An analysis by WIRED this week found that ICE and CBP’s face recognition app Mobile Fortify, which is being used to identify people across the United States, isn’t actually designed to verify who people are and was only approved for Department of Homeland Security use by relaxing some of the agency’s own privacy rules.

WIRED took a close look at highly militarized ICE and CBP units that use extreme tactics typically seen only in active combat. Two agents involved in the shooting deaths of US citizens in Minneapolis are reportedly members of these paramilitary units. And a new report from the Public Service Alliance this week found that data brokers can fuel violence against public servants, who are facing more and more threats but have few ways to protect their personal information under state privacy laws.

Meanwhile, with the Milano Cortina Olympic Games beginning this week, Italians and other spectators are on edge as an influx of security personnel—including ICE agents and members of the Qatari Security Forces—descend on the event.

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

AI has been touted as a super-powered tool for finding security flaws in code for hackers to exploit or for defenders to fix. For now, one thing is confirmed: AI creates a lot of those hackable bugs itself—including a very bad one revealed this week in the AI-coded social network for AI agents known as Moltbook.

Researchers at the security firm Wiz this week revealed that they’d found a serious security flaw in Moltbook, a social network intended to be a Reddit-like platform for AI agents to interact with one another. The mishandling of a private key in the site’s JavaScript code exposed the email addresses of thousands of users along with millions of API credentials, allowing anyone access “that would allow complete account impersonation of any user on the platform,” as Wiz wrote, along with access to the private communications between AI agents.

That security flaw may come as little surprise given that Moltbook was proudly “vibe-coded” by its founder, Matt Schlicht, who has stated that he “didn’t write one line of code” himself in creating the site. “I just had a vision for the technical architecture, and AI made it a reality,” he wrote on X.

Though Moltbook has now fixed the site’s flaw discovered by Wiz, its critical vulnerability should serve as a cautionary tale about the security of AI-made platforms. The problem often isn’t any security flaw inherent in companies’ implementation of AI. Instead, it’s that these firms are far more likely to let AI write their code—and a lot of AI-generated bugs.

The FBI’s raid on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home and search of her computers and phone amid its investigation into a federal contractor’s alleged leaks has offered important security lessons in how federal agents can access your devices if you have biometrics enabled. It also reveals at least one safeguard that can keep them out of those devices: Apple’s Lockdown mode for iOS. The feature, designed at least in part to prevent the hacking of iPhones by governments contracting with spyware companies like NSO Group, also kept the FBI out of Natanson’s phone, according to a court filing first reported by 404 Media. “Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the filing read, using an acronym for the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team. That protection likely resulted from Lockdown mode’s security measure that prevents connection to peripherals—as well as forensic analysis devices like the Graykey or Cellebrite tools used for hacking phones—unless the phone is unlocked.

The role of Elon Musk and Starlink in the war in Ukraine has been complicated, and has not always favored Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. But Starlink this week gave Ukraine a significant win, disabling the Russian military’s use of Starlink, causing a communications blackout among many of its frontline forces. Russian military bloggers described the measure as a serious problem for Russian troops, in particular for its use of drones. The move reportedly comes after Ukraine’s defense minister wrote to Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, last month. Now it appears to have responded to that request for help. “The enemy has not only a problem, the enemy has a catastrophe,” Serhiy Beskrestnov, one of the defense minister’s advisers, wrote on Facebook.

In a coordinated digital operation last year, US Cyber Command used digital weapons to disrupt Iran’s air missile defense systems during the US’s kinetic attack on Iran’s nuclear program. The disruption “helped to prevent Iran from launching surface-to-air missiles at American warplanes,” according to The Record. US agents reportedly used intelligence from the National Security Agency to find an advantageous weakness in Iran’s military systems that allowed them to get at the anti-missile defenses without having to directly attack and defeat Iran’s military digital defenses.

“US Cyber Command was proud to support Operation Midnight Hammer and is fully equipped to execute the orders of the commander-in-chief and the secretary of war at any time and in any place,” a command spokesperson said in a statement to The Record.

Defense attorneys for a Minnesota man convicted in December of assaulting Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross are seeking access to investigative files related to the killing of Renee Nicole Good, after learning Ross was the same officer who shot and killed her during a targeted operation in Minneapolis last month.

Attorneys for Roberto Carlos Muñoz-Guatemala asked a federal judge on Friday to order prosecutors to turn over training records as well as investigative files related to Ross, the ICE agent who killed Good on January 7 during Operation Metro Surge and was also injured in a June 2025 incident in which Muñoz-Guatemala dragged him with his car.

A separate post-trial motion by the defense, filed in the US District Court in Minnesota, asks the judge to pause deadlines for a new-trial motion until the discovery motion is resolved.

Muñoz-Guatemala’s attorneys argue that even if the court ultimately decides that any newly discovered evidence doesn’t entitle their client to a new trial, he’s entitled to explore whether there are mitigating factors that could impact the length of his sentence, such as whether Ross’ injuries could have been, to some degree, brought upon him by his own behavior.

A jury convicted Muñoz-Guatemala on December 10 of assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon and causing bodily injury.

