The Department of Justice admits that DOGE may have misused Social Security data

Law enforcement authorities In the United States for years Circumventing the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution by Purchase data about US residents Which may need to be obtained by court order. Today, ICE appears to believe it can ignore long-standing constitutional protections by breaking down doors without a warrant to arrest people, according to a recent whistleblower complaint –Despite recent federal rulings that doing so violates the Fourth Amendment.

This is the news Get out of Minneapolis This week, as protesters and the federal government continued their confrontation — even as ICE had planned Building a relay network spanning Minnesota and four other states. Despite DHS’s claims that simply naming an ICE agent publicly amounts to “doxxing,” a WIRED review of LinkedIn found that agents They often wash themselves. Of course, accessing someone’s personal information can have consequences: a report this week found that people are doing just that Less likely to seek medical care Due to ad technology surveillance and ICE enforcement activities.

Not only do immigration authorities raid people’s homes without a warrant signed by a judge, they also look for drugs. Customs and Border Protection this week Place sensors for a “quantum sensor” capable of detecting fentanyl Which links to the “Artificial Intelligence Database”.

In non-immigration news, a researcher recently discovered Insecure database containing 149 million login credentials. Usernames and passwords appear associated with accounts for everything from Gmail, Facebook, and Apple to government systems around the world. The researcher who found the database, Jeremiah Fowler, believes the stolen logins were collected by malware to steal information. Since then, the database, which anyone could access online, has been taken offline.

Meanwhile, TikTok took off Collect more data about its users– including precise location data – after the social video app was sold to US investors.

But that’s not all. Every week we round up security and privacy news that we haven’t covered in depth ourselves. Click on the titles to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

The Trump administration admitted this week in court documents that agents of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doug) may have shared data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) with an outside group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” according to one report. January 16 A lawsuit was filed in court at the Ministry of Justice. However, it is not clear to the Department of Justice whether the unnamed “DOGE team members” actually shared data with the group, which was not identified in court records.

The filing, which seeks to “correct” the previous testimony, says DOGE agents “were using links to share data through the third-party server ‘Cloudflare,’ which is ‘not approved for SSA data storage and when used in this manner is outside of SSA’s security protocols.'” The filing also says that Steve Davis, a senior adviser to Elon Musk, was copied on March 3, 2025, in an email that included a password-protected attachment containing the names and addresses of about 1,000 people, which was Taking it from SSA’s recording systems However, the Social Security Administration (SSA) was unable to determine whether Davis had accessed the file, which remained unavailable to current SSA workers as of the date the lawsuit was filed in court.

The Federal Aviation Administration has taken the unusual step of including “Department of Homeland Security facilities in mobile assets” in a “no-fly zone” declaration, 404 Media reports. The notice restricts “drones,” which includes commercial drones used to capture aerial footage, from their use to 3,000 feet horizontally and up to 1,000 feet high above DHS assets. According to 404 Media, people caught violating the restrictions could face criminal charges, civil penalties, or even lose their authority to fly drones in the future.

If you’re shaking off the high temperatures in preparation for this weekend Giant winter stormyou may want to check to see if you purchased it from Under Armour. TechCrunch reports that the clothing and fitness app company is investigating a potential data breach after a hacker posted millions of customer records online. Data breach notification website Have I Been Pwned notified 72 million individuals via email about the leak and says the data set includes names, email addresses, gender, dates of birth, approximate location, and information related to purchases. An Under Armor spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company was aware of the allegations related to the hack, had used “third party cybersecurity experts” for assistance, and had no evidence that the issue affected its payment processing systems or storage of customer passwords.

When you encrypt your laptop’s hard drive, you probably expect that this means that only you, the computer owner, will be able to decrypt it at will and access your data. If you follow Microsoft’s recommendation to store your decryption key in the cloud to make it easier to recover your data if you lose the key or forget your password to unlock it, you’ll need to update your security expectations: Microsoft has confirmed that it often hands over these decryption keys to law enforcement upon the agency’s request, giving them full access to the device’s secrets. Forbes found an example when Microsoft complied with an FBI request for decryption keys for a computer in Guam that was part of a fraud investigation. Microsoft went on to confirm to Forbes that it receives about 20 requests for Bitlocker keys annually from law enforcement and often complies. The company added that I cannot However, it must be adhered to when the key is only stored locally by the user – a guiding note for cypherpunks everywhere.

The Iranian government cut off internet service in the country for weeks amid protests that swept the country. But anti-regime voices this week found another way to reach the country’s population: an apparent hacking operation that hijacked the country’s state television satellite to broadcast a message of support for protesters, thousands of whom have died amid the recent uprising. The clip, which featured the son of former Iranian ruler Reza Pahlavi, called on the military and security forces to join the demonstrators and fight the regime. One of the graphics in the broadcast said: “Do not point your weapons at people.” “Join the nation for Iran’s freedom.” According to some reports, the unauthorized message continued for up to 10 minutes before the state TV channel resumed its regular programming.