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The Latest Breaking News from 404 Media

Hacker Group ShinyHunters Claims FBI Breach as 5,000-Record Sample Raises Fears for Agents' Families

Hacker group ShinyHunters claims it breached FBI-related services and stole employee and applicant data, but the sample, alleged access route and wider scope remain unverified.

International Business Times UK · Sep 22

Intent not malicious, it's indifference: Thousands, if not millions, of books sent to AI woodchipper

Intent not malicious, it's indifference: Thousands, if not millions, of books sent to AI woodchipper

François Picard is pleased to welcome investigative journalist Emanuel Maiberg, Co-founder of 404 Media. As we embark on AI's uncharted waters, Maiberg has made a most unexpected discovery:: the mass acquisition, dismemberment and scanning of rare books for use as training data. His investigation reveals a globalised and deliberately opaque…

France 24 · Sep 17

OpenAI Hired Contractors To Review ChatGPT Chats but Improve Opt-Out Does Not Remove Earlier Eligible Chats

OpenAI Hired Contractors To Review ChatGPT Chats but Improve Opt-Out Does Not Remove Earlier Eligible Chats

Project Lily contractors review real ChatGPT conversations, while memory summaries can provide additional context even after usernames are removed.

International Business Times UK · Sep 17

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Flock Camera Captured 1.6M Images in 21 Days as Leaked Code Shows It Detects People

A recovered Flock camera logged about 50,200 vehicles and 1.6 million images, revealing how its software captures and classifies roadside scenes

International Business Times UK · Sep 16

Sinclair Local Stations Push Report Linking Anti-Flock Critics to Pro-China Activist Network

At least 40 US television stations aired a Sinclair-syndicated segment linking opposition to Flock surveillance cameras to China-linked activist networks, based on a disputed lobbying paper.

International Business Times UK · Sep 11

The Feds Are Spying on Your Bank Account

While the Treasury forces money changers to report on suspected immigrants, Homeland Security is having police pull people over for suspicious transactions.

Reason · Sep 9

Border Patrol Is Secretly Tracking Americans' Money and Movements: U.S. Citizens Can Be Pulled Over Without Being Suspected of a Crime

Being a U.S. citizen does not appear to protect drivers from a secretive Border Patrol program that analyzes Americans' financial activity, tracks their movements and quietly asks local police to pull them over, even when they are not suspected of a specific crime.

Latin Times · Sep 9

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Amazon's wanton destruction of rare books is a betrayal of the brand's origins

Fahrenheit 451 isn't a great look for the "Earth's biggest bookstore".

Creative Bloq · Aug 19

Secret tracking device placed in rare book ends up in Amazon processing facility — destroying books to train AI models is 'all' the Vegas warehouse does

Secret tracking device placed in rare book ends up in Amazon processing facility — destroying books to train AI models is 'all' the Vegas warehouse does

404 Media placed an AirTag inside a shipment of 1,000 books, which landed at an Amazon facility that reportedly spends all day cutting the spine off of, and scanning, books.

Tom’s Hardware · Aug 18

Rare Books Shipment Tracked to Amazon AI Facility Where Books Are Allegedly Scanned and Destroyed

Rare Books Shipment Tracked to Amazon AI Facility Where Books Are Allegedly Scanned and Destroyed

Amazon faces criticism for allegedly destroying books to digitise them for AI training, raising concerns about the preservation of physical culture and the ethics of AI data sourcing.

International Business Times UK · Aug 18

The privacy myth crumbles: Inside the iCloud+ flaws threatening Apple's most valuable promise

The privacy myth crumbles: Inside the iCloud+ flaws threatening Apple's most valuable promise

Recently uncovered bugs in Private Relay and Hide My Email have exposed a glaring truth: no single company can act as your sole privacy shield

TechRadar · Aug 14

Plaintiff busted trying to use AI prompt injection to win court case, hides text instruction in filing — demands AI model reviewing the text should side with him, rumbled because of strange white spaces in text

Plaintiff busted trying to use AI prompt injection to win court case, hides text instruction in filing — demands AI model reviewing the text should side with him, rumbled because of strange white spaces in text

A self-represented plaintiff in a Connecticut court added a hidden AI prompt injection attack in their filing in a failed attempt to influence a decision. The court bars them from submitting documents electronically and instead must print them and hand to the clerk of court.

