursues the exact same technologies and techniques it condemns in the hands of geopolitical foes. National security officials have long described the state-backed use of deepfakes as an urgent threat — that is, if they are being done by another country.

Last September, a joint statement by the NSA, FBI, and CISA warned “synthetic media, such as deepfakes, present a growing challenge for all users of modern technology and communications.” It described the global proliferation of deepfake technology as a “top risk” for 2023. In a background briefing to reporters this year, U.S. intelligence officials cautioned that the ability of foreign adversaries to disseminate “AI-generated content” without being detected — exactly the capability the Pentagon now seeks — represents a “malign influence accelerant” from the likes of Russia, China, and Iran. Earlier this year, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit sought private sector help in combating deepfakes with an air of alarm: “This technology is increasingly common and credible, posing a significant threat to the Department of Defense, especially as U.S. adversaries use deepfakes for deception, fraud, disinformation, and other malicious activities.” An April paper by the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute was similarly concerned: “Experts expect the malicious use of AI, including the creation of deepfake videos to sow disinformation to polarize societies and deepen grievances, to grow over the next decade.”

“There are no legitimate use cases besides deception.”

The offensive use of this technology by the U.S. would, naturally, spur its proliferation and normalize it as a tool for all governments. “What’s notable about this technology is that it is purely of a deceptive nature,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute. “There are no legitimate use cases besides deception, and it is concerning to see the U.S. military lean into a use of a technology they have themselves warned against. This will only embolden other militaries or adversaries to do the same, leading to a society where it is increasingly difficult to ascertain truth from fiction and muddling the geopolitical sphere.” 

Both Russia and China have been caught using deepfaked video and user avatars in their online propaganda efforts, prompting the State Department to announce an international “Framework to Counter Foreign State Information Manipulation” in January. “Foreign information manipulation and interference is a national security threat to the United States as well as to its allies and partners,” a State Department press release said. “Authoritarian governments use information manipulation to shred the fabric of free and democratic societies.”

SOCOM’s interest in deepfakes is part of a fundamental tension within the U.S. government, said Daniel Byman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a member of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board. “Much of the U.S. government has a strong interest in the public believing that the government consistently puts out truthful (to the best of knowledge) information and is not deliberately deceiving people,” he explained, while other branches are tasked with deception. “So there is a legitimate concern that the U.S. will be seen as hypocritical,” Byman added. “I’m also concerned about the impact on domestic trust in government — will segments of the U.S. people, in general, become more suspicious of information from the government?”

The post The Pentagon Wants to Use AI to Create Deepfake Internet Users appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

When a hurricane like Helene or Milton ravages coastal communities, already-strained first responders face a novel, and growing, threat: the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, e-bikes, and countless gadgets. When exposed to the salty water of a storm surge, they are at risk of bursting into flames — and taking an entire house with them.

“Anything that’s lithium-ion and exposed to salt water can have an issue,” said Bill Morelli, the fire chief in Seminole, Florida, and the bigger the battery, the greater the threat. That’s what makes EVs especially hazardous. “[The problem] has expanded as they continue to be more and more popular.”

It is not yet clear how many vehicles might have caught fire in the wake of Hurricane Milton, which slammed into Tampa Bay on Wednesday, leaving at least 13 people dead and some 80,000 in shelters. But there have been 48 confirmed battery fires related to storm surge from Hurricane Helene, 11 of them associated with EVs.

Morelli’s crews fought three of them. St. Petersburg Fire Rescue reported at least two, one from an electric bike and another from a Mercedes-Benz EQB300 that led to what a fire department representative called “major damage to the home.” CNN and other outlets reported on a fire in Sarasota sparked by a Tesla Model X. 

Overall, such fires are far from common. Idaho National Laboratory found that of the 3,000 to 5,000 electric vehicles damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022, about three dozen caught fire. Public awareness of the risk has mounted since then, with officials up to and including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urging residents to move their EVs to higher ground ahead of storms. But the chemistry and construction of lithium-ion batteries make them especially prone to fires that are difficult for first responders to combat.

“They burn hot, they burn fast, and they’re hard to extinguish,” Morelli said.

The battery in an EV is comprised of thousands of cells stacked and packed into a sealed enclosure. If salt water, which is particularly conductive, reaches the interior of a battery, it can cause a short circuit, which can generate excessive heat that jumps from cell to cell. “That’s called ‘thermal runaway,’” said Andrew Klock, senior manager of education and development at the National Fire Protection Association. 

