tonytins

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought data from the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ precise movements over time, in a process that often involves siphoning data from ordinary apps like video games, dating services, and fitness trackers, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media.

The document shows in stark terms the power, and potential risk, of online advertising data and how it can be leveraged by government agencies for surveillance purposes. The news comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purchased similar tools that can monitor the movements of phones in entire neighbourhoods. ICE also recently said in public procurement documents it was interested in sourcing more “Ad Tech” data for its investigations. Following 404 Media’s revelation of that ICE purchase, on Tuesday a group of around 70 lawmakers urged the DHS oversight body to conduct a new investigation into ICE’s location data buying.

This sort of information is a “goldmine for tracking where every person is and what they read, watch, and listen to,” Johnny Ryan, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) Enforce, which has closely followed the sale of advertising data, told 404 Media in an email.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260303141140/https://www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-into-the-online-advertising-ecosystem-to-track-peoples-movements/

A rash spotted on President Donald Trump's neck is trending across social media and now his personal doctor is explaining what's behind it.

On Monday, President Trump made an appearance at a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, where the rash, which could be seen on the right side of his neck, was first spotted. The reddish spot on his neck was photographed extending above his collar.

Dr. Sean Barbabella, Trump's physician, told CNN in a statement that the rash is because of a cream he is using as a "preventative skin treatment."

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with Republicans in ruling that the boundaries of the only GOP-held congressional district in New York City do not not need to be redrawn for the 2026 elections, despite a court ruling that the district is unfair to Black and Hispanic residents.

The justices halted the state court ruling that had ordered New York's redistricting commission to redraw the district held by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis that covers Staten Island and a small piece of Brooklyn.

The outcome is a victory for Republicans in a national tug-of-war over redistricting that could determine control of the closely divided House of Representatives. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority.

The main bet on the front page of Polymarket right now is “Will the Iranian regime fall by June 30?” The site has this at a 41 percent chance of happening as I write this.

On Polymarket, more than $5 million has been spent gambling on this question. On Kalshi, a competing prediction market where users can bet on almost anything, $54 million was spent on “Ali Khamenei out as Supreme Leader?,” a bet whose results somehow ended up ambiguous even after Khamenei’s assassination.

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Kalshi’s CEO and founder Tarek Mansour repeatedly twisted himself into pretzels attempting to explain how the absurd, grotesque exercise of allowing people to bet on politics, geopolitics, and world events is not supposed to allow people to profit from death.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260302210336/https://www.404media.co/with-iran-war-kalshi-and-polymarket-bet-that-the-depravity-economy-has-no-bottom/

Donald Trump is planning to use his attack on Iran to justify a power grab over voting in the 2026 midterms. The fact that the attack violates the Constitution won’t stop him from trying. It is our job to expose this plot and ensure that it does not succeed.

At 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, Donald Trump posted a video on his social media platform announcing that he had ordered the bombing of Iran.

Two hours later, he wrote: “Iran tried to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections to stop Trump and now faces renewed war with the United States.” In that post, he also shared an article from a right-wing news outlet with that claim as its title.

The US military reportedly used Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, to inform its attack on Iran despite Donald Trump’s decision, announced hours earlier, to sever all ties with the company and its artificial intelligence tools.

The use of Claude during the massive joint US-Israel bombardment of Iran that began on Saturday was reported by the Wall Street Journal and Axios. It underlines the complexity of the US military withdrawing powerful AI tools from its missions when the technology is already intricately embedded in operations.

According to the Journal, US military command used the tools for intelligence purposes, as well as to help select targets and carry out battlefield simulations.

The opposition appeared overwhelming: Tens of thousands of emails poured into Southern California's top air pollution authority as its board weighed a June proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances. But in reality, many of the messages that may have swayed the powerful regulatory agency to scrap the plan were generated by a platform that is powered by artificial intelligence.

Public records requests reviewed by The Times and corroborated by staff members at the South Coast Air Quality Management District confirm that more than 20,000 public comments submitted in opposition to last year's proposal were generated by a Washington, D.C.-based company called CiviClick, which bills itself as "the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform."

A Southern California-based public affairs consultant, Matt Klink, has taken credit for using CiviClick to wage the opposition campaign, including in a sponsored article on the website Campaigns and Elections. The campaign "left the staff of the Southern California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) reeling," the article says.

Trump said at a Texas gathering on Feb. 27 that he was considering nominating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for a future seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, although Cruz last month said he was not interested.

Trump, introducing Cruz at a rally in Corpus Christi, called the Texas Republican "an amazing guy," joking that he would easily win confirmation from Democrats and Republicans in Congress alike because they wanted to get him out of the Senate.

"He's the only guy I know, he'll get 100% of the Democrat vote, 100% of the Republican vote. They want to get him out of there. He is such a pain in the a--, but he's so good and so talented."

President Donald Trump on Friday again suggested he should be permitted to illegally serve a third term as president based on his baseless claim that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was “stolen” from him.

Trump was just a few minutes into remarks at a campaign-style rally in Corpus Christi, Texas when he began rattling off a list of purported accomplishments from the first year of his second term in the White House.

“I've been here one year. Think of it, one year, little bit more than one year. Now, time flies. Time flies,” he said.

A proposed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Romulus would be built within historical floodplains, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acknowledged in a notice on its website. Yet the department still plans to proceed with the ICE facility at 7525 Cogswell St. in the city — and its deadline for the public to comment on potential floodplain impacts ends Friday, Feb. 27.

The Homeland Security notice is required under Executive Order 11988. Signed in May 1977, the order mandates that federal agencies avoid, to the extent possible, the long- and short-term adverse impacts associated with the occupancy and modification of floodplains. It requires agencies to avoid direct or indirect support of floodplain development whenever a practicable alternative exists.

But ICE, in its notice, cited the project's limited scope and said the absence of stormwater or grading changes and the elevations of finished floors in the building to state the detention center project "would not affect floodplain hydrology or increase flood risk on or off the site," and declared "ICE has determined that the facility can be safely occupied and operated within the mapped floodplain."

Weeks after the US Congress rejected unprecedented cuts to science budgets that the administration of US President Donald Trump had sought for 2026, funding to several agencies that award research grants is still not freely flowing.

One reason is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been slow to authorize its release. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has so far not received approval to spend any of the research funding allocated in a budget bill signed into law on 3 February. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) was authorized to spend its funding just last week. And NASA has had its full funding authorized for release, but with an unusual restriction that limits spending on ten specific programmes — many of which the Trump team had tried to cancel last year.

The OMB did not respond to Nature’s queries about these moves or when the outstanding funding might be approved. OMB director Russell Vought has said in the past that the office’s role in doling out government funding can be an “indispensable statutory tool” to ensure that agencies are not wasting public funds and are adhering to White House priorities. Vought has also said that the OMB can provide less funding than what Congress has appropriated.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo to staff that he will draw the same red lines that sparked a high-stakes fight between rival Anthropic and the Pentagon: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.