Thomas Brewster

@thomasbrewster.bsky.social

Forbes senior writer, covering privacy, surveillance and cybercrime. Editor of The Wiretap newsletter, featuring all of the above.

I keep forgetting to tell folks that I’m on and off work with paternity this year for my (insert random number) child, hence why my output and response times are a little slower than normal. Still, if you have a great tip, don’t be shy about getting me on Signal.

FalcoNet “can be concealed within the vehicles, hidden in a backpack for on-foot missions or attached to a helicopter. It’s the same technology as the infamous Stingray, one of the original cell-site simulators made by defense giant L3Harris.”

Israel’s Palantir Rival Is Selling $1 Million Spy Vans To U.S. Cops

Cognyte, which sells technology to snoop on phone locations largely in Israel and Europe, is making inroads in America by tricking out trucks with spy tech.

forbes.com

For whatever reason Axon is yet to do or authorise a data-driven, independent, controlled study on the efficiency of the tech. There has been one such study so far from Manchester, NH, and it showed zero time savings, even when officers said they thought they experienced them.

Thomas Brewster@thomasbrewster.bsky.social · 2w ago

🚨NEW🚨 The $35bn police tech giant Axon claims its AI massively speeds up cops’ report writing time. I got public records showing one of its AI tools introduced errors into reports, “dramatically” increasing the time it takes to finish them. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

The number of criminal defendants who will (rightfully) claim hallucinations introduce reasonable doubt is going to be incalculable. Even taking Axon's claims at face value, any savings will be offset by higher prosecution costs dealing with these claims.

Thomas Brewster@thomasbrewster.bsky.social · 2w ago

🚨NEW🚨 The $35bn police tech giant Axon claims its AI massively speeds up cops’ report writing time. I got public records showing one of its AI tools introduced errors into reports, “dramatically” increasing the time it takes to finish them. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

🚨NEW🚨 The $35bn police tech giant Axon claims its AI massively speeds up cops’ report writing time. I got public records showing one of its AI tools introduced errors into reports, “dramatically” increasing the time it takes to finish them. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Axon Says AI Police Reports Save Time. Public Records Show They Get Facts Wrong

More than 600,000 police reports have been written with help from Axon’s AI tools. Public records obtained by Forbes show that they can introduce errors that cops have to spend time editing out.

forbes.com

🚨NEW🚨 Well, this is a first for me: A surveillance company CEO says sorry. Flock's chief Garrett Langley says it was a "mistake" to label activists tracking the spread of its surveillance technology "terrorists." His comments come amid a rising public backlash. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Flock CEO Apologizes For Calling Activists ‘Terrorists’

As a movement against $8.3 billion Flock Safety’s license plate readers gathers momentum, company CEO Garrett Langley tells Forbes he shouldn’t have called non-violent activists “terroristic” organiza...

forbes.com

🚨NEW🚨 Well, this is a first for me: A surveillance company CEO says sorry. Flock's chief Garrett Langley says it was a "mistake" to label activists tracking the spread of its surveillance technology "terrorists." His comments come amid a rising public backlash. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Flock CEO Apologizes For Calling Activists ‘Terrorists’

As a movement against $8.3 billion Flock Safety’s license plate readers gathers momentum, company CEO Garrett Langley tells Forbes he shouldn’t have called non-violent activists “terroristic” organiza...

forbes.com

People can't get OpenAI or Anthropic shares. Instead, they're buying used OpenAI employee sweatshirts on eBay for $250. Or used Anthropic t-shirts for $120. Inside the secondary market for AI swag. It's a bubble inside of a bubble. www.forbes.com/sites/annato...

The Booming Secondary Market For Used OpenAI and Anthropic Swag

You might not be able to get in on the IPO, but you can still get the hoodie. With AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic in private hands, people are paying $250 for used sweatshirts on eBay to cospla...

forbes.com

🚨 NEW 🚨 An Israeli spyware maker banned by Meta and panned by civil rights activists has been selling $1 million spy trucks to American police. It's been especially successful in border states, with a $5m deal in Texas. It bills itself as the affordable Palantir. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Israel’s Palantir Rival Is Selling $1 Million Spy Vans To U.S. Cops

Cognyte, which sells technology to snoop on phone locations largely in Israel and Europe, is making inroads in America by tricking out trucks with spy tech.

forbes.com

Per Cognyte's own PR, such deals pave the way to sell more of its tech into the US. Among Cognyte's other products are predictive AI, social media surveillance, and an SS7 tool for finding a phone with just a number. It's also invested in adint, which gets user locations from mobile ads.