As a battery heats up, it releases flammable gases that can ignite. Once the car starts burning, methods of putting out traditional vehicle fires — such as foam or thermal blankets to smother the flames — aren’t as effective. “Lithium-ion batteries generate their own oxygen and heat when they are on fire,” Klock said. “You can’t starve the fire.“

Instead, first responders must direct high volumes of water at the battery pack as directly as possible in order to reduce the heat. The International Association of Fire Chiefs recommends having 3,000 to 8,000 gallons on hand — which can be difficult during a disaster, when hydrants may not be working properly and trucks have a limited supply aboard. 

“They take tons and tons and tons and tons of water to extinguish,” said Morelli, who is working with other departments to acquire more thermal blankets. A ready supply of them could allow firefighters to smother the flames enough to move the car away from structures so it can burn itself out safely. 

Klock said “training is paramount” to effectively fighting these fires. But of the roughly 1.2 million firefighters in the country, only 350,000 or so have completed the association’s training, he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

The danger doesn’t end when a storm passes, either. According to the Department of Transportation, “the time frame in which a damaged battery can ignite varies, from days to weeks,” which is one reason Tesla urges owners not to operate their vehicle until a dealer inspects it. 

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents 44 automakers and suppliers, declined to comment but cited a letter it sent to Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida on the issue in 2022. It notes that “safety is a top priority for our members, which is why they have been engaged in long-standing efforts to address fire risks for both conventionally fueled vehicles and EVs.”  

In the meantime, a range of efforts are underway to try to prevent these fires from occurring. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has funded research into emerging hazards of at-home battery storage systems. Other researchers are looking at how to make batteries safer, including Yang Yang, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Central Florida. His team developed a battery that, instead of fighting salt water, utilizes it as the main electrolyte. 

“It can be soaked in the salty water and still works well,” said Yang, who started working on the project after living in Houston and Florida and seeing firsthand the problem floods present. While he said car companies have yet to contact him about his research, he’s optimistic that safer batteries could be on the market within the next few years. 

Until then, storms like Helene and Milton may be among the biggest drivers of public attention to both the problem and prevention methods. Yang, for one, finds that possibility bittersweet at best: “I don’t want people to have any issues with their electric vehicles.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Helene and Milton reveal an emerging challenge for first responders: EV batteries catching fire on Oct 11, 2024.

This post was originally published on Grist.

The Internet Archive recently was the target of a data breach that exposed information related to 31 million users, including their usernames and email addresses, among other materials. The group SN_Blackmeta has claimed responsibility for a concurrent DDoS attack that took the site offline. The party responsible for the data breach has not yet been identified.

The nonprofit Internet Archive plays a vital role in online culture, preserving web content and other digitized materials and operating the popular Wayback Machine, which lets visitors see historic versions of websites.

It is not yet clear how the data breach occurred, though some in the information security community have speculated that credentials for the Internet Archive’s servers may have been found in the logs of “information stealer” malware, which exfiltrates sensitive information from infected systems.  

The recent data breach is not the only way that Internet Archive user email addresses have been vulnerable online. But for more than a decade, the Internet Archive has been exposing the email addresses of anyone who uploaded a file to its library, despite its claims that it does not share uploader email addresses with anyone.

When content is uploaded to the Internet Archive, a metadata file is automatically generated that includes a variety of information about the content, such as date of upload, any user-entered description of file contents, as well as the subject and media type. Alongside the metadata, however, there is an “uploader” field that shows the uploader’s email address. The metadata file is publicly viewable by clicking the “Show All” link viewable on the main page of any uploaded content. The metadata can also be accessed by going to a specific metadata URL for the file. 

Users have been raising concerns about the visibility of email addresses at Internet Archive for more than a decade. On its own site, in response to the question of “How can I contact the person / group who uploaded an item?”, the Internet Archive states that it is “unable to release any contact information for patrons.” Similarly, in a section of its guide titled “Why do you need my email address?”, the Internet Archive explains that it needs email addresses to verify accounts, allow users to log into accounts, help recover passwords, and receive notifications. The Archive goes on to “promise we will not share your data with anyone.”

Despite these assurances, however, the Internet Archive appears to readily reveal the email address of content uploaders, ignoring support requests from users who flagged the issue for years. In 2013, a user made a post on the Archive’s support forums pointing out that uploader information, specifically the uploader’s email address, was made available in a metadata file the Archive generated for every upload. The post didn’t receive a response from anyone at the Archive. 

