After WIRED reported last week that the Meta smart glasses app contained code that would allow the company to enable facial recognition features on the devices, the company removed the code this week without commenting on why it plans to add such functionality back to the app later. Another investigation by WIRED this week found that xAI’s Grok is still hosting sex-related deepfakes, including “nude” photos and videos of celebrities and at least one prominent US politician.
After curtailing the release of its new Mythos-class AI model due to concerns about its potential impact on cyber security, Anthropic announced the development of the model to partners in their limited-access group this week and presented a “safe” version of the model to the public with safeguards intended to prevent the system from being used to fuel cyber attacks. Meanwhile, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the United States issued a new order to government agencies this week in response to new AI threats that includes the need to fix the most urgent software vulnerabilities within three days.
As Europe looks to isolate and protect itself from US Big Tech, WIRED has created a timeline that tracks all the ways EU governments, companies, and other organizations are moving away from US technology. A new open source project called Encrypted Spaces could be used to make many common collaboration applications more private and resistant to surveillance with edge-to-edge encryption. And illegal pharmacy and scam websites are hijacking Spotify searches using fake podcasts, according to a new joint report by the US Congress.
The 2026 World Cup is fast approaching, and WIRED took a look at the surveillance technology, from anti-drone tech to facial recognition, being used at stadiums in the US, Canadian, and Mexico. We also mapped every Flock license plate reader near the US World Cup stadium. More broadly, Amnesty International said this week it concluded fans in all three participating countries—local residents and tourists—are facing potential human rights violations as a result of the FIFA tournament.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing two Florida police departments over their use of FACES, one of the longest-running facial recognition tools in the US, after its misuse led to the wrongful arrest of a Fort Myers man. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has put the future of the surveillance chief in jeopardy after appointing Bill Pulte, who has been described as “grossly unfit,” as acting director of national intelligence. (Trump has chosen another permanent nominee.)
And there is more. Each week, we cover security and privacy issues that we haven’t covered in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe there.
As difficult as digital anonymity has become in today’s world, obtaining a phone number without revealing almost any identifying information—whether by buying a temporary hotline or registering an account with a privacy-preserving carrier—is always perfectly legal in the US. Now the Federal Communications Commission wants to change that.
Late last month, the FCC issued a proposed new rule that would implement know-your-customer requirements on cellular networks, requiring cellular providers to “at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government-issued identification number, and other telephone number of any new and renewing customer before providing access to its services.” The proposal is described as a measure similar to money laundering laws designed to make it harder for fraudsters to exploit phone networks. But privacy advocates say it also threatens the last line of anonymity for those who want to avoid wiretapping—whether they’re journalists, whistleblowers, activists, or people who just want to avoid the collection of big data on yet another part of their communications.
