Subject: How the Internet Broke Everyone’s Bullshit Detectors
Source: WIRED
https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-internet-broke-everyones-bullshit-detectors/
Lego-style propaganda videos alleging war crimes are flooding online feeds, echoing the White House’s own turn toward cryptic teaser clips and meme-native visuals. This is not just content drift. It is a new front in the information war, one where speed, ambiguity, and algorithmic reach matter as much as accuracy.
One Iran-linked outlet, Explosive News, can reportedly turn around a two-minute synthetic Lego segment in about 24 hours. The speed is the point. Synthetic media does not need to hold up forever; it only needs to travel before verification catches up.
Last month, the White House added to that confusion when it posted two vague “launching soon” videos, then removed them after online investigators and open source researchers began dissecting them.
How to Verify – Van Ess breaks it down into five steps anyone can apply—not as guarantees, but as ways to slow the spread.
Source: Android Headlines
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2026/04/us-government-fails-unmask-reddit-user-privacy-ice-case.html
The US government has subpoenaed Reddit to reveal the identity of an anonymous user critical of ICE’s immigration crackdown, escalating to a secret grand jury after an initial attempt was thrown out of court. Reddit is pushing back, arguing the user’s posts and anonymity are protected under the First Amendment.
US government wants Reddit to reveal user information – According to a report from The Intercept, Reddit has been served a subpoena that orders the platform to reveal a user who has been critical of the US government’s immigration crackdown. The subpoena wants the platform to hand over information. This includes their name, address, phone number, and other personal data.
This is actually not the first time the government has attempted this. The first attempt came from ICE, who tried to get the user information through a federal court in Northern California. However, that failed, which has led federal prosecutors to try again, this time through Washington D.C.
However, for now, the user is being protected by the company. Reddit’s attorneys say their client’s posts and anonymity are protected under the First Amendment. They also called ICE’s use of a grand jury “a disturbing escalation.” We’re not sure if Reddit will eventually cave, but for now, it’s not.
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Filed: https://www.androidheadlines.com/category/tech-news
Subject: Agencies fall short on documenting AI acquisition best practices, GAO says
Source: FedScoop
https://fedscoop.com/agency-ai-procurement-gao-report/
Federal agencies are still in the early days of acquiring artificial intelligence tools, but the congressional watchdog is worried that they’re not doing their best to document their findings.In a report released Monday, the Government Accountability Office said it found that selected agencies have not been “systematically collecting lessons learned from AI acquisitions” — something the watchdog said is a “necessary first step” to follow White House guidance and a missed opportunity to set the stage for improvements.As part of its audit, the GAO analyzed 44 AI contracts and agreements awarded between September 2018 and February 2025, as well as any supporting documentation. The watchdog also interviewed procurement officials to better understand the contracting details and the thought processes behind agency AI acquisition strategies.Those conversations revealed an immediate issue between Office of Management and Budget guidance and internal agency policies.
Source: They See Your Photos
https://www.bespacific.com/they-see-your-photos/
“Your photos reveal a lot of private information. In this experiment, we use the Google Vision API to see how much can be inferred about you from a single photo. See what they see…”
Source: Android Central
https://www.androidcentral.com/apps-software/your-android-phone-could-soon-get-a-better-way-to-sniff-out-spoofed-calls
What you need to know:
- Google is reportedly building a deeper fix for scam calls by moving Verified Caller protections into Android itself.
- The big change is that you may no longer need the Google Phone app to get this extra layer of security.
Android could soon check incoming calls against Do-Not-Originate numbers, which scammers often spoof to look legit.
Until now, Google’s Verified Calls feature was the main way to block these attacks, but you had to use the Google Phone app to access it. That’s about to change.
Source: BleepingComputer
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-athr-vishing-platform-uses-ai-voice-agents-for-automated-attacks/
A new cybercrime platform called ATHR can harvest credentials via fully automated voice phishing attacks that use both human operators and AI agents for the social engineering phase.
The malicious operation is advertised on underground forums for $4,000 and a 10% comission from profits, and can steal login data for multiple services, including Google, Microsoft, and Coinbase.
Automation covers the entire telephone-oriented attack delivery (TOAD) stages, from luring targets over email to conducting voice-based social engineering and harvesting account credentials.
ATHR attack chain According to researchers at cloud email security company Abnormal, ATHR is a complete phishing/vishing attack generator that offers brand-specific email templates, per-target customization, and spoofing mechanisms to make it appear as if the message originates from a trusted sender. At the time of their analysis, the researchers observed that ATHR supported eight online services: Google, Microsoft, Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, Crypto.com, Yahoo, and AOL.
“The lure is typically a fake security alert or account notification – something urgent enough to prompt a phone call but generic enough to avoid triggering content-based filters,” Abnormal notes in a report today.