In 2024, another user posted an issue on the Internet Archive’s GitHub page, referencing the earlier 2013 post and similarly detailing the fact that uploader emails are publicly viewable. “There is nothing on the website warning users that their email addresses are going to be exposed,” the post states. It goes on to describe this as a “betrayal of uploaders’ privacy.” Even if users subsequently updated the email address affiliated with their account, older uploads still revealed the email address which was associated with the account at the time of the upload, the user noted. As with the earlier post from 2013, no one from the Internet Archive publicly responded to the raised issue.

The Internet Archive did not immediately respond to questions about the breach or about why uploader emails are made public, despite documentation stating that uploader emails are not shared with anyone.

To mitigate the adverse impact of potential account leaks, users should have a unique, random password for each of their accounts, so that if a breach of a particular service were to occur, attackers wouldn’t be able to use the same password to attempt to get into other accounts, in what’s known as a credential stuffing attack. In this case, password materials included in the breach were hashed or scrambled using a secure algorithm, meaning victims of the attack shouldn’t be immediately at risk. 

To further safeguard yourself against data breaches, choose random and unique usernames for each online service. Setting up a unique email address for every online account makes things even more secure — and it isn’t as cumbersome as one might think thanks to new services offered by some e-mail providers. 

The post Internet Archive Was Exposing User Email Addresses for Years Before Recent Breach appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

Meta is restricting the use of the upside-down red triangle emoji, a reference to Hamas combat operations that has become a broader symbol of Palestinian resistance, on its Facebook and Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms, according to internal content moderation materials reviewed by The Intercept.

Since the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza, Hamas has regularly released footage of its successful strikes on Israeli military positions with red triangles superimposed above targeted soldiers and armor. Since last fall, use of the red triangle emoji has expanded online, becoming a widely used icon for people expressing pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli sentiment. Social media users have included the shape in their posts, usernames, and profiles as a badge of solidarity and protest. The symbol has become common enough that the Israeli military has used it as shorthand in its own propaganda: In November, Al Jazeera reported on an Israeli military video that warned “Our triangle is stronger than yours, Abu Obeida,” addressing Hamas’s spokesperson.

According to internal policy guidelines obtained by The Intercept, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has determined that the upside-down triangle emoji is a proxy for support for Hamas, an organization blacklisted under the company’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy and designated a terror group under U.S. law. While the rule applies to all users, it is only being enforced in moderation cases that are flagged internally. Deletions of the offending triangle may be followed by further disciplinary action from Meta depending on how severely the company assesses its use.

According to the policy materials, the ban covers contexts in which Meta decides a “user is clearly posting about the conflict and it is reasonable to read the red triangle as a proxy for Hamas and it is being used to glorify, support or represent Hamas’s violence.”

Many questions about the policy remain unanswered; Meta did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It’s unclear how often Meta chooses to restrict posts or accounts using the emoji, how many times it has intervened, and whether users have faced further repercussions for violating this policy.

The policy also appears to apply even if the emoji is used without any violent speech or reference to Hamas. The documents show that the company will “Remove as a ‘Reference to DOI’ if the use of triangle is not related to Hamas’s violence,” as in the case of the emoji as a user’s profile picture. Another example of a prohibited use doesn’t even include the emoji itself, but rather a hashtag mentioning the word triangle and a Hamas spokesperson.

It “seems wildly over-broad to remove any ‘reference’ to a designated DOI,” according to Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School and scholar of content moderation policy. “If we are just understanding the ‘’ as essentially a stand-in for the word “Hamas,” we would never ban every instance of the word. Much discussion of Hamas or use of the ‘’ will not necessarily be praise or glorification.”

The previously unreported prohibition has not been announced to users by Meta and has worried some digital rights advocates about how fairly and accurately it will be enforced. “Wholesale bans on expressions proved time and time again to be disastrous for free speech, but Meta never seems to learn this lesson,” Marwa Fatafta, a policy adviser with the digital rights organization Access Now, told The Intercept. “Their systems will not be able to distinguish between the different uses of this symbol, and under the unforgiving DOI policy, those who are caught in this widely cast net will pay a hefty price.”

“Their systems will not be able to distinguish between the different uses of this symbol, and … those who are caught in this widely cast net will pay a hefty price.”

While Meta publishes a broad overview of the Dangerous Organizations policy, the specifics, including the exact people and groups that are included under it, are kept secret, making it difficult for users to avoid breaking the rule.

“Soon enough, users will know and notice that their posts are being taken down because of using this red triangle, and that will raise questions,” Fatafta said. “Meta seems to be forgetting another very important lesson here, and that is transparency.”

