Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE), the iconic and long-running hacking conference, says far fewer people have bought tickets for the event this year as compared to last, with organizers believing it is due to the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts and more aggressive detainment of travellers into the U.S.

“We are roughly 50 percent behind last year’s sales, based on being 3 months away from the event,” Greg Newby, one of HOPE’s organizers, told 404 Media in an email. According to hacking collective and magazine 2600, which organizes HOPE, the conference usually has around 1,000 attendees and the event is almost entirely funded by ticket sales. “Having fewer international attendees hurts the conference program, as well as the bottom line,” a planned press release says.

Newby said there isn’t a serious danger of the event not going ahead, but that the conference may need to "significantly decrease” its space in the venue to manage HOPE’s budget.

Emmanuel Goldstein, HOPE conference chair, told 404 Media “We're always looking at potential reasons why ticket sales may be adversely affected, such as location, dates, lineup, etc. The only common reason we're hearing from people this year is that they don't feel comfortable coming to the States due to fear of harassment or detention.”

HOPE started in 1994 and recently switched to an annual conference model. This year’s HOPE will take place at St. John’s University in New York from August 15 to 17. The event usually has a slate of information security and activism focused talks, booths where people can try out lockpicking, and displays of digital art.

One planned speaker has dropped out of the conference: hacker and consultant Thomas Kranz. In an email Kranz sent to the HOPE organizers later shared with 404 Media, he wrote that friends of his recently tried to attend RSA, the cybersecurity conference held in San Francisco, and were detained at the border and refused entry into the U.S. “Several other friends who have travelled from the EU to the USA since January have had the same issue. All have had all of their electronics confiscated (laptops, phones, gadgets, even MP3 players) and have yet to have had them returned,” Kranz wrote.

Kranz believes they will likely not be allowed into the U.S. because of their “ongoing criticism of the current U.S. government,” and what Kranz described as his previous “engagements” with the FBI. In another email, Kranz told 404 Media: “I have had a previous run-in with the FBI back in the 90s: after Phil Zimmerman went on the run to Canada, I hosted a repository of the PGP source code, as well as IRIX binaries, in the EU. I had some entertaining correspondence with the FBI, who demanded I take it down as a violation of export controls. In turn, I sent them a copy of a map of the world, with ‘NOT THE USA’ clearly marked, as well as an exhortation to ‘piss off’. I don’t really fancy being detained by the FBI as well as the CBP as a result of detailed records checks while being held at the border.”

In the email to HOPE, Kranz concluded “I’m gutted—HOPE is the only conference that remains true to the hacker spirit, and now [that] it’s every year I was looking forward to more chances to meet old friends and make new ones.”

In the planned press release, 2600 wrote “The chilling effect of the Trump administration's anti-immigrant posture is real, and having impacts on legitimate travel.”

HOPE says it has coordinated with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on tips for those attending the conference from overseas and published them online. “In our discussion with the ACLU, they stressed that at points of entry to the United States (e.g., an airport or land crossing), the government can engage in searches and seizures of your property without any suspicion of wrongdoing, and you will not be able to contact an attorney until you are either admitted or, if you're a non-citizen, denied entry,” HOPE organizers wrote on the conference website. 

Attendees are still able to buy a virtual ticket to access livestreams of the talks and workshops.

We start this week with Jason's couple of stories about how the Chicago Sun-Times printed a summer guide that was basically all AI-generated. Jason spoke to the person behind it. After the break, a bunch of documents show that schools were simply not ready for AI. In the subscribers-only section, we chat all about Star Wars and those funny little guys.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

• Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist
• Viral AI-Generated Summer Guide Printed by Chicago Sun-Times Was Made by Magazine Giant Hearst
• American Schools Were Deeply Unprepared for ChatGPT, Public Records Show
• Star Wars Shows the Future of AI Special Effects and It Sucks

Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company whose cameras are installed in more than 5,000 communities in the U.S., is building a product that will use people lookup tools, data brokers, and data breaches to “jump from LPR [license plate reader] to person,” allowing police to much more easily identify and track the movements of specific people around the country without a warrant or court order, according to internal Flock presentation slides, Slack chats, and meeting audio obtained by 404 Media.

The news turns Flock, already a controversial technology, into a much more invasive tool, potentially able to link a vehicle passing by a camera to its owner and then more people connected to them, through marriage or other association. The new product development has also led to Flock employees questioning the ethics of using hacked data as part of their surveillance product, according to the Slack chats. Flock told 404 Media the tool is already being used by some law enforcement agencies in an early access program.

