FIRST ON FOX: House Republicans are pushing to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) ahead of President-elect Donald Trump taking office later this month.

Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., is unveiling the bill on Tuesday and already has several co-sponsors in Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Mike Collins, R-Ga., Bob Onder, R-Mo., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Mary Miller, R-Ill., Keith Self, R-Texas, and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.

Burlison argued that the ATF was an "unconstitutional agency" and that its mission and goals are duplicates of existing state and local regulations. 

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"The Constitution makes it very clear that when it comes to the federal government, there shall be no laws restricting firearms," he told Fox News Digital. "It's in the purview of the states, and so I don't think it belongs on the federal level."

"But here's the thing I want to reiterate – they don't have the manpower to enforce the laws that they implement. So they go and they solicit help from every local state law enforcement official to help them implement their stupid new rules."

He said assisting the ATF "takes them out of the things they should be prioritizing to keep the community safe."

Burlison said he has not spoken with members of President-elect Trump's orbit on the bill, but added, "I'm sure there's quite a few people in Trump world that would be open to this."

One possible supporter the bill could find is Vice President-elect JD Vance, who previously called for abolishing the ATF and vowed to fight toward that goal in the Senate.

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The ATF makes federal regulations for firearm handling and storage, gun licenses and other matters. It also assists in law enforcement investigations like the recent New Orleans attack.

The modern iteration of the ATF was formed as a bureau under the Treasury Department in 1972. It was transferred to the Department of Justice in 2003 as a law enforcement agency after laws on gun control and explosives were added to the ATF's purview in the 1990s.

Supporters of the ATF's existence include gun control advocates who argue it does important work to fight gun violence.

However, opponents like Burlison argue its regulations are unnecessary.

ATF Director Steven Dettelbach warned earlier this week that he believes curbing the ATF will result in more unnecessary deaths.

"People who don’t think that law enforcement, including ATF, has anything to do with driving down violent crime are just wrong — it didn’t happen by accident," he told the New York Times.

"What I am concerned about is that people will take their eye off the ball, that they’ll either get complacent or political, or some combination of those things."

The ATF has gotten public blowback for its handling of the infamous standoffs in Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas, however.

Trump previously promised to fire Dettelbach on his first day in office. He told an audience at a National Rifle Association event that the Biden administration appointee was a "radical gun-grabber."

It is not clear if he would abolish it altogether, however. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Trump and the ATF for comment.

Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the certification of the 2024 presidential election results on Monday, but Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asserted in a post on Tuesday that the political battle was only beginning.

Blumenthal, who has served in the Senate since 2011, claimed President-elect Donald Trump has tapped "malignly motivated" nominees who are not qualified.

"Now that the Electoral Count is done we can move on? No. Not with Trump planning blanket pardons. Not with dangerously unqualified, malignly motivated Trump nominees. Not with Trump normalizing election denial. The fight is just beginning," the senator declared in the post on X.

WILL CONGRESS WORK WITH TRUMP TO SECURE CABINET NOMINATIONS?

"Enough with the Trump Derangement Syndrome," Karoline Leavitt, who Trump has selected to serve as his White House press secretary, said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

"The American people clearly support President Trump and his policies to secure the border, end inflation, and restore world peace; and President Trump will work with anyone on Capitol Hill who wants to solve these problems and deliver results," she added.

Fox News Digital also reached out to Blumenthal's office to request comment from the senator on Tuesday, but no comment was provided.

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Trump, who is slated to be sworn in on January 20, has indicated that on his first day back in office he will likely pardon people connected with the Jan. 6 episode, telling "Meet the Press" moderator Kristin Welker late last year that the cases would be examined and there could be exceptions if a person was "radical, crazy."

After President Joe Biden announced a sweeping pardon for his son Hunter last year, Trump declared on Truth Social, "Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!" 

In a March 2024 post, Trump said freeing "January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned" would be among his "first acts" as president.

DONALD TRUMP SAYS HE'LL PARDON JAN. 6 RIOTERS ON DAY ONE: ‘ACTING VERY QUICKLY’

"Pardoning any convicted Jan 6 rioter, particularly anyone who attacked police officers, would disgrace them & endanger democracy," Blumenthal asserted in a tweet on Monday.

What if your cat tower could weigh your furry friend, monitor its health, and help keep their pesky dander spores out of your air? That’s the idea behind LG’s new AeroCatTower, an air purifier with a cat-friendly dome-shaped seat on top for your feline to curl up in.