Douek echoed the need for transparency regarding Meta’s content moderation around the war: “Not knowing when or how the rule is being applied is going to exacerbate the perception, if not the reality, that Meta isn’t being fair in a context where the company has a history of biased enforcement.”

Although Meta last year relaxed its Dangerous Organizations policy to ostensibly allow references to banned entities in certain contexts, like elections, civil society groups and digital rights advocates have widely criticized Meta’s enforcement of the policy against speech pertaining to the war, particularly from Palestinian users. The policy material reviewed by The Intercept mentions no such exceptions for the triangle emoji or instructions to consider its context beyond Hamas.

“What is being banned are expressions of solidarity and support for Palestinians as they are trying to resist ethnic cleansing and genocide,” Mayssoun Sukarieh, a senior lecturer with the Department of International Development at King’s College London, told The Intercept. “Symbols are always created by resistance, and there will be resistance as long as there is colonialism and occupation.”

The post Facebook and Instagram Restrict the Use of the Red Triangle Emoji Over Hamas Association appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

Digital security appears to be a fixation of New York Mayor Eric Adams and his staff, at least according to his indictment on multiple charges, including soliciting and receiving campaign contributions from a foreign national, bribery, and wire fraud. 

But then why were they so bad at it?

Case in point: The indictment quotes a text message exchange between Adams and an unnamed staffer, in which the staffer allegedly tells Adams to “be o[n the] safe side Please Delete all messages you send me.” 

Adams, according to the indictment, texts back, “Always do.”

It goes without saying that this policy of deleting messages did not prevent investigators from discovering these communications.

Nor did an alleged attempt by the same staff member to delete encrypted messaging apps after asking for a bathroom break during a meeting with FBI agents. The staff member, according to the indictment, asked to excuse herself from the conversation, then removed from her phone the apps she had used to communicate with Adams, a Turkish official who coordinated various dealings with Adams, and others. 

This is not the first time the run-to-the-bathroom-to-flush-messages-down-the-toilet trick has been attempted. When Apple sued former iOS engineer Andrew Aude for allegedly leaking information on upcoming Apple products, the complaint noted that “Feigning the need to visit the bathroom mid-interview, Mr. Aude then extracted his iPhone from his pocket during the break and permanently deleted significant amounts of evidence from his device,” which included the popular encrypted messaging app Signal. 

Much like how attempts to flush drugs down the toilet don’t always destroy incriminating evidence, there are a plethora of forensic techniques to recover lingering trace evidence of applications which have been installed on a phone even after the app may have been deleted from the device. There are also a number of ways to recover trace remnants of communications, even if those communications are conducted via encrypted messaging apps. 

Deleting messages, or even an entire app, may nonetheless leave an array of bread crumbs for investigators that would betray the fact that interactions between certain parties may have transpired, even if the actual contents of the conversations may no longer be recoverable. 

Take Signal, for example. Signal offers a variety of options to delete messages, including the ability to delete a message that you sent to someone from the recipients’ devices, as well as the ability to set message duration lengths, after which they will disappear. However, these various deletion measures come with critical caveats that can nonetheless leave traces of the fact that communications between certain parties may have transpired — which in some cases may be sufficient to pose problems for the people implicated. 

There are a plethora of forensic techniques to recover lingering trace evidence of applications, even after the app may have been deleted from the device.

For example, although Signal offers the option for a sender to delete a message they sent to recipients, this feature comes with two notable asterisks. First, this “delete for everyone” feature can only be done within 24 hours of a message being sent, Second, the deleted messages are not deleted entirely, but are instead replaced with the boilerplate text that reads “This message was deleted” on recipients’ devices, or “You deleted this message” on the sender’s devices. Metadata about the original message, such as the time the original message was sent and received, is preserved as well. To effectively eliminate traces that a message had been sent and then deleted, both the sender and the recipients must individually tap on the deleted message placeholder and select “delete.”

When placing a Signal voice call on an iPhone, Signal integrates with the iPhone so that Signal calls show up in the “recents” list of calls in the iOS Phone app. This means that forensic investigators can simply check the Phone app to see who an individual called on Signal without having to utilize the Signal app at all. Though these instructions don’t appear to be documented on Signal’s official support portal, this feature can nonetheless be disabled by going to Settings, then Privacy, and making sure “Show Calls in Recents” is turned off on the Signal iOS app.

This is all to say, if you find yourself in a situation where you need an impromptu bathroom break in the middle of an interrogation to delete messages, you’re already in deep shit.

The post Encrypted Apps Can Protect Your Privacy — Unless You Use Them Like Eric Adams appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

by A.C. Thompson, James Bandler and Brandon Roberts

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This story is part of a collaboration between FRONTLINE and ProPublica that includes an upcoming documentary.

