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Tech News
A coordinated law enforcement effort known as Operation Blackout successfully took down a network of scam centers, according to a threat intelligence expert who detailed the operation's execution. The expert described the takedown as a significant win against organized scam operations and called for similar efforts to continue.
Polymarket paused trading on its international platform for about an hour on Thursday after a security incident affecting third-party provider DebugBear, a UK website-monitoring company. Polymarket said it identified and fixed the issue, resumed trading, and pledged to fully reimburse any affected traders. The company also referred the matter to UK law enforcement.
A profile recounts the career of a DEA special agent known as 'Lili,' a Russian immigrant and Ivy League graduate who became one of the agency's leading cryptocurrency investigators. Her expertise in tracing digital money eventually led her to evidence implicating members of her own family in a fraud scheme, according to the account.
Graylark Technologies has built a feature called Raven, an extension of its GeoSpy tool, that lets police departments including the LAPD and Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office upload an interior photo—even of a washing machine—to find matching short-term rental listings on sites like Airbnb, Vrbo and Zillow. Rather than a reverse image search, Raven identifies distinctive visual details and cross-references them against listing photos and text, which 404 Media found includes direct quotes from rental descriptions.
Flock Safety plans to lay off about 270 employees, roughly 18 percent of its 1,500-person workforce, effective at the end of October, according to sources cited by Reuters. The cuts follow a recent employee buyout program reported by WIRED, and it remains unclear how many departures are voluntary versus involuntary layoffs.
A former police officer argues that Flock Safety's automated license plate recognition cameras have replaced guesswork with instant, precise identification of stolen vehicles. The Atlanta startup, founded in 2017, installs solar-powered roadside cameras that photograph passing cars, log identifying details, and check plates against the FBI's national database in real time, alerting officers to matches.
Officials in North Richland Hills, Texas, have requested a $2.3 million fee before releasing public records related to Flock surveillance systems. The city claims that reviewing approximately one terabyte of data would require 14 years of work at $15 per hour, a cost deemed excessive by the requesting group. Other cities have charged varying amounts for similar records, with some providing data free of charge and others demanding tens of thousands of dollars.
Officials in North Richland Hills, Texas, have requested a $2.3 million fee before releasing records related to Flock surveillance camera data. The fee was based on an estimate that reviewing the data would require 14 years of work at $15 per hour, according to the city. The request was made by the Texas Privacy Coalition, which criticized the cost as excessive and intended to hinder access to information about law enforcement's use of Flock systems.
A woman in Florida was detained after Anthropic's review team flagged a conversation with its AI model Claude, in which she allegedly threatened to attack the Lee County Sheriff's Office and mentioned acquiring a firearm. The company reported the incident to authorities, leading to her arrest on a felony charge for making threats of violence. Court records show the charge was filed on September 30 under Florida law concerning threats of mass violence.
A Bonita Springs, Florida woman, Carli Michelle Heller, was charged with making a written threat of violence after she wrote in Claude, which she used like a diary, that she planned to attack the local Sheriff's office. Anthropic's safety systems flagged the September 26 entry, a human reviewer deemed it credible, and the company reported it to law enforcement, who located and detained Heller without incident.
An investigation into Flock Safety's automated license-plate camera system argues that its core design, not isolated misuse, allows police and other agencies to query cameras they never purchased or deployed. The report cites a case in Georgia where a woman's ex-boyfriend appeared to track her movements via the network, suggesting data from local cameras can flow well beyond their intended jurisdiction.
International law enforcement agencies coordinated an operation to dismantle a ransomware group known as KillSec, which is linked to roughly 500 victims worldwide over the past two years. Investigators have identified the suspected mastermind behind the operation as a 16-year-old.