The company showcased the gadget at its CES 2025 booth this week, complete with some rather creepy-looking fake cats.

The tower also features a heater to keep your kitty cozy, and the second platform can be used to help elderly cats get up to the platform or for a second pet. The air purifier can adjust to a lower flow when there’s a feline on board — so as not to disturb — then ramp up when they leave to help clear the air.

A built-in scale will keep track of their weight using LG ThinQ’s app, and here you can also see how long your friend has been sleeping ... so you can seriously sleep shame them. Lazy sods.

As with virtually everything being shown in LG’s booth at CES this year, there is no pricing or release date.

If you’re the type of person who always forgets where they parked or put their car keys, it’s probably a good idea to invest in a location tracker like Apple’s AirTag. They can help you quickly locate just about anything, and they’re currently matching their lowest price to date. Right now, you can buy a four-pack at Amazon and Best Buy for just $69.99 ($29 off), which amounts to $17.50 apiece.

If you’re an iPhone owner looking for a Bluetooth tracker, Apple’s AirTags remain our top pick. That’s largely because the ultra wideband (UWB) trackers can tap into Apple’s extensive Find My network, which allows for ultra-precise tracking. Apple also offers several software perks that make it easier to recover lost items, including the ability to share the trackers with up to five people. Thanks to iOS 18.2, you’ll also soon be able to temporarily share the location of lost AirTags with more than 15 airlines — including United, which just recently rolled out support for the feature.

In terms of hardware, Apple’s AirTags offer user-replaceable batteries that last about a year, so you don’t need to keep buying a new tracker every time one dies. They’re also relatively durable, with an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance, allowing them to withstand a wide range of conditions.

Read our Apple AirTag review.

Three more deals worth a look

• Woot is selling the original Google Pixel Buds Pro for an all-time low of $109.99 ($90 off) until 9:59PM PT on January 7th. The comfortable wireless earbuds continue to offer great noise cancellation and sound, even if they’re not as powerful or as light as the second-gen model. They’re a particularly great option for Pixel phone owners, as they offer head-tracking spatial audio, native controls, and several exclusive features. Read our review.
• Anker’s MagGo Wireless Charging Station (Foldable 3-in- 1) is available at Amazon for Prime members in select colors for $71.99 ($23 off), its best price to date. The macaron-like foldable pad uses a rubber strap to connect three wireless pucks, including a Qi2-certified 15W charger you can use to quickly juice a MagSafe-compatible smartphone. It also comes with a 5W Apple-certified Apple Watch charger and a 5W Qi puck (with a USB-C power input port), so you can charge a pair of AirPods.
• Best Buy is selling the N-Edition of the 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard with a joystick for $69.99 ($30 off), which matches the bundle’s all-time low. As the name suggests, the NES-inspired mechanical keyboard comes with a joystick, along with a pair of programmable “Super Buttons.” The keyboard also offers clicky, hot-swappable switches and support for USB-C, Bluetooth, and even 2.4GHz wireless via a dongle.

iFixit has announced the Pro Tech Go Toolkit, a compact take on the popular Pro Tech kit. The Pro Tech Go is about half the size and weight but squeezes in iFixit’s most important tools for repairing everything from phones and laptops to game consoles.

The heart of the kit is a 32-bit screwdriver set, ranging from run-of-the-mill Phillips and flathead bits to specialized parts like the Pentalobe P2 and P5 security bits needed for accessing the innards of Apple hardware. They’re joined by a range of opening tools, including six picks, two pairs of tweezers, and a couple of spudgers.

Like the Pro Tech kit, the Pro Tech Go comes wrapped in a toughened fabric roll, only smaller at 160 x 100 x 52mm for added portability. Despite this, it still fits in a couple of spare tool slots, so you can add two of your own staples in case they’re not already included.

Image: iFixit

“We designed this for people who fix in the real world,” says iFixit’s lead product engineer Brett Hartt. “It’s light, it’s compact, and it’s got what you need when repairs come calling — even if you’re not at your workbench.”

It may be about half the size, but the Pro Tech Go isn’t quite half the price: $49.95 compared to the original kit’s $74.95. It’s available now from iFixit’s online store, Amazon, and Best Buy.