The recent crackdown on the social media platform Telegram has triggered waves of panic among the neo-Nazis who have made the app their headquarters for posting hate and planning violence.

“Shut It Down,” one person posted in a white supremacist chat on Tuesday, hours after Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced he would begin sharing some users’ identifying information with law enforcement.

With over 900 million users around the globe, Telegram has been both revered and reviled for its hands-off approach to moderating posted content. The platform made headlines this summer when French authorities arrested Durov, seeking to hold him responsible for illegal activity that has been conducted or facilitated on the platform — including organized drug trafficking, child pornography and fraud.

Durov has called the charges “misguided.” But he acknowledged that criminals have abused the platform and promised in a Telegram post to “significantly improve things in this regard.” Durov’s announcement marked a considerable policy shift: He said Telegram will now share the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate the platform’s rules with authorities “in response to valid legal requests.”

This was the second time in weeks that extremists had called on their brethren to abandon Telegram. The first flurry of panic followed indictments by the Justice Department of two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, a group of white supremacists accused of inciting others on the platform to commit racist killings.

“EVERYONE LEAVE CHAT,” posted the administrator of a group chat allied with the Terrorgram Collective the day the indictments were announced.

An analysis by ProPublica and FRONTLINE, however, shows that despite the wave of early panic, users didn’t initially leave the platform. Instead there was a surge in activity on Terrorgram-aligned channels and chats, as allies of the group tried to rally support for their comrades in custody, railed against the government’s actions and sought to oust users they believed to be federal agents.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, with a slew of felonies including soliciting the murder of government officials on Telegram.

Humber has pleaded not guilty. She made a brief appearance in federal court in Sacramento, California, on Sept. 13, during which she was denied bail. Humber, shackled and clad in orange-and-white jail garb, said nothing. Allison, who has not yet entered a plea, was arrested in Idaho but will face trial in California.

Attorneys for Humber and Allison did not respond to separate requests for comment.

The two are alleged Accelerationists, a subset of white supremacists intent on accelerating the collapse of today’s liberal democracies and replacing them with all-white ethno-states, according to the indictment.

Through a constellation of linked Telegram channels, the collective distributes books, audio recordings, videos, posters and calendars celebrating white supremacist mass murderers, such as Brenton Tarrant, who in early 2019 stormed two mosques in New Zealand and shot to death 51 Muslim worshippers.

The group explicitly aims to inspire similar attacks, offering would-be terrorists tips and tools for carrying out spectacular acts of violence and sabotage. A now-defunct channel allegedly run by Humber, for example, featured instructions on how to make a vast array of potent explosives. After their arrests, channels allegedly run by Humber and Allison went silent.

But within days of the indictments, an anonymous Telegram user had set up a new channel “dedicated to updates about their situation.”

“I understand that some people may not like these two, however, their arrests and possible prosecution affects all of us,” the user wrote. The criminal case, they argued, “shows us that Telegram is under attack globally.”

The channel referred to Humber and Allison by their alleged Telegram usernames, Ryder_Returns and Btc.

A long-running neo-Nazi channel with more than 13,000 subscribers posted a lengthy screed. “We are very sad to hear of the egregious overreach of government powers with these arrests,” stated the poster, who used coded language to suggest that white supremacists should forcefully overthrow the U.S. government.

One group closely aligned with the Terrorgram Collective warned like-minded followers that federal agents could be lurking. In a post, it said that it had been in contact with Humber since her arrest, and that she gave them information about an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated the Accelerationist scene.

“If this person is in your chats, remove them,” said one post, referring to the supposed agent. “Don’t threaten them. Don’t say anything to them. Just remove them from contacts and chats.”

Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium, said the Terrorgram Collective had already been badly weakened by a string of arrests in the U.S., Europe and Canada over the past two years. “Overall, the arrests of Humber and Allison are likely the final blow to the Terrorgram Collective,” Kriner said.

In the U.S., federal agents this year have arrested at least two individuals who were allegedly inspired by the group. The first was Alexander Lightner, a 26-year-old construction worker who was apprehended in January during a raid on his Florida home. In a series of Telegram posts, Lightner said he planned to commit a racially or ethnically motivated mass killing, according to prosecutors. Court records show that agents found a manual produced by the Terrorgram Collective and a copy of “Mein Kampf” in Lightner’s home.

Lightner has pleaded not guilty to charges of making online threats and possessing an illegal handgun silencer. His attorney declined to comment.

