404 Media

404 Media is a digital media platform created by journalists dedicated to examining how technology influences our lives and how we, in turn, influence technology. Our content includes in-depth investigative articles, detailed features, insightful blogs, and exclusive stories covering a variety of subjects such as hacking, cybersecurity, cybercrime, sexuality, artificial intelligence, consumer rights, surveillance, privacy, and the democratization of the internet.

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The FBI Can't Find ‘Missing’ Records of Its Hacking Tools

3 days ago | 404media.co | Joseph Cox

The FBI says it is unable to find records related to its purchase of a series of hacking tools, despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on them and those purchases initially being included in a public U.S. government procurement database before being quietly scrubbed from the internet. The news highlights the secrecy the FBI maintains around its use of hacking tools.
ICE Plans Central Database of Health, Labor, Housing Agency Data to Find Targets

5 days ago | 404media.co | Joseph Cox

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to bring together data from a wide variety of other U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to make a centralized database to identify immigration targets, according to a document viewed by 404 Media.
Behold, a Genuinely Promising Sign of Alien Life

5 days ago | 404media.co | Becky Ferreira

Welcome back to the Abstract!It was a good week for the Fox Mulders among us. We want to believe, and a new study has given us some empirical grist along those lines. I shall say no more, and let the giant planet K2-18b speak for itself. Next, remember the time that Earth partied so hard that the Northern Lights showed up in the Sahara and humans had to invent sunscreen? Hahaha…our planet just DGAF sometimes.
AI Slop Is Breaking the Internet as We Know It (404 Media Live at SXSW)

6 days ago | 404media.co | Jason Koebler

We're excited to share audio and video of our panel at SXSW, where Jason, Sam, and our friend Brian Merchant of Blood in the Machine discuss how AI slop has taken over the internet, how it is a brute-force attack against the algorithms that control what we see on social media, and what we can do to fight back against it.
Leaked: Palantir’s Plan to Help ICE Deport People

1 week ago | 404media.co | Joseph Cox

Palantir, the surveillance giant, is taking on an increased role with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including finding the physical location of people who are marked for deportation, according to Palantir Slacks and other internal messages obtained by 404 Media.
LAPD Publishes Crime Footage It Got From a Waymo Driverless Car

1 week ago | 404media.co | Jason Koebler

The Los Angeles Police Department obtained video footage from a Waymo driverless car as part of its investigation into a hit-and-run in which a separate, human-driven car hit a pedestrian. The LAPD published the footage, which has a note on it that reads “Waymo Confidential Commercial Information,” on its YouTube page to ask the public for help identifying the driver of the vehicle. The short clip shows what video footage that law enforcement requests from Waymo looks like.
Following Layoffs, Automattic Employees Discover Leak-Catching Watermarks

1 week ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

As part of the company's months-long obsession with catching employees leaking internal developments to the press, staff at Wordpress parent company Automattic recently noticed individually-unique watermarks on internal sites, according to employees who spoke to 404 Media. Automattic added the watermarks to an internal employee communications platform called P2. P2 is a WordPress product other workplaces can also use.
ICE Just Paid Palantir Tens of Millions for ‘Complete Target Analysis of Known Populations’

1 week ago | 404media.co | Joseph Cox

Last week Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paid contracting giant Palantir tens of millions of dollars to make modifications to a powerful ICE database and search tool to allow “complete target analysis of known populations” and to update the tool’s targeting and enforcement priorities, according to procurement records reviewed by 404 Media.
I Went to See ‘God’s Influencer,’ the Millennial Saint Carlo Acutis

1 week ago | 404media.co | Samantha Cole

When I walked into the Shrine of the Renunciation in Assisi, I thought about going to my friends’ houses in high school to play Xbox, and how bizarre it would be if one of those teenagers became a saint. What if the kid from down the cul-de-sac died, and they put his face on keychains, fridge magnets, and rosaries, and people stood in line to see his dead body through glass?
The AI Tools CBP Is Using to Scan Social Media

1 week ago | 404media.co | Joseph Cox

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using various artificial intelligence tools, including ones that can quickly identify people of interest by pulling data from social media, according to documents published by the agency last week and marketing material from the contractors. The documents follow others that 404 Media has previously obtained and published through the Freedom of Information Act and are more up to date.