Consumers shopping for new smart home devices will soon be able to look for the official stamp of trust from the US government: the US Cyber Trust Mark.

Similar to how an Energy Star label on home appliances denotes a certain level of energy efficiency, the Cyber Trust Mark is meant to be a way for consumers to quickly understand that a connected device meets certain standards to secure it from cybersecurity threats. The standards cover things like whether a device issues software updates, how it securely moves data to the cloud, and how other devices are able to gain access to the product.

Image: Federal Communications Commission

Companies can voluntarily apply to use the logo by having their products tested by an accredited lab recognized by the Federal Communications Commission, showing that they meet the standards for the label. The label could be applied to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including smart appliances, home security cameras, fitness trackers, and baby monitors.

Now that the label is launched, companies are able to submit their products to be tested. Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, predicts that products with the Cyber Trust Mark will be on shelves by the end of the year.

“We know Americans are afraid,” Neuberger said on a press briefing call. “Consumers don’t have the confidence that they can connect a device at home and know that their private pictures and communications will be secure. So this program takes on that problem in a bipartisan and voluntary way.”

In addition to giving consumers a sense of security, the government hopes the labels will incentivize companies to raise the bar. The White House included statements from Amazon and Best Buy executives in its announcement of the launch. Amazon vice president Steve Downer says that “consumers will value seeing the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark both on product packaging and while shopping online,” and Best Buy head of enterprise privacy and data protection Michael Dolan says it’s “a positive step forward for consumers.”

The launch is a long time coming after initially being announced in 2023. FCC commissioners unanimously voted to approve the labeling program in March, opening a public comment period. Recently, the FCC conditionally approved 11 companies to be Cybersecurity Label Administrators, which will help review applications for the label. Neuberger and FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel are slated to discuss the program at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday.

“Americans buying home alarm systems and baby monitors need to know hackers can’t disable the alarm system remotely or hack in to watch their babies asleep,” Neuberger says. “Companies need to have an incentive to bake security into products, and the US government wants to give American consumers that confidence, and we welcome this voluntary mechanism to assure consumers and companies that products are cyber safe.”

The Panasonic-owned audio brand Technics makes some of the best wireless earbuds that most people have probably never heard of. For example, we found that the sound quality and active noise cancellation of the company’s stylish EAH-AZ80 earbuds equal that of the high-end options from bigger brands like Sony, Bose, and Sennheiser — if not better in some respects.

Now, Technics has launched a new pair of earbuds at CES 2025 in a bid to further that reputation. The Technics EAH-AZ100, which we should start seeing available for purchase today for $299.99, are the first wireless earbuds with the company’s proprietary fluid magnetic drivers. That’s not just a buzzword: according to Technics, there’s actual oil-like fluid with magnetic particles sitting between the 10mm driver and voice coil to keep distortion at bay.

Image: Panasonic

We’ll have to take its word on that until we try them out for ourselves, but the brand says it tested the result with sound engineers, presumably with no complaints. Technics says they have a frequency response floor of 3Hz, which is a calming ultra-low binaural frequency that produces a bass result most people would have trouble hearing, but you may feel the low-rumbling vibration affect your body as you’re listening. For comparison’s sake, most headphones and earbuds (including the Sony WF-1000XM5 and other flagships) target the typical human frequency range of between 20Hz and 20,000Hz. In short, it sounds like we’re in for a wide but well-balanced sound with warm bass. The earbuds also support Dolby Atmos spatial audio head tracking tech.

The Technics EAH-AZ100 have three microphones in each bud to enable features like Voice Focus AI, which detects and amplifies your voice on calls while filtering out traffic noise, wind, and other external sounds. It uses similar tricks for active noise cancellation but goes a step further by detecting your ear shape for personalized tweaks. The result should be impressive if it’s anything like the AZ80’s top-notch noise cancellation. Whether the new transparency mode sounds any better than the older pair’s unnatural reproduction is still a question mark, though.

You’ll get lots of modern connectivity conveniences in the AZ100, too, such as three-device Bluetooth multipoint that trounces the two-device limit of most competitors. The device also supports Google Fast Pair for seamless switching between supported Android devices, Bluetooth LE Audio with Auracast for easy multidevice audio pairing and sharing, and the low-latency LC3 audio codec.