This summer, prosecutors charged Andrew Takhistov of New Jersey with soliciting an individual to destroy a power plant. Takhistov allegedly shared a PDF copy of a different Terrorgram publication with an undercover agent. The 261-page manual includes detailed instructions for building explosives and encourages readers to destabilize society through murder and industrial sabotage. Takhistov has not yet entered a plea. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Durov’s August arrest also sent a spasm of fear through the extremist scene. “It’s over,” one user of a white supremacist chat group declared.

“Does this mean I have to Nuke my Telegram account?” asked another member of the group. “I just got on.”

Their concerns grew when Telegram removed language from its FAQ page stating that the company would not comply with law enforcement requests regarding users in private Telegram chats.

Alarmed, Accelerationists on Telegram discussed the feasibility of finding another online sanctuary. Some considered the messaging service Signal, but others warned it was likely controlled by U.S. intelligence agencies. One post suggested users migrate to more obscure encrypted messaging apps like Briar and Session.

In extremist circles, there was more discussion about fleeing Telegram after Durov’s announcement this week. “Time is running out on this sinking ship,” wrote one user. “So we’re ditching Telegram?” asked another.

“Every time we have a success against one of them, they learn, they adapt, they modify,” said Don Robinson, who as an FBI agent conducted infiltration operations against white supremacists. “Extremists can simply pick up and move to a new platform once they are de-platformed for content abuses. This leaves law enforcement and intelligence agencies playing an endless game of Whac-a-Mole to identify where the next threat may be coming from.”

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Right now, much of the food sent to space is dehydrated or vacuum–packed, but fresh food might be on the horizon for space explorers. The University of California has genetically engineered a cherry tomato plant that is currently undergoing NASA observation at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Within the next year, researchers hope that its seeds will be the first ever to germinate in the International Space Station’s Advanced Plant Habitat laboratory, 260 miles above Earth.

The hope is that the cherry tomato seeds will produce fruit, and then that fruit will produce more seeds, which will be planted again to produce more fruit. “It’s going to be a seed-to-a-seed-to-a-seed, which has never been done before in space,” said Robert Jinkerson, an associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California.

Pexels

Why NASA is growing plants in space 

Eventually, the University of California’s cherry tomato seeds might provide astronauts with a sustained, tasty, and fresh source of nutrition—vital for the type of long space exploration trips NASA wants to see in the future. In the 2030s, the US government agency is hoping to send astronauts to Mars, for example.

“A lack of vitamin C was all it took to give sailors scurvy, and vitamin deficiencies can cause a number of other health problems,” notes the NASA website. “Simply packing some multivitamins will not be enough to keep astronauts healthy as they explore deep space. They will need fresh produce.”

There are many projects on the go that aim to provide astronauts with fresh produce. On the International Space Station, there is a small vegetable production system called Veggie that can hold up to six plants at a time. In Veggie, each plant grows in its own special “pillow,” which is filled with a clay-like material and fertilizer and helps to give plant roots the right amount of air, water, and nutrients (without these pillows, water, and air would behave strangely in space, either flooding the roots with too much water or trapping them in air bubbles).

So far, Veggie has produced a range of plants, including red Russian kale, zinnia flowers, and three different types of lettuce.

“Good food, proper food with a lot of variety, tailored to the needs of the individual astronauts is crucial for a successful deep space mission. I think people underestimate how important it is.” —Sonja Brungs, ESA’s astronaut operations deputy lead, to the ’BBC’

There’s also the Advanced Plant Habitat, where NASA hopes to plant cherry tomato seeds. It’s similar to Veggie, as it uses clay material and slow-release fertilizer, as well as LED lights, but it also differs in many ways. The habitat is fully enclosed and runs automatically with more than 180 sensors that keep track of everything, like water, air, moisture, and temperature. 

The Advanced Plant Habitat system is controlled by a team at the Kennedy Space Center. When plants are ready to be studied, astronauts collect samples, preserve them, and send them back to Earth to see how space affects their growth.

NASA/Cory Huston

What other foods are suitable for space?

Jinkerson’s focus isn’t just cherry tomatoes. The professor is also working on a mushroom that can be grown in space, after receiving $250,000 from NASA to create a compact system that produces enough mushrooms to provide astronauts with around 4,000 calories per day.

Research suggests that fungi will be a key part of space diets in the future. “Fungi is very versatile,” Carlos Otero, who works in the R&D team at Mycorena, said. The Swedish food technology brand also has funding from NASA and is currently working on a mycoprotein made from a mix of fungi and microalgae. “It can grow on different substrates, it grows fast and you can design a small and efficient system capable of producing enough food for the crew,” he added. “It is also very robust, resistant to radiation, and easy to store and transport.”

