Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Debriefing on Two Trips
This week, we discuss San Diego and Costa Rica reporting trips.
News
Contractor Used Classified CIA Systems as ‘His Own Personal Google’
Dale Britt Bendler “earned approximately $360,000 in private client fees while also working as a full-time CIA contractor with daily access to highly classified material that he searched like it was his own personal Google,” according to a court record.
Podcast
Podcast: The (Hacked) Spy In Your Car
A massive hack of a popular dashcam company; the sentencing of someone Sam has covered for years; and the mass firings around Charlie Kirk's assassination.
FOIA
Airlines Sell 5 Billion Plane Ticket Records to the Government For Warrantless Searching
New documents obtained by 404 Media show how a data broker owned by American Airlines, United, Delta, and many other airlines is selling masses of passenger data to the U.S. government.
News
ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers
A new contract with Clearview AI explicitly says ICE is buying the tech to investigate "assaults against law enforcement officers."
News
This Company Turns Dashcams into ‘Virtual CCTV Cameras.’ Then Hackers Got In
A hacker has compromised Nexar, which turns peoples' cars into "virtual CCTV cameras" that organizations can then buy images from. The images include sensitive U.S. military and intelligence facilities.
Impact
Congress Pushes DHS for Details on ICE’s New Facial Recognition App
404 Media first revealed ICE’s new app, called Mobile Fortify, in June. Now members of a congressional committee are pressing DHS for more information, including ICE's legal basis for using the app inside the U.S.
Podcast
Podcast: Trump Take LEGO
How Trump's tariffs are impacting all sorts of hobbies; how OnlyFans piracy is ruining the internet for everyone; and ChatGPT's reckoning.
Behind The Blog
Behind the Blog: Dogfooding and Datasets
This week, we discuss our top games, “dense street imagery," and first-person experiences with apps.
Podcast
Podcast: 404 Media Live—NYC!
Here's the podcast recorded at our recent second anniversary party in New York!
News
Flock Wants to Partner With Consumer Dashcam Company That Takes ‘Trillions of Images’ a Month
That dashcam in your car could soon integrate with Flock, the surveillance company providing license plate data to DHS and local police.
Podcast
Podcast: The Underground Trade of Car Hacking Tech
The Flipper Zero is being modified to break into cars; the wave of 80s nostalgia AI slop; and how the Citizen app is using AI to write crime alerts.