Planning a big night out at Madison Square Garden? It might be time to rethink your plans. An investigation has exposed extensive surveillance measures implemented by MSG owner Jim Dolan and his head of security, John Eversole. Concert-goers at MSG and other Dolan venues are subjected to face recognition, social media monitoring, and in-person surveillance.
In US politics, President Donald Trump’s push for a long-term reauthorization of the Section 702 spy program faced significant resistance this week. In a surprising twist, 20 Republican lawmakers in the House voted against full reauthorization, forcing Speaker Mike Johnson to settle for a mere 10-day extension.
Meanwhile, Meta’s AI smartglasses have stirred controversy. Over 70 civil rights groups, including the ACLU and the National Organization for Women, urged Meta to abandon potential face-recognition features in its Ray-Ban and Oakley glasses. They argue this could lead to increased privacy invasions and misuse by stalkers and domestic abusers.
In a troubling trend, an analysis of nonconsensual deepfake nudes has revealed the severity of the issue worldwide, affecting over 600 victims across 28 countries, primarily middle and high school girls.
Investigations also highlighted Telegram’s ongoing struggle with a $20 billion black market for scams. Despite the UK government designating the Xinbi Guarantee platform as a facilitator of human trafficking, Telegram continues to host it, raising serious concerns about user safety.
In the realm of cybersecurity, the race between AI and security measures has taken a new turn. Anthropic’s new model, Mythos, poses unique challenges to traditional security norms, prompting OpenAI to introduce its new cybersecurity strategy and model, GPT-5.4-Cyber.
Recent developments related to data breaches have also made headlines. Europe’s largest gym chain, Basic-Fit, confirmed a data breach affecting around one million customers, including sensitive bank details. Similarly, Booking.com disclosed that hackers may have accessed customer data, though they assured that no financial information was compromised.
Lastly, Bluesky, a social media platform, suffered a DDoS attack that impacted its services, while the government faces scrutiny over hiring practices in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where a review revealed questionable backgrounds among some job applicants.
In a more striking case, the Russian cryptocurrency exchange Grinex announced it was halting operations after suffering a breach that resulted in the loss of over a billion rubles (approximately $13 million). The exchange attributed the incident to foreign espionage, although evidence to support this claim was not provided.