Thomas Brewster@thomasbrewster.bsky.social · 3w ago

🚨 NEW 🚨 An Israeli spyware maker banned by Meta and panned by civil rights activists has been selling $1 million spy trucks to American police. It's been especially successful in border states, with a $5m deal in Texas. It bills itself as the affordable Palantir. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

🚨 NEW 🚨 An Israeli spyware maker banned by Meta and panned by civil rights activists has been selling $1 million spy trucks to American police. It's been especially successful in border states, with a $5m deal in Texas. It bills itself as the affordable Palantir. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Israel’s Palantir Rival Is Selling $1 Million Spy Vans To U.S. Cops

Cognyte, which sells technology to snoop on phone locations largely in Israel and Europe, is making inroads in America by tricking out trucks with spy tech.

forbes.com

New: there is a major vulnerability with Apple’s Hide My Email feature that lets attackers discover peoples’ real emails. Verified it works on my own email. We’re not disclosing how it works because Apple has not fixed it. But Apple has known for more than a year www.404media.co/apple-hide-m...

Apple ‘Hide My Email’ Vulnerability Reveals Peoples’ Real Email Addresses

”Hide My Email users deserve to know that it may be possible for attackers to discover their hidden email addresses,” the person who reported the issue said.

404media.co

🚨NEW🚨 The company behind China's new Mythos rival is known to send vulnerabilities to Beijing intelligence agencies via a national database. It's alleged China keeps some bugs from the database to use in cyber espionage. Hence US has labelled it a natsec threat. www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

Qihoo 360: The Cyber Giant Behind China’s Mythos Rival

A Chinese cybersecurity giant with various ties to China's cyber surveillance agencies claims to have developed a powerful AI to rival Anthropic's Mythos.

forbes.com

AI valuations have always been mind boggling. But "tranched" funding rounds mystify them even further, allowing VCs to invest at wildly different prices and founders to raise unprecedented amounts of money without any product or revenue. With @iainmartin.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/rashis...

AI Startups With No Revenue Are Using This Tactic To Supersize Their Valuations

Funding rounds where VCs can invest at wildly different prices are helping AI founders raise unprecedented amounts of money at sky-high valuations, before they even have a product.

forbes.com

🧵NEW: For more than a decade, police in South West England have been quietly experimenting with algorithms to score thousands of people. Most of them didn't know anything about it. Over two years, me and Mark Wilding investigated the messy setup, multiple parts have now been scrapped

British Police Built a Sprawling Crime-Prediction Machine. Some Results Couldn’t Be Trusted

As UK police embrace the AI revolution, a WIRED investigation reveals the messy inside story of one region’s experiment with predictive analytics.

wired.com

🚨 NEW 🚨 In 2021, Russian investigators hacked into the iPhone of Andrey Pivovarov, a prominent Russian opposition politician. They grabbed the data using Israeli-made Cellebrite tech, per research. That was 2 months after the company pulled out of the country. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Russia Hacked Dissident’s iPhone With Cellebrite Tech, Records Show

Israeli surveillance company Cellebrite ended sales to Russia in early 2021. A few months later, Russia used its tech to search a prominent opponent of the regime, new research indicates.

forbes.com

🚨NEW🚨 And now for some good news... A court rules Apple, Google and Amazon don't have to provide over identities of 100,000 users of car tinkering app EZ Lynk to the Justice Department. Looked like overreach by DOJ, court appears to agree. www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

Court Stops DOJ From Forcing Apple, Google To Hand Over 100,000 People’s Information

Government had ordered Apple, Google and Amazon to provide identifying data of over 100,000 users of a car tinkering app.

forbes.com