Court filings say that Ross and other agents were attempting to interview Muñoz-Guatemala last summer, and possibly process him for deportation, because he had an administrative warrant out for being in the country without authorization. They surrounded his Nissan Altima and attempted to remove him from the vehicle. Ross then used a tool to shatter the rear driver’s-side window before reaching inside. When the defendant accelerated away, Ross testified, he was dragged approximately 100 yards, during which time he repeatedly deployed a taser. Muñoz-Guatemala subsequently called 911 to report he’d been the victim of an assault.

During his trial, Muñoz-Guatemala said he didn’t understand that Ross—who according to his own testimony was wearing ranger green and gray and wore his badge on his belt—was a federal agent. (Ross testified that Muñoz-Guatemala had asked to speak to an attorney, which would suggest he knew Ross was acting as law enforcement, but an FBI agent who witnessed the incident said he didn’t hear this. According to court records, this claim did not come up in pretrial interviews, and prosecutors said they had not heard it before he made the claim in court.) Muñoz-Guatemala’s attorneys say now that had he been tried after Good’s killing, his defense may have also asserted that he was justified in resisting Ross, who they claim was the aggressor and used excessive force.

The argument is that the jury instructions essentially contained a two-part decision tree: Jurors could convict Muñoz-Guatemala if they believed he should have known Ross was law enforcement. They could also convict him if they believed driving away was not a reasonable response.

Muñoz-Guatemala’s conviction does not indicate which of these prongs the jury relied on. If it was the latter, the defense argues in the motion, the court should have access to evidence that may have bearing on Ross’ conduct, tactics, and whether he behaved aggressively—information that might indicate whether the agent has a history behaving recklessly in the field or contrary to his training.

Prosecutors have not yet filed a response to the motions. An email to an address associated with Ross in publicly available records did not result in an immediate response. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to questions about Ross’ current duty status or the status of any departmental review.

Ross has been placed on administrative leave following the January 7 shooting of Good, a 37-year-old Minnesota poet and mother of three, a step DHS officials say is standard protocol after fatal use of force. Ross has not been charged in Good’s killing, and the Justice Department has said it will not pursue criminal charges.

US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filled an autism committee with friends, associates, and former colleagues who believe that autism is caused by vaccines. Autism advocates are now worried the group could pave the way for dangerous pseudoscientific treatments going mainstream.

Last week, Kennedy announced an entirely new lineup for the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), a group that recommends what types of autism research the government should fund and provides guidance on the services the autism community requires. The group is typically composed of experts in the area of autism research, along with policy experts and autistic people advocating for their own community.

In a statement announcing the new panel, which includes no previous members, Kennedy claimed that he has appointed “the most qualified experts—leaders with decades of experience studying, researching, and treating autism.” But health experts and autism advocates strongly disagree, and a review of the new members of the group suggests that Kennedy appointed members of the anti-vaccine community who claim vaccines cause autism—despite there being no evidence to prove such a claim.

Among those appointed last week was Daniel Rossignol, a doctor who was sued for alleged fraud after prescribing a 7-year-old autistic child a debunked and dangerous treatment. Tracy Slepcevic, an appointee who Kennedy calls a “dear friend,” offers exposure to a wide range of bogus autism cures at her annual Autism Health Summit, including one that involves the injection of animal stem cells into children. Another appointee, Toby Rogers, has claimed that “no thinking person vaccinates” and that vaccine makers are “poisoning children.” Rogers is a fellow at the Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research and has also called vaccines “one of the greatest crimes in human history.” He has written articles for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy that has linked autism to vaccines.

Other appointees are no different: John Gilmore founded the Autism Action Network and has said that his autistic son is “vaccine injured.” Gilmore is also the founder of the New York chapter of Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense group. Ginger Taylor, the former director of the Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice, has publicly claimed that many autism cases involve “vaccine causation.” Elizabeth Mumper has written for Children’s Health Defense and is a senior fellow with the Independent Medical Alliance, a group formerly known as the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance that has promoted ivermectin as a treatment for Covid.

Mumper tells WIRED that her decades of work as a pediatrician and in the field of autism qualified her to be a member of the IACC. She also denied being anti-vaccine, pointing out that she has “given thousands of vaccinations in my career.”

None of the other new members of the IACC contacted by WIRED responded to requests for comment.

Just a few years ago, this may have sounded like the all-star lineup of a conspiracy conference. Today, these appointments appear routine, and just the latest example of how Kennedy has sought to remake America’s public health administration.

Kennedy’s decision, according to public health experts and autism advocates, will lead to fewer resources for people with autism and their families, and also embolden those promoting pseudoscientific treatments that can threaten the lives of autistic people.

“Once again, [Kennedy] proves that he is one of the world’s most extreme and dangerous conspiracy theorists who loves stacking his committees with anti-science, anti-public-health kooks,” Gavin Yamey, professor of global health and public policy at Duke University, tells WIRED. “The research evidence is clear that vaccines do not cause autism.” To Yamey, “it looks like RFK Jr.’s new committee has been tasked to muddy the waters and cast doubt on that evidence. RFK Jr. has spent the past year doing all he can to dismantle public health and roll back vaccination, and this new committee is more of the same.”