Tom’s Hardware · Aug 14

The Flock uprising is just the beginning

The Flock uprising is just the beginning

People are sick of tech billionaires trying to control our lives

Salon · Aug 14

What Are Flock Cameras? Inside the ALPR Network Sparking a Viral TikTok and Instagram DeFlock Backlash

What Are Flock Cameras? Inside the ALPR Network Sparking a Viral TikTok and Instagram DeFlock Backlash

Flock cameras, used for vehicle surveillance, are at the centre of a US privacy debate. The DeFlock movement opposes their use, sparking national protests and law enforcement scrutiny.

International Business Times UK · Aug 13

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Tom’s Guide · Aug 10

Flock reportedly planned to co-opt Uber and Lyft vehicles to expand its surveillance network

Flock planned to partner with Nexar to turn dash cams in Uber and Lyft vehicles into mobile license plate readers, leaked documents show.

Tom’s Hardware · Aug 9

Kansas town silences public comment on gigawatt AI data center after receiving death threats, moves to virtual meetings — shift follows physics teacher's arrest for clapping at data center hearing

Emporia, Kansas, switched to virtual city council meetings after death threats intensified against city leaders. The move also canceled public comments, prompting some members of the public to ask why it was affected, too.

TechRadar · Aug 5

'Tokenmaxxing is not what we are optimizing for': Microsoft tells engineer to calm down on AI usage

Microsoft engineers told to chill out when it comes to AI token usage.

PC Gamer · Aug 3

Company that said it could scan and destroy books for AI data-harvesting has deleted that part of its website: 'no such service was ever brought to life'

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TechRadar · Aug 1

A cultural crime against humanity? AI firms are destroying ultra-rare books so nobody else can read them

AI firms buy and destroy rare pre-2022 books to create clean training data, concealing purchases through NDAs while courts approve the practice.

Pedestrian.tv · Jul 31

AI Has Run Out Of Clean Internet Data. Now It’s Coming For Physical Books

AI companies are buying physical books in bulk to train chatbots, then destroying the copies. Here’s what’s going on.

The Independent UK · Jul 30

LinkedIn’s newest feature: A ‘Seems Like AI Slop’ button

LinkedIn is also removing its ‘enhance with AI’ option for users and replacing it with an option for proofreading that does not significantly re-write posts

The Economic Times · Jul 30

AI's hunger for data is now consuming rare books and booksellers are cashing in

Artificial intelligence firms are purchasing vast quantities of physical books. These books are scanned to train large language models and then destroyed. Rare and out-of-print titles are particularly sought after for this purpose. Booksellers report a significant surge in demand for these older publications. This practice raises concerns about the…

International Business Times UK · Jul 29

Cops Tracked Woman's Abortion Across 83,000 Cameras for Her 'Safety'; Court Records Show They Eyed Criminal Charges

A Texas sheriff's office used over 83,000 ALPR cameras to track a woman post-abortion, sparking federal scrutiny, state legislation, and charges against the sheriff. The case highlights surveillance and reproductive rights issues.

PC Gamer · Jul 28

AI companies are anonymously buying and destroying millions of books through middleman services to avoid headlines about AI companies buying and destroying millions of books

Booksellers say they're facing a sudden surge of orders for seemingly random rare books—and fear they might be profiting from their destruction.

Tom’s Hardware · Jul 28

AI companies are reportedly shredding millions of books after using them to train AI models — tech giants outsource to middlemen to secretly buy up books for training material

New report reveals that AI companies are buying up physical books to train their LLMs and destroying them in the process.

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