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Officials fear that Latin American drug cartels are among those who obtained sensitive court data due to a sweeping breach of the federal judiciary’s case filing system, raising concerns that the groups will now be able to target cooperating witnesses involved in criminal trials against them.

The worry, according to three judicial officials and investigators with knowledge of the hack, is that cartels could weaponize the stolen data to identify witnesses in cases the federal government has opened against them, or to gain knowledge of impending or ongoing criminal investigations, such as sealed wiretap orders and arrest and search warrants.

POLITICO first reported on the hack, which the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts determined was serious, in early July.

At least a dozen district courts across several U.S. states are believed to have been directly impacted by the ongoing compromise of the digital case filing system, known as CM/ECF, according to the first two people. The incident is believed to be one of the most serious hacks into the federal court filing system in years.

From: Cartels may be able to target witnesses after major court hack – POLITICO.

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The New York Times magazine has a typical respons

An overzealous U.K. law in the country’s long tradition of disregarding civil liberties and privacy in favor of surveillance wouldn’t be such a big deal on its own. But it’s emblematic of a much larger trend: Around the world, and across the United States, age- and identity-verification laws are passing into law. The Supreme Court, in a swerve from precedent, recently upheld a Texas age-verification law, and half of the American states, most with conservative governments, have passed laws with similar intentions and implementations, usually under the guise of preventing access to porn. Lots of services already choose to ask for age and identity verification — anything that requires a credit card is effectively doing so, and you can’t rent an e-scooter, for example, without submitting government ID — but with these laws, a comprehensively different internet is coming into view: one where, before you can do much of anything, you need to reveal who you are.

From: Age Verification Is Coming for the Whole Internet.

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July 2025 saw UK chancellor Rachel Reeves and UK defence secretary John Healey endorse the creation of the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), a new international financial institution owned by nations that will help deliver on the 5% of GDP pledge.

The DSRB’s mission will be to harness capital markets in support of deterrence, readiness, and collective security. In this era of systemic threat, the new bank will ensure that the free world has the financial tools to defend itself.

European Parliament MEPs also voted for a resolution to create the DSRB in order to fund crtiical defence procurement, boost modernisation, and ensure supply chain resilience across Nato, the EU, and Indo-Pacific allied nations.

From: Nato nations to launch Defence, Security and Resilience Bank.

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Indirect prompt injections, which are considered one of most serious AI security problems, take things up a notch. Instead of being entered by the user, the malicious prompt is inserted by an outside source. That could be a devious set of instructions included in text on a website that an AI summarizes; or text in a white font in a document that a human wouldn’t obviously see but a computer will still read. These kinds of attacks are a key concern as AI agents, which can let an LLM control or access other systems, are being developed and released.

From: Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home | WIRED.

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“Everybody has become porous. The light and the message go right through us,” he said during a television appearance. “At this moment, we are on the air, and on the air we do not have any physical body. When you’re on the telephone or on radio or on TV, you don’t have a physical body. … You’re a discarnate being. You have a very different relation to the world around you. … It has deprived people really of their identity.” That’s exactly what it feels like to spend time on TikTok or X—and was said by someone who died in 1980.

If you’re not a boomer or a grad student, you may not have heard of him, but theorist Marshall McLuhan—the coiner of enduring aphorisms “the medium is the message” and “the global village”—warned us about today’s digital descent a long time ago.

From: Peter Thiel Just Accidentally Made a Chilling Admission. Five Decades Ago, One Man Saw It Coming..

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What to know:

China’s Ministry of State Security has issued a warning about the misuse of biometric data by foreign companies, specifically targeting those offering cryptocurrency for iris scans.
The warning appears to reference Worldcoin, a project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, which has faced regulatory scrutiny in Germany, France, and Kenya.
Concerns have been raised about the transfer of biometric data abroad, potential privacy violations, and national security risks associated with such practices.

From: WLD News: China Warns Worldcoin-Style Iris Scanning a National Security Threat.

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The Tea platform suffered from two major data leaks. First, an unprotected Firebase database containing users’ personal information was breached and then a second database containing 1.1 million personal messages exchanged by the users was opened up. This meant that torrents of the leaked data (users’ driver’s licenses, selfies, and message attachments) were spewed across the web. Why was the web site storing this personal information? Well, it is because of the sign-up process, which required people to take selfies to prove their identity.

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Age verification to reach ostensibly adult sites also raises serious questions about privacy protections. A database of people who visit pornographic sites, for instance, would be a rich target for scammers and extortionists.

From: Bluesky Made Me Prove I Was An Adult—Here’s How I Did It.

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With banks doing nothing, then, perhaps it will be the crypto world that will rise to meet this challenge by using new technology to bring a new approach to the problem of identity in the new economy. And if they do, the benefits will spread far beyond the worlds of fintech and defi, payments and exchanges, because this new approach to identity is needed across the economy as whole.

From: If The Banks Will Not Deliver Digital Identity, Perhaps Crypto Will.

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For years there has been an argument, sometimes loud, sometimes subdued, on whether Britain needs an ID card system. One big reason given for wanting them is simply to know who is here legally. With illegal and irregular migration never far from the headlines these days and with President Macron, during his recent visit describing the “pull factor” of illegal migrants being able to work in Britain, the debate is being resurrected. So, what is the history of ID cards in the UK, what form might they take if we have a system and would they work? Presenter: David Aaronovitch Guests: Jon Agar, author of The Government Machine Rainer Kattel, Professor of Innovation and Public Governance, UCL Edgar Whitley, Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Management, LSE Rachel Coldicutt, technology specialist and executive director of the research consultancy, Careful Industries.

From: The Briefing Room – Why don’t we have ID cards in the UK? – BBC Sounds.

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