I recently read End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend that everyone read it. Tech oligarchs make up an important component of the end-times-fascist coalition. One thing that stood out to me, as a software and security engineer who finds LLMs to be extremely powerful, is that the American frontier labs are

This morning, DDoSecrets published an exciting new dataset: Filesystem images of the partitions from an in-use Flock ALPR camera. 404 Media and Wired published a joint investigation into it. I downloaded the dataset and am now thoroughly nerd-sniped. Hackers from a collective called stegan0gram collected the data. “Why just destroy [Flock cameras] when we can reverse engineer them and find the sec

On Wednesday, Trump's fascist government designated Autistic/Inventati as a terrorist organization. A/I is an Italian hacker collective that runs tech infrastructure for leftists around the world, similar to Riseup.net in the US. This is really bad, and I want more people to know what's going on. The following is an article from Sabot Media , reposted with permission. For twenty-five years, an Ita

At the beginning of the month I wrote about how I've been using coding agents to write high quality code securely. In this post I'll show the details of setting up isolated sandboxes for agents, where they can only access a single isolated GitHub repo, and where they sign commits with a dedicated agent-only key. As an aside: After writing my last post, I went to DEF CON. I spent the whole time in

Since LLMs have been available, I've been doing a lot of coding using agents. Unlike shoving AI into every app, replacing customer support with chatbots, generating endless streams of slop, etc., agentic coding is actually useful. If used right – and, crucially, by someone who understands and reviews the code before merging it – it's an incredible time saver. In this post, I'm going to share some

Guess what? Lately I've been nerding out on creative writing. I even joined a local fiction writers group where we meet up at coffee shops. Like, in person! Anyway, I submitted a short story to the DEF CON 34 Creative Writing Short Story Contest . My story is called Mandatory Update . The rules of the contest were pretty simple: It has to be about hacking. It has to mention the DEF CON hacking con

I just finished reading Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance , by my friend Cindy Cohn. It's excellent and you should buy a copy. Cindy is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and this memoir/legal history goes over three major legal battles in her career, all interspliced with personal stories from her life. It covers: The fight in the 199

Today, DDoSecrets published data about ICE contracts hacked from DHS's Office of Industry Partnership. The hacker group, Department of Peace, published a statement that included: Why hack the DHS? I can think of a couple Pretti Good reasons! I'm releasing this because the DHS is killing us and people deserve to know which companies support them and what they're working on. ICE agents recently murd

As ICE continues its invasion of American cities, kidnapping and murdering the people who live there, observers on the ground are increasingly relying on Signal groups to organize mutual aid and rapid response networks. In Minneapolis, people are using hyper-local Signal groups for their buildings, streets, neighborhoods, and schools. If you, like me, are in a ton of newly created Signal groups fu

The disgraced financier’s Kindle library reveals his interests in Lolita, how the elite avoid accountability, and Trump’s many scandals. 💡 This is a repost of an article I originally published on Zeteo. Following Zeteo's lead, this post is behind a paywall. You can read the full post (and support my work!) by becoming a paid subscriber. This journalism is only possible because of the transparency

Today, I published my first article in Zeteo , alongside the amazing journalist Prem Thakker: Zeteo Scoured 26,000 Epstein Docs. Here’s What We Found . The latest Epstein dataset that the House Oversight Committee released is bonkers. It shows absolute elite impunity, and it implicates rich assholes like Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and Larry Summers. From the article: Dinners with Pet

In case you missed it, last week I was on an episode of the kill switch podcast. I discussed the ICEBlock app and why it was activism theater , and how the developer handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way . But I also talk about why, even though I have criticisms of ICEBlock, the Trump administration's censorship of the app stores (and Apple and Google's complicity) is so incred

I gave the Saturday morning keynote at BSidesPDX! I spoke honestly and frankly about the terrifying reality that Americans are facing under Trump's fascist regime, alongside practical advice for communities to defend themselves. Watch my talk below. Of if you prefer reading articles over watching video, I've added a copy of my whole talk below the video, mildly edited, and with added links to my s

I'll be giving the Saturday morning keynote at BSidesPDX next weekend in beautiful Portland, Oregon. I'm still putting the final touches on my talk, but it will largely be about the new American technofascist reality of mercenary spyware, device searches, and app censorship, with a focus on practical ways to defend ourselves and our communities. Stay safe, and see you there! BSides Portland is a r

Last week, I wrote about how Joshua Aaron's ICEBlock app, which allows people to anonymously report ICE sightings within a 5-mile radius, is – unfortunately, and despite apparent good intentions – activism theater . This was based on Joshua's talk at HOPE where he made it clear that he isn't taking the advice of local community groups, that ICE sightings aren't verified in any way, and that he doe