#surveillance

3 items

Government Hacking Tools Are Now in Criminals' Hands (with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai)

The tools were never supposed to leave the room, but they always do. What begins as state-sanctioned capability inevitably degrades into something more portable, more anonymous, and significantly less controlled. The distinction between government operation and criminal enterprise narrows once the software changes hands, which it appears it already has. There is no clear moment where this becomes a problem, only a slow realization that it already is.

#hacking#surveillance

This Company Is Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meetings into AI Podcasts

WebinarTV, a company apparently founded on the principle that nobody has suffered enough, has been crawling the internet for Zoom meetings and turning them into AI-generated podcast episodes — and before you ask, no, they didn't bother telling most of the people in those meetings. The organizer technically opts in, which is a real cute way of saying everyone else in the room gets volunteered without their knowledge, including people in therapy sessions and job interviews, two situations where "surprise, you're now a podcast" ranks pretty high on the list of things you didn't need. The AI spits out a synthetic host who recaps the whole thing in that relentless upbeat tone that makes you want to put your fist through a wall, and by default the finished product is available to anyone with the link. It's the kind of innovation that really makes you step back and appreciate how nobody asked for this.

#ai#surveillance