Photo: Panasonic

The earbuds come in a wireless charging case that adds 28 hours of battery to the advertised 10-hour runtime during AAC playback or up to seven hours with LDAC, which Technics says you can achieve while noise cancellation is on. They also have the same IPX4 water resistance as the AZ80 (although, like the older pair, the case still has no such rating).

All of these qualities sound about right for a $300 pair of flagship earbuds in 2025, and in some cases, the AZ100 seem to be pushing the bar a bit. They certainly have the on-paper credentials, and we already thought the AZ80 were justifiable at that price. (They now start at $199.99.) If the AZ100 are building on that foundation with a meaningfully transformed soundstage, then the incumbent rivals occupying this tier of wireless earbuds should be listening.

AI is the big buzzword in health tech at CES 2025. Everywhere you look, there are AI algorithms, AI health recommendations, and AI chatbots. The thing is, AI’s got a reputation for making things up — and when it comes to health, the stakes for accuracy and privacy are high.

That’s why smart ring maker Movano wants to make one thing abundantly clear about its new chatbot, EvieAI: this one has been post-trained exclusively on peer-reviewed medical journals.

EvieAI was designed to be a more accurate alternative to something like ChatGPT. The difference is, unlike ChatGPT and other similar generative AI assistants, EvieAI theoretically won’t be pulling from vast repositories of public data where health and wellness misinformation runs rife. According to Movano CEO John Mastrototaro, it’s been trained on and will be constrained to over 100,000 medical journals written by medical professionals.

All the data the LLM has access to comes from accredited sources that have been referred to by a medical advisory board, Mastrototaro says. That includes FDA-approved journals, practices, and procedures. EvieAI is a bounded LLM, which means it will only speak to data from the “post-training” phase after it’s been initially created. In this case, that means medical data. The data is then cross-referenced with organizations like the Mayo Clinic, Harvard, and UCLA. The LLM does this by referencing this outside data before answering and making sure there isn’t a conflict.

The result, according to Movano, is 99 percent accuracy, though we weren’t able to test EvieAI for ourselves before CES. The company says this is possible because anytime you query EvieAI, the LLM is tracking to see if the information given in the conversation is consistent and accurate compared to the data it’s been trained on.

Achieving that level of accuracy is a tall order and a bold claim. Most chatbots don’t make reliably accurate statements, and some specifically steer clear of health and medicine precisely because the stakes are so high. When I ask about AI’s tendency to hallucinate, however, I’m firmly told that Movano isn’t afraid for EvieAI to tell users it doesn’t have an answer.

“If you ask it ‘What do you think about the election?’, it’s not going to respond,” says Mastrototaro. “It’s not going to tell you because it doesn’t have any information about that.”

“I think that it’s okay to say no if you don’t know the answer to something,” he adds. “And I think sometimes, with the other tools out there, they’re gonna answer one way or another, whether it’s right or wrong. We’re just only gonna give an answer if it’s right.”

EvieAI is meant to be a conversational resource that gives clear and concise answers to health and wellness questions, with an emphasis on women’s health (much like the company’s Evie Ring).

Even so, health, wellness, and medicine are an ever-shifting landscape. Even peer-reviewed studies can present contradictory findings. Doctors don’t always agree on emerging science. By and large, health tech has also steered clear of anything that could be considered diagnostic or medical advice — something that would require FDA oversight.

Image: Movano

To that end, Mastrototaro says the LLM is updated monthly with new approved documents such as medical journals and articles detailing breakthroughs. He also emphasizes that EvieAI is steering clear of anything diagnostic. The AI will not get into treatment but act more as a guide that asks clarifying questions to steer you in the right direction. For example, if you suspect that you might have diabetes, it may ask clarifying questions about whether you have experienced low vision or weight gain as well as inquire about your diet. But if you tell it you’ve chopped your finger off, or express that you’re experiencing suicidal ideation, it’ll direct you to the ER or to the number to call an appropriate hotline. The hope is that EvieAI can help people better research and prepare for a doctor’s visit in a way that’s more natural and supportive than, say, falling down a WebMD rabbit hole.

As for privacy, Movano says EvieAI will follow industry-standard encryption standards in storage and transmission and that any chats can’t be traced back to individuals. Mastrototaro also says conversation data will be periodically deleted and won’t be used for targeted ads, either.

