anom

Defense Lawyers Push Judge to Reveal Secret Country that Helped FBI Wiretap the World

For the worldwide Operation Trojan Shield, the FBI secretly ran an encrypted phone company. Now defense teams are demanding the FBI reveal which unnamed third country helped intercept messages of their clients.
Joseph Cox
7.24.23
encryption

Researchers Find ‘Backdoor’ in Encrypted Police and Military Radios

The TETRA standard is used in radios worldwide. Security researchers have found multiple vulnerabilities in the underlying cryptography and its implementation, including issues that allow for the decryption of traffic.
Joseph Cox
7.24.23
location data

Bill that Would Stop the Government Buying Data Without a Warrant Passes Key Hurdle

The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act passed the House Judiciary Committee, bringing it one step closer to becoming law. The bill was written in part in response to Motherboard’s reporting.
Joseph Cox
7.19.23
Silk Road

Top Silk Road Advisor ‘Variety Jones’ Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison

Roger Thomas Clark was Ross Ulbricht's confidant who convinced him to carry out an attempted murder-for-hire scheme.
Joseph Cox
7.11.23
pacer

‘It’s About the Little Victories’: Government Closer to Paying $125 Million it Overcharged for Court Records

“The best part about all of this is I couldn’t even tell you what my PACER bill was during the timeframe of the class action lawsuit because PACER doesn’t allow me to go back more than two years to get old invoices. Never change, PACER.”
Joseph Cox
7.10.23
deepfakes

Internal Emails Show FBI Freaking Out About Deepfakes

“Do we have the ability to effectively detect this?” asks one email. “No.”
Joseph Cox
7.7.23

‘It Is A Huge, Vast, Opportunity’: How OceanGate Went from Disruptive Startup to Catastrophic Deep Sea Failure

Motherboard dug through years worth of OceanGate’s archives, finding a company that repeatedly brought up the commercial prospect of deep sea exploration while misleading the public about its claimed connections to respected government bodies and private
Joseph Cox
Tim Marchman
Matthew Gault
Jordan Pearson
6.22.23
The COMM

Bloodied Macbooks and Stacks of Cash: Inside the Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes

I spent weeks immersed in the world of the Comm, a nebulous community of young hackers, aggressive criminals, and people just hanging out on Discord.
Joseph Cox
6.20.23
police

Police Raided Afroman Searching for a ‘Dungeon.’ His Record Label Says He Doesn’t Even Have a Basement

Motherboard reviewed a bevvy of bodycam footage and the search warrant that underpinned the raid on Afroman’s residence in August 2022.
Joseph Cox
Jason Koebler
Tim Marchman
Jules Roscoe
6.9.23
anom

State Department Offers $5 Million for Information on Key Anom Distributor

The FBI secretly created its own encrypted phone company. Now the U.S. government wants help capturing Maximilian Rivkin, one of its alleged top brass.
Joseph Cox
6.8.23
OpenAI

People Are Pirating GPT-4 By Scraping Exposed API Keys

Why pay for $150,000 worth of OpenAI access when you could just steal it?
Joseph Cox
6.7.23
SURVEILLANCE

'Night Fury': Documents Detail DHS Project to Give 'Risk Scores' to Social Media Users

Internal DHS documents reviewed by Motherboard provide more detail on a DHS plan to monitor social media for content related to terrorists, the illegal opioid trade, and foreign interference bots.
Joseph Cox
6.6.23
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