Flock’s new product, called Nova, will supplement license plate data with a wealth of personal information sourced from other companies and the wider web, according to the material obtained by 404 Media. “You're going to be able to access data and jump from LPR to person and understand what that context is, link to other people that are related to that person [...] marriage or through gang affiliation, et cetera,” a Flock employee said during an internal company meeting, according to an audio recording. “There’s very powerful linking.” One Slack message said that Nova supports 20 different data sources that agencies can toggle on or off.

We start this week with Jason and Matthew's story about an AI avatar that testified in court. It might be a sign of things to come. After the break, well, well, well, Meta is developing facial recognition for its smart glasses. In the subscribers-only section, Jason tells us all about AI in baseball.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

• 'I Loved That AI:' Judge Moved by AI-Generated Avatar of Man Killed in Road Rage Incident
• Well, Well, Well: Meta to Add Facial Recognition To Glasses After All
• The Simulation Says the Orioles Should Be Good

On Wednesday, The Information reported that Meta is working on facial recognition for the company’s Ray-Ban glasses. This sort of technology—combining facial recognition with a camera feed—is something that big tech including Meta has been able to technically pull off, but has previously decided to not release. There are serious, inherent risks with the idea of anyone being able to instantly know the real identity of anyone who just happens to walk past their camera feed, be that in a pair of glasses or other sort of camera. 

The move is an obvious about-face from Meta. It’s also interesting to me because Meta’s PR chewed my ass off when I dared to report in October that a pair of students took Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and combined them with off-the-shelf facial recognition technology. That tool, which the students called I-XRAY, captured a person’s face, ran it through an easy to access facial recognition service called Pimeyes, then went a step further and pulled up information about the subject from across the web, including their home address and phone number.

When I contacted Meta for comment for that story, Dave Arnold, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email he had one question for me. “That Pimeyes facial recognition technology could be used with ANY camera, correct? In other words, this isn't something that only is possible because of Meta Ray-Bans? If so, I think that's an important point to note in the piece,” he wrote.

Earlier this week TeleMessage, the company that creates modified versions of messaging apps like Signal and adds an archiving ability to them, made a video private on its YouTube channel that explained how its Signal message archiving tool worked, and how the company says it is able to copy messages securely. The hiding of the video came after 404 Media revealed that a hacker had targeted TeleMessage, which is used by the Trump administration, and managed to obtain the contents of some users’ messages and group chats.

404 Media made a transcript of what this video said and is now publishing it in order to preserve TeleMessage’s claims around the security and functioning of its Signal archiving product. The news comes after Senator Ron Wyden has demanded a Department of Justice investigation into the TeleMessage episode, including the national security risk the app poses. The letter demanding the investigation also points to TeleMessage’s marketing material which claims messages are protected with end-to-end encryption, a claim that both the hack and a subsequent technical analysis refute.

The video said TeleMessage’s app keeps “intact the Signal security and end-to-end encryption when communicating with other Signal users.” This is not true, judging by the fact the hacker was able to obtain plaintext Signal messages. The video also says “The only difference is the TeleMessage version captures all incoming and outgoing Signal messages for archiving purposes.”

We start this week's episode with our massive story on TeleMessage, the Signal clone the Trump administration uses to archive messages which was hacked. We have more detail than anyone else on that story. After the break, Jason tells us about another hack, this time GlobalX Air, one of the airlines used by ICE for deportation flights. In the subscribers-only section, Sam and Emanuel tell us about the shut down of Mr. Deepfakes, and what the lasting legacy of the site will be.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

• The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked
• Senator Demands Investigation into Trump Admin Signal Clone After 404 Media Investigation
• GlobalX, Airline for Trump’s Deportations, Hacked
• Mr. Deepfakes, the Biggest Deepfake Porn Site on the Internet, Says It’s Shutting Down for Good

On Tuesday a Senator demanded the Department of Justice investigate “the serious threat to U.S. national security” posed by TeleMessage, a company that makes a Signal clone used by the Trump administration which 404 Media revealed was hacked on Sunday, with the hacker obtaining the content of some users’ messages and group chats.

The news is the latest piece of fallout from the TeleMessage hack and the Trump administration’s use of Signal, or insecure modified versions, more broadly. On Monday NBC News reported that another hacker had targeted the same company, and TeleMessage suspended service in response to the breaches.

“Communications from several federal agencies, including the most senior national security officials, have been recklessly entrusted to TeleMessage, a foreign company that purports to offer agencies a secure tool to archive messages sent using Signal, the popular secure messaging app,” Senator Ron Wyden’s letter reads. The Washington Post first reported the existence of the letter. 

“It would be hard to imagine a less secure way for U.S. government agencies to retain employee messages than decrypting, copying to, and processing those messages on a poorly secured server operated by a foreign company,” the letter adds. TeleMessage is an Israeli company that was acquired by Portland, Oregon company Smarsh in 2024.