It can be easy to roll one’s eyes at promises of privacy and accuracy in health tech. Movano has thus far shown a dogged dedication to adhering to medical industry best practices and standards. It recently gained FDA clearance for its EvieMED ring, an enterprise version of its ring aimed at remote patient monitoring and clinical trials. Movano also recently relaunched the consumer version of its Evie Ring to better address initial feedback from customers, like improved sleep and heart rate accuracy.

In the future, Movano hopes to eventually further incorporate individual health data collected by its smart rings. But for now, a beta version will roll out starting on January 8th to existing Evie Ring users within the Evie app at no extra cost.

Asus’ new featherweight laptop is aiming to be the latest Windows rival to the Apple MacBook Air. The Asus Zenbook A14 is a new thin and light productivity machine announced at CES 2025 sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor for a claimed battery life of up to 32 hours and a weight of just 2.18 pounds — just over half a pound lighter than the current M3 MacBook Air. The A14’s ultralight magnesium alloy chassis is decked out in Asus’ “Ceraluminum” ceramic coating to keep its weight down and give the laptop a matte, stone-like finish.

Asus is undercutting Apple’s M3 Air in price as well as weight. The Zenbook A14 with a new base-model eight-core Snapdragon X will start at $1,099.99 in gray when it launches in mid-January with 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and a 14-inch OLED display capable of 1920 x 1200 resolution running at 60Hz with 600 nits of peak brightness. Later in March, Asus will launch an even cheaper $899.99 model in beige that’s a little heavier at 2.4 pounds, with a slightly higher-end eight-core Snapdragon X Plus chip but only 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage — exclusively sold at Best Buy.

The A14 has a 70Wh battery, compared to the smaller 52.6Wh cell in the MacBook Air. And it offers a decent selection of ports, with two USB 4 Type-C for charging / data, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, a 3.5mm combo headphone / mic jack, and a full-size HDMI 2.1 port. The A14 can connect to up to three external monitors with its lid open, compared to the M3 MacBook Air’s two monitors while its lid is closed (though, keep in mind, one of those monitors will have to provide power to the Zenbook over USB-C).

It all sounds pretty compelling on paper, but while Windows on Arm proved its competence in 2024 through Snapdragon X’s balance of performance and battery life, there can still be compatibility headaches in some unsupported apps and games. And frankly, while our benchmarks of Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite processors were competitive in some ways with Apple’s M3 MacBook Air, I’m skeptical a new lower-end version can really hang against it — let alone an anticipated M4 model.

I had a very brief moment to get my hands on the Zenbook A14 at an early preview event in December, and I can attest to how surprisingly light Asus’ new laptop is. You can pick it up from a corner with just two or three fingers with ease, but it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap. The matte finish and sad beige aesthetic may not be to everyone’s liking, and I wager most people might think a MacBook Air’s exposed aluminum feels fancier, but Asus put some of its build quality where it counts. For example, the A14’s hinge can be opened with just one finger, while far too many Windows laptops out there require both hands to pry open their lids.

There have been plenty of claimed “MacBook killers” and past Windows laptops aiming for Apple’s crown as the go-to pick for the average user, but few stack up as the complete packages like those offered by Apple. Maybe pairing a Snapdragon X’s excellent battery life with some nice extras like OLED screens and solid build at affordable-ish prices might bring something special to the table — though we’ll have to see about performance.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

The Tennessee Titans secured the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft after a loss in Week 18. However, general manager Ran Carthon will not be making that selection. 

The team announced on Tuesday that, after two seasons, they have parted ways with Carthon. 

The Titans were 3-14 this season, and 9-25 over the past two years with Carthon at the helm. 

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Titans team owner Amy Adams Strunk informed Carthon that the team would be making a change on Tuesday morning.

"I've loved the time I've spent with Ran. He's a talented football mind, a great man, and friend to everyone along his path. It's impossible to ignore that our football team hasn't improved over the past two years. I am deeply disappointed in our poor win-loss record during this period, of course, but my decision also speaks to my concern about our long-term future should we stay the course," Strunk said in a statement. 

"I love this team more than you can imagine. To our fans: we know this level of performance isn't acceptable. We're humbled by your support as we continue to work towards building the team you expect and deserve."

Despite the firing of Carthon, head coach Brian Callahan will return next season.

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President of Football Operations Chad Brinker will lead the search for their new general manager. 

In the Titans statement, Brinker listed what he will be looking for. 