In 2022, a vegan fungi protein bioreactor from Chicago-based company Nature’s Fynd also orbited aboard the SpaceX-25, a Commercial Resupply Service mission (CRS) to the International Space Station that was a collaboration between NASA and Elon Musk’s spacecraft company SpaceX.

The bioreactor grew Fy, Nature’s Fynd’s own nutritional fungi protein. “Our breakthrough fermentation system is relatively simple, uses minimal energy and water, and delivers a nutritious protein that is easy to harvest, with little to no waste in a matter of days—as perfect for space as it is here on Earth,” said Thomas Jonas, CEO and co-founder of Nature’s Fynd at the time.

SpaceX

Experts have also experimented with growing cultivated meat in space. After all, it would be extremely difficult to produce traditional meat on board a spaceship. In 2019, Aleph Farms worked with the International Space Station to grow the first-ever piece of cultivated meat in space.

“Developed countries have the historical opportunity to move away from farming and killing animals, being a very inefficient process to produce food, unsustainable for the planet, dangerous for our health and raising more and more ethical concerns among the population.”—ESA engineer Paolo Corradi

In 2023, the ESA revealed it was also exploring the idea of cultivated meat in space. Its study teams concluded that the idea is “not far-fetched,” although further research is required.

ESA engineer Paolo Corradi noted that the research could lead to much-needed food system transformation on Earth, too. “The feeling is that we are at the beginning of a process that could transform the industry, making the conventional meat production model obsolete,” he said.

This post was originally published on VegNews.com.

The ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza has triggered tense, at times hostile, reckonings across American tech companies over their role in the killing. Since October 7, tech workers have agitated for greater transparency about their employers’ work for the Israeli military and at times vehemently protested those contracts.

IBM, which has worked with the Israeli military since the 1960s, is no exception: For months after the war’s start, workers repeatedly pressed company leadership — including its chief executive — to divulge and limit its role in the Israeli offensive that has so far killed over 40,000 Palestinians. For many workers, the question of where IBM might draw the line with foreign governments is particularly fraught given the company’s grim track record of selling computers and services to both apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.

On June 6, CEO Arvind Krishna addressed these concerns in a livestreamed video Q&A session.

For IBM workers worried about where the company draws the line, his response has sparked only greater consternation.

According to records of the presentation reviewed by The Intercept, Krishna told employees that IBM’s foreign business wouldn’t be shaped by the company’s own values or humanitarian guidelines.

Rather, Krishna explained, when working for governments, IBM believes the customer is always right: 

We try to operate with the principles that are encouraged by the governments of the countries we are in. We are a U.S. headquarter company. So, what does the U.S. federal government want to do on international relations? That helps guide a lot of what we do. We operate in many countries. We operate in Israel, but we also operate in Saudi Arabia. What do those countries want us to do? And what is it they consider to be correct behavior?

For IBM employees worried that business interests would override ethical considerations, this answer provided little reassurance. It also echoed, intentionally or not, the company’s defense when workers had protested IBM’s sale of computer services to apartheid South Africa. According to Kwame Afoh, an IBM employee who organized against the company’s South African ventures in the 1970s, the company’s go-to internal rationale was “We don’t set foreign policy but rather we follow the lead of the U.S. government in foreign business dealings.” 

Krishna continued by claiming IBM would not help build weapons — not because doing so is morally wrong, but because the company doesn’t have a system of judging right from wrong. “We will not work on offensive weapons programs,” Krishna explained. “Why? I am not taking any kind of moral or ethical judgment. I think that should be on each country who does those. The reason we don’t is, we do not have the internal guardrails to decide whether the technology applies in a good way or unethical way for offensive weapons.”

Though it may not build weapons itself, IBM has long helped run the military that carries them. In 2020, the company split a roughly $275 million contract to build data centers that would handle Israeli military logistics, including “combat equipment,” according to Israeli outlet TheMarker. That same year, an executive with IBM subsidiary Red Hat told an Israeli business publication “we see ourselves as partners of the IDF.”

IBM did not respond to a request for comment.

Some IBM employees who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity say they were unnerved or upset by their CEO’s remarks, including one who described them as “predictably shameful.” This person said that while some were glad Krishna had even broached the topic of IBM and Israel, “the responses I heard in one-on-one discussions were overwhelmingly dissatisfied or outraged.” Another IBM worker characterized Krishna’s comments as an “excuse for him to hide behind the US government’s choices in a business sense,” adding that “with the track record that IBM has with taking part in genocidal government projects, it certainly doesn’t help his case in any valuable moral way whatsoever.”