Hackers have targeted GlobalX Air, one of the main airlines the Trump administration is using as part of its deportation efforts, and stolen what they say are flight records and passenger manifests of all of its flights, including those for deportation, 404 Media has learned.

The data, which the hackers contacted 404 Media and other journalists about unprompted, could provide granular insight into who exactly has been deported on GlobalX flights, when, and to where, with GlobalX being the charter company that facilitated the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador. 

“Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans,” a defacement message posted to GlobalX’s website reads. Anonymous, well-known for its use of the Guy Fawkes mask, is an umbrella some hackers operate under when performing what they see as hacktivism.

The hacker says the data includes flight records and passenger lists. The hacker sent 404 Media a copy of the data, which is sorted into folders dated everyday from January 19 through May 1. 

404 Media cross-checked known information about ICE deportation flights that come from official and confirmable sources with information contained on the flight manifests and flight details obtained by the hacker. Information about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s flight is in the hacked data. 

A hacker has breached and stolen customer data from TeleMessage, an obscure Israeli company that sells modified versions of Signal and other messaging apps to the U.S. government to archive messages, 404 Media has learned. The data stolen by the hacker contains the contents of some direct messages and group chats sent using its Signal clone, as well as modified versions of WhatsApp, Telegram, and WeChat. TeleMessage was recently the center of a wave of media coverage after Mike Waltz accidentally revealed he used the tool in a cabinet meeting with President Trump.

The hack shows that an app gathering messages of the highest ranking officials in the government—Waltz’s chats on the app include recipients that appear to be Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, and JD Vance—contained serious vulnerabilities that allowed a hacker to trivially access the archived chats of some people who used the same tool. The hacker has not obtained the messages of cabinet members, Waltz, and people he spoke to, but the hack shows that the archived chat logs are not end-to-end encrypted between the modified version of the messaging app and the ultimate archive destination controlled by the TeleMessage customer.

Data related to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the cryptocurrency giant Coinbase, and other financial institutions are included in the hacked material, according to screenshots of messages and backend systems obtained by 404 Media.

Mike Waltz, who was until Thursday U.S. National Security Advisor, has inadvertently revealed he is using an obscure and unofficial version of Signal that is designed to archive messages, raising questions about what classification of information officials are discussing on the app and how that data is being secured, 404 Media has found.

On Thursday Reuters published a photograph of Waltz checking his mobile phone during a cabinet meeting held by Donald Trump. The screen appears to show messages from various top level government officials, including JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marco Rubio.

At the bottom of Waltz’s phone’s screen is a message that looks like Signal’s regular PIN verification message. This sometimes appears to encourage users to remember their PIN, which can stop people from taking over their account.

Update: After the publication of this piece, a reader found an archived screenshot of the Trillion Dollar Dinner website. It described the event as “a high-impact effort to reinvigorate American prosperity by uniting world leaders, industry pioneers and investors in a shared commitment to the future of American jobs, innovation, and economic growth. Launched with an exclusive gathering of CEOs, billionaires, and decision-makers, the initiative serves as a catalyst for strategic reinvestment in the nation's workforce, industries, and technological advancements.” The original story follows below.

The U.S. government registered thetrilliondollardinner.gov around the time Donald Trump announced people who invested in the president’s cryptocurrency, $TRUMP, could win a chance to meet him, according to a lawyer who spotted the domain and 404 Media’s corroboration of those findings. The government also registered the domains dinnerforamerica.gov, and thetrillion.gov.

The domains signal that there may have been plans to incorporate official government internet infrastructure with the memecoin investment dinner, with the dinner already presenting ethical issues around the president promoting certain investments he would personally profit from. At one point, at least one of the domains redirected to a Department of Commerce login portal, according to the lawyer. 

This week we start with Sam's very in-depth story on Meta's AI chatbots, and how they're essentially posing as licensed therapists. After the break, Jason breaks down the wildly unethical AI-powered research that took place on Reddit. In the subscribers-only section, Joseph explains how the age of realtime deepfake fraud is here after he got a bunch of videos showing scammers do their thing.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

• Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists
• Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users
• Reddit Issuing 'Formal Legal Demands' Against Researchers Who Conducted Secret AI Experiment on Users
• The Age of Realtime Deepfake Fraud Is Here

Over the last few weeks multiple media outlets have reported on data analytics company Palantir’s closer collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as the agency carries out Trump’s mass deportation efforts. 404 Media first reported that Palantir was awarded tens of millions of dollars to work on improving ICE’s immigration targeting and enforcement systems. A day later, 404 Media published an article based on internal Palantir Slacks and a wiki which showed the company was engaged on a six-month project to help find the location of people flagged for deportation. That same day, ICE published a procurement document laying out similar details of the project, called “ImmigrationOS,” Business Insider reported.