"I think the general manager position is unique to their respective organizations. This particular job, what we'll be looking for is someone who has spent their career as a scout, is a top-flight, top-level evaluator who has spent the majority of their career projecting college players to the National Football League, they've had a major hand in setting the draft board in preferably a consistent, winning organization, and you can see their fingerprints all over the roster," Brinker said.

"It is someone who wakes up every single day and the only thing they think about is building a roster, evaluating players, watching tape, working with the coaching staff. And, not just someone who knows how to collect talent, but someone who really understands how to build a team and how all the pieces fit together that I can work with not only in the short term, winning today, but building for the future, the long term, and understanding how all those pieces fit together. If you make a decision here, how it impacts a decision down the road, and really understand the full puzzle.

"At the end of the day, this person is going to be all ball, all day. They are going to focus on the roster and the coaching staff, and I'll continue in my role with handling all the other areas that surround the center of our program, scouting and coaches. So, I will support that person. But we are looking for a general manager who wakes up every day and is focused on building the team."

Whoever the new general manager is, they are armed with the top pick in the draft, and a little over $61 million in cap space, according to Over The Cap.

The big question for their new general manager is what they want to do at the quarterback position, after second-year quarterback Will Levis struggled this season. 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked Special Counsel Jack Smith from releasing his report relating to his now-suspended investigations into President-elect Trump’s alleged 2020 election interference and alleged improper retention of classified records. 

Trump co-defendants Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira filed an emergency motion to block the reported imminent release of Smith’s final report. 

U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Aileen Cannon ruled in favor of Nauta and De Oliveira to "prevent irreparable harm." 

Cannon said Smith is "temporarily enjoined" from "releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice."

The order remains in effect until three days after a resolution is announced from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. 

Some Motorola automated license plate reader surveillance cameras are live-streaming video and car data to the unsecured internet where anyone can watch and scrape them, a security researcher has found. In a proof-of-concept, a privacy advocate then developed a tool that automatically scans the exposed footage for license plates, and dumps that information into a spreadsheet, allowing someone to track the movements of others in real time.

Matt Brown of Brown Fine Security made a series of YouTube videos showing vulnerabilities in a Motorola Reaper HD ALPR that he bought on eBay. As we have reported previously, these ALPRs are deployed all over the United States by cities and police departments. Brown initially found that it is possible to view the video and data that these cameras are collecting if you join the private networks that they are operating on. But then he found that many of them are misconfigured to stream to the open internet rather than a private network.

“My initial videos were showing that if you’re on the same network, you can access the video stream without authentication,” Brown told 404 Media in a video chat. “But then I asked the question: What if somebody misconfigured this and instead of it being on a private network, some of these found their way onto the public internet?” 

In his most recent video, Brown shows that many of these cameras are indeed misconfigured to stream both video as well as the data they are collecting to the open internet and whose IP addresses can be found using the Internet of Things search engine Censys. The streams can be watched without any sort of login.

In many cases, they are streaming color video as well as infrared black-and-white video of the streets they are surveilling, and are broadcasting that data, including license plate information, onto the internet in real time. 

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Will Freeman, the creator of DeFlock, an open-source map of ALPRs in the United States, said that people in the DeFlock community have found many ALPRs that are streaming to the open internet. Freeman built a proof of concept script that takes data from unencrypted Motorola ALPR streams, decodes that data, and adds timestamped information about specific car movements into a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet he sent me shows a car’s make, model, color, and license plate number associated with the specific time that they drove past an unencrypted ALPR near Chicago. So far, roughly 170 unencrypted ALPR streams have been found.

“Let’s say 10 of them are in a city at strategic locations. If you connect to all 10 of them, you’d be able to track regular movements of people,” Freeman said. 

Freeman told 404 Media that this fact is more evidence that the proliferation of ALPRs around the United States and the world represents a significant privacy risk, and Freeman has been a strong advocate against the widespread adoption of ALPRs. 

“I’ve always thought these things were concerning, but this just goes to show that law enforcement agencies and the companies that provide ALPRs are no different than any other data company and can’t be trusted with this information,” Freeman told 404 Media. “So when a police department says there’s nothing to worry about unless you’re a criminal, there definitely is. Here’s evidence of a ton of cameras operated by law enforcement freely streaming sensitive data they’re collecting on us. My hometown is mostly Motorola [ALPRs], so someone could simply write a script that maps vehicles to times and precise locations.”