The company’s stance from its closed-doors staff discussion is markedly different than its public claims. Like its major rivals, IBM says its business practices are constrained by various human rights commitments, principles that in theory ask the company to avoid harm in the pursuit of profit. When operating in a foreign country, such commitments ostensibly prevent a company like IBM from simply asking “What do those countries want us to do?” as Krishna put it. 

But like its competitors, IBM’s human rights language is generally feel-good verbiage that gestures at ethical guidelines without spelling any of them out. “Our definition of corporate responsibility includes environmental responsibility, as well as social concerns for our workforce, clients, business partners, and the communities where we operate,” the company’s “human rights principles” page states. “IBM has a strong culture of ethics and integrity.”

The only substance to be found here is in reference to third-party human rights frameworks, namely those issued by the United Nations. IBM says its “corporate responsibility standards” are “informed by” the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which asks its adherents to “prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts.” 

These guidelines, endorsed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2011, stress that “Some operating environments, such as conflict-affected areas, may increase the risks of enterprises being complicit in gross human rights abuses committed by other actors (security forces, for example).” The document further notes that such conflict zone abuses may create corporate liability before the International Criminal Court, which in April charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with crimes against humanity stemming from the Gaza assault. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which also sell technology services to the Israeli military, similarly say they subscribe to the voluntarily, nonbinding U.N. guidelines.

The post IBM CEO: We Listen to What Israel and Saudi Arabia Consider “Correct Behavior” appeared first on The Intercept.

This post was originally published on The Intercept.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, no longer exists strictly within the confines of tech companies and Hollywood blockbusters. Once a tenet of science fiction and futuristic horror films, artificial intelligence has been piquing the curiosity of scientists since the middle of the 20th century when Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon unveiled the world’s first AI program aimed at proving mathematical theorems by mimicking human problem solving. But today, this field of study has rapidly evolved, becoming the hot topic on everyone’s mind—and it has come a long way from its mathematical origins. Now, AI is driving vegan innovation as plant-based companies use it to emulate the taste, texture, and functionality of animal products without the cruelty. Check out how three vegan companies are leveraging this new technology to help feed the world.

Climax Foods

Climax Foods

Their goal: Create a new generation of affordable, planet-friendly vegan foods
What they make: Hyper-realistic cheese—already adopted by food industry veterans like Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn—with the help of the world’s first plant-based casein
How they do it: The company’s AI-enabled Deep Plant Intelligence platform analyzes the characteristics of animal-based foods on a molecular level. “We continuously train our portfolio of machine intelligence tools to enable the plant-based recreation of any taste and texture, while optimizing for nutrition and lowering costs,” says Karthik Sekar, PhD, Head of Data Science. Employing its findings and using the vast ingredients available in the plant kingdom, Climax Foods is able to create delectable vegan cheeses—like its funky Blue and bloomy Brie varieties—that are indistinguishable from their dairy counterparts.

Meati Foods

Meati

Their goal: Harness the biotechnological power of fungi to meet the world’s sustainability and nutritional needs What they make: Healthier, tastier, more nutritious plant-based meat
How they do it: Made from mycelium (the fast-growing root system of mushrooms), Meati’s whole-cut steaks and chicken cutlets are beloved for their realistic taste and texture. And now, the company is turning to AI to do even more. With studies showing a desire among consumers for improved meat alternatives—including increased protein and less sodium—Meati’s next phase will be to optimize the nutritional profile of its range. And its new partnership with AI food science company PIPA—allowing it to analyze vast amounts of data on the power of mycelium—will help do just that.

The Kraft Heinz Not Company

NotCo

Their goal: Create and usher in a new food industry devoid of animal foods
What they make: Ingenious formulations that replicate meat and cheese on a molecular level
How they do it: From juicy chicken patties to nostalgic Kraft mac and cheese, NotCo’s AI platform Giuseppe is helping to break away from standard industry formulations to perfect plant-based alternatives by bringing over 300,000 edible plants and billions of combinations to NotCo’s fingertips. First, Giuseppe analyzes the molecular structure of animal foods and replicates them using only animal-free ingredients—a process that has resulted in unique formulations and near-identical alternatives (think pineapple and cabbage to recreate the flavor and mouthfeel of dairy milk). The AI then generates recipes for NotCo chefs and scientists to test and provide feedback—helping Giuseppe to learn, get faster, and improve even more.

This post was originally published on VegNews.com.