WIRED then reported that DOGE is building a master database to track down immigrants, likely to be hosted on Palantir-developed software. Last week CNN corroborated that reporting and said that Palantir is involved in building the database. U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly said in a letter to the oversight body for the Social Security Administration (SSA) that an agency whistleblower told them the “master database” will use data from SSA, IRS, and Health and Human Services (HHS). 404 Media also reported that ICE plans to bring together data from HHS, the Department of Labor (DOL), and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Internally Palantir has justified its closer relationship with ICE because it believes its work can promote “efficiency, transparency, and accountability” and “enable fair treatment” of immigrants. ICE continues to deport some people with no due process. 

It is rare for outsiders to see a tech company’s justification for working on such a divisive project. For that reason 404 Media is publishing the full wiki page in which Palantir discusses the project and the ethics around it.

404 Media has retyped the wiki to protect the source who provided it and spelled out some acronyms where necessary. 

A Palantir spokeswoman told 404 Media in an email “Palantir's work with the U.S. Government has spanned many administrations, as we have worked with the Department of Homeland Security since 2010 and are non-partisan. While unfortunate that this internal communication has leaked, we hope it reflects the careful consideration that we apply to all our sensitive work. It is core to who we are to maximize our team's collective perspective and hold as sacred dialogue and debate around our work given the power of our platforms.”

“At least now I saw you’re way more gorgeous and more beautiful than you were in the photo you sent me,” an older white man with a greying beard says during a Skype video call. He is talking to an elderly woman who appears to be in her car, staring into her phone’s front-facing camera.

She laughs at the compliment, and the smiling man keeps going. “I think I should send security to keep you safe, so no one comes,” he says. To that, the woman laughs even more. I’ll be okay, she reassures the man.

The bearded man, however, doesn’t really exist. Instead, he is a realtime deepfake created by a fraudster, likely to lure the woman as part of a romance scam and have her send money. Someone filming the interaction captures what is really happening: a young Black man is sitting in front of a laptop and webcam, and software is then automatically transforming his appearance to that of the much older white man and feeding that into Skype, all live.

We start this week with Emanuel and Jason's big story on Massive Blue, a company that is selling AI-powered undercover bots posing as protesters and children to the cops. After the break, Sam tells us about visiting the millennial saint. In the subscribers-only section, we talk business and the state of 404 Media.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

• Leaked: Palantir’s Plan to Help ICE Deport People
• ICE Plans Central Database of Health, Labor, Housing Agency Data to Find Targets
• This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops
• I Went to See ‘God’s Influencer,’ the Millennial Saint Carlo Acutis
• How 404 Media Is Navigating 'Economic Headwinds'

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. The agency has previously used classified technology in ordinary criminal investigations, pushed back against demands to provide details of hacking operations to defendants, and purchased technology from surveillance vendors. 

“Potentially responsive records were identified during the search,” a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request I sent about a specific hacking tool contract says. “However, we were advised that they were not in their expected locations. An additional search for the missing records also met with unsuccessful results. Since we were unable to review the records, we were unable to determine if they were responsive to your request.”

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.

The news signals ICE’s heavy emphasis on bringing disparate datasets together in order to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation effort. The tool, called ATrac and “Alien Tracker” in the document, is planned to allow for the management of all enforcement priorities, and provide near real-time tracking of both targets on a local level and the broader set of immigration enforcement targets around the country.

The document says ATrac is an ICE tool that displays information on a geospatial interface for officials to identify potential enforcement targets, and then task that enforcement to a particular team. Once a team is sent out, they are required to report the ultimate outcome, such as the target being arrested; the target being located but not arrested; or the target not being located.

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.

The leak shows that Palantir’s work with ICE includes producing leads for law enforcement to find people to deport and keeping track of the logistics of Trump’s mass deportation effort, and provides concrete insight into the Trump administration’s wish to leverage data to enforce its immigration agenda. The internal communications also show Palantir leadership preparing for a potential backlash from employees or outsiders, with them writing FAQs that can be sent to friends or family that start to ask about Palantir’s work with ICE. 

“Hey all, wanted to provide a quick update on our work with ICE,” Akash Jain, the Chief Technology Officer of Palantir Technologies and President of Palantir USG, wrote in a Slack message several days ago. “Over the last few weeks we prototyped a new set of data integrations and workflows with ICE.”

“The new administration’s focus on leveraging data to drive enforcement operations has accelerated those efforts,” Jain wrote.

A page of an internal Palantir wiki obtained by 404 Media says Palantir participated in a three-week sprint, where developers rapidly work on new projects, with Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) Innovation Lab, which is the agency’s centralized hub for developing new advanced analytics capabilities and tools. The primary focus of that sprint was providing immigration agents with “improved awareness about the criminality and location of individuals who have already received a final order of removal,” the wiki says.