A Motorola Solutions spokesperson told 404 Media that the company is working on a firmware update that “will introduce additional security hardening.”

“Motorola Solutions designs, develops and deploys our products to prioritize data security and protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data,” the spokesperson said. “The ReaperHD camera is a legacy device, sales of which were discontinued in June 2022. Findings in the recent YouTube videos do not pose a risk to customers using their devices in accordance with our recommended configurations. Some customer-modified network configurations potentially exposed certain IP addresses. We are working directly with these customers to restore their system configurations consistent with our recommendations and industry best practices. Our next firmware update will introduce additional security hardening.”

This is not the first time that ALPRs have been found to be streaming directly to the unsecured internet. In 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and researchers at the University of Arizona found hundreds of exposed ALPR streams. In 2019, an ALPR vendor for the Department of Homeland Security was hacked and license plates and images of travelers were leaked onto the dark web. Last year, the U.S. government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency put out a warning saying that Motorola’s Vigilant ALPR cameras were remotely exploitable. 

Brown said that, although not all Motorola ALPRs are streaming to the internet, the security problems he found are deeply concerning and it’s not likely that ALPR security is something that’s going to suddenly be fixed.

“Let’s say the police or Motorola were like ‘Oh crap, we shouldn’t have put those on the public internet.’ They can clean that up,” he said. “But you still have a super vulnerable device that if you gain access to their network you can see the data. When you deploy the technology into the field, attacks always get easier, they don’t get harder.”

• Three friends and I paid about $190 for an Uber Safari experience in Cape Town, South Africa.
• The flat rate covered a welcome drink, a buffet-style lunch, and the safari.
• I thought the experience was a great value for the money, and I hope to do it again.

As someone who lives in South Africa, I'm no stranger to going on safari. However, I was intrigued when I heard I could reserve a safari ride through the Uber app, and decided to try it out to celebrate a friend's birthday.

The experience, called Uber Safari, is a limited-time service the company rolled out from October 2024 to January.

In this daylong experience, a driver picks up Uber passengers from anywhere in Cape Town and takes them to go on safari at Aquila Private Game Reserve in the Western Cape. Once at the reserve, the staff at Aquila provides welcome drinks, lunch, and, of course, the game drive.

The whole experience costs a flat rate of 3,550 South African rand, or about $190, for up to four people. I also paid an additional ZAR45 for tolls. Here's what the experience was like.

• JPMorgan is gearing up to call its workers back to the office 5 days a week, Bloomberg reported.
• The bank's CEO, Jamie Dimon, has been an outspoken critic of remote work.
• See how the bank's return-to-work policies have changed over the years.

JPMorgan Chase may soon call all of its workers back to the office, marking the latest large finance company to return to pre-pandemic working conditions, according to a report.

According to Bloomberg News, America's biggest bank by assets is developing a new policy that could eliminate remote work entirely. The policy, which has not yet been announced and is subject to change, follows Amazon's decision to call its workers back to the office five days a week starting this month.

A spokesman for JPMorgan, which reported 316,043 workers as of the end of September, didn't immediately return a request for comment.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been an outspoken critic of remote work, and the company has been calling people back to the office for several years now.

In September, Dimon criticized the federal government for its remote work policies during a discussion with The Atlantic magazine in Washington, D.C., saying that he'd "make Washington, D.C., go back to work."

"I can't believe, when I come down here, the empty buildings. The people who work for you not going to the office," Dimon said, adding: "That bothers me. I don't allow that."

Here's a timeline of JPMorgan's work-from-home policies:

July 2021: JPMorgan started calling workers back to the office on a rolling basis, focusing on people who worked in bank branches or in investment-banking jobs like sales and trading.

April 2022: CEO Jamie Dimon said in a letter to shareholders that 40% of the bank's employees, which then numbered around 270,000, would be permitted to work a few days at home. The remaining 10% could work from home full-time. Everyone else was expected to be in the office five days a week.

April 2023: Dimon called all of the bank's managing directors back to the office five days a week, whether they work in demanding revenue-producing jobs or lead back-office departments like technology and compliance.

January 2025: Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan is working on a policy that could call all of its workers back to the office five days a week.

The cybersecurity consumer labeling program will launch in 2025, the Biden administration confirmed, after initially slated for last year.

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