An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A court in south-west Spain has sentenced 15 schoolchildren to a year's probation for creating and spreading AI-generated images of their female peers in a case that prompted a debate on the harmful and abusive uses of deepfake technology. Police began investigating the matter last year after parents in the Extremaduran town of Almendralejo reported that faked naked pictures of their daughters were being circulated on WhatsApp groups. The mother of one of the victims said the dissemination of the pictures on WhatsApp had been going on since July.

"Many girls were completely terrified and had tremendous anxiety attacks because they were suffering this in silence," she told Reuters at the time. "They felt bad and were afraid to tell and be blamed for it." On Tuesday, a youth court in the city of Badajoz said it had convicted the minors of 20 counts of creating child abuse images and 20 counts of offenses against their victims' moral integrity. Each of the defendants was handed a year's probation and ordered to attend classes on gender and equality awareness, and on the "responsible use of technology." [...] Police identified several teenagers aged between 13 and 15 as being responsible for generating and sharing the images. Under Spanish law minors under 14 cannot be charged but their cases are sent to child protection services, which can force them to take part in rehabilitation courses. Further reading: First-Known TikTok Mob Attack Led By Middle Schoolers Tormenting Teachers

A U.S. government agency tasked with supporting the nation's nuclear deterrence capability has bought access to a data tool that claims to cover more than 90 percent of the world's internet traffic, and can in some cases let users trace activity through virtual private networks, according to documents obtained by 404 Media. From the report: The documents provide more insight into the use cases and customers of so-called netflow data, which can show which server communicated with another, information that is ordinarily only available to the server's owner, or the internet service provider (ISP) handling the traffic. Other agencies that have purchased the data include the U.S. Army, NCIS, FBI, IRS, with some government clients saying it would take too long to get data from the NSA, so they bought this tool instead. In this case, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) says it is using the data to perform vulnerability assessments of U.S. and allied systems.

A document written by the DTRA and obtained by 404 Media says the agency "has a requirement to support ongoing assessments of the vulnerability of critical U.S. and allied national/theater mission systems, networks, architectures, infrastructures, and assets." The tool "is capable of following communications between servers, even private servers," which allows the agency to identify infrastructure used by malicious actors, the document continues. That contract was for $490,000 in 2023, according to the document. 404 Media obtained the document and others under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: As deep-pocketed companies like Amazon, Google and Walmart invest in and experiment with drone delivery, a phenomenon reflective of this modern era has emerged. Drones, carrying snacks and other sundries, are being shot out of the sky. Incidents are still rare. However, a recent arrest in Florida, in which a man allegedly shot down a Walmart drone, raises questions of what the legal ramifications are and whether those consequences could escalate if these events become more common. [...] While consumer drones have been proliferating for well over a decade, the question of legal ramifications hasn't been wholly clear. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave us a partial answer following a 2016 drone shooting in Arkansas. At the time, the FAA pointed interested parties to 18 U.S.C. 32. The law, titled "Aircraft Sabotage," is focused on the wanton destruction of "any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce."

At first glance, the law appears primarily focused on manned aircraft, including a provision that "makes it a Federal offense to commit an act of violence against any person on the aircraft, not simply crew members, if the act is likely to endanger the safety of the aircraft." In responding to the Arkansas drone shooting, however, the FAA asserts that such protections can be interpreted to also include UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). The language does, indeed, appear broad enough to cover drones. That means, in turn, that the penalties are potentially as stiff. The subject was revived after a 2020 incident in Minnesota. In that case, the suspect was hit with felony charges relating to criminal damage and discharging a weapon within city limits. Those would likely also be the charges in most scenarios involving property, rather than bodily damage, drone or not. Even with these examples, there is not a rigid rule that predicts if or when prosecutors might also introduce a federal charge like 18 U.S.C. 32.

As the legal blog Above the Law notes, in most cases, the federal government has deferred to state law for enforcement. Meanwhile, in most cases where 18 U.S.C. 32 has been applied, if a human crew/passengers are involved, there could be other potential charges like murder. It certainly can be argued that shooting a large piece of hardware out of the sky in a heavily populated area invites its own potential for bodily harm, though it may not be prosecuted in the same manner. As drone delivery increases in the U.S., however, we may soon have an answer to the role federal legislation like 18 U.S.C. 32 will play in UAV shootings. Adding that into the picture brings penalties, including fines and up to 20 years in prison, potentially compounding those consequences. What is clear, though, is that the consequences can be severe, whether it is invoked.

Anna's Archive, a meta-search engine for pirated books and other sources, faces monetary damages and a permanent injunction at a U.S. court. According to TorrentFreak, the operators of the site "failed to respond to a lawsuit filed by [Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)], after its WorldCat database was scraped and published online." From the report: The site launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, to ensure continued availability of 'free' books and articles to the broader public. Late last year, Anna's Archive expanded its offering by making information from OCLC's proprietary WorldCat database available online. The site's operators took more than a year to scrape several terabytes of data and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

This 'metadata' heist was a massive breakthrough in the site's quest to archive as much published content as possible. However, OCLC wasn't pleased and responded with a lawsuit (PDF) at an Ohio federal court, accusing the site and its operators of hacking and demanding damages. The non-profit says that it spent more than a million dollars responding to Anna's Archive's alleged hacking efforts. Even then, it couldn't prevent the data from being released through a torrent. "Defendants, through the Anna's Archive domains, have made, and continue to make, all 2.2 TB of WorldCat data available for public download through its torrents," OCLC wrote in the complaint it filed in an Ohio federal court.

In the months that passed since then, the operators of Anna's Archive didn't respond in court. The only named defendant flat-out denied all connections to the site, and OCLC didn't receive any response from any of the official Anna's Archive email addresses that were served. Meanwhile, the pirate library continues to offer the WorldCat data, which is a major problem for the organization. Without the prospect of a two-sided legal battle, OCLC has now moved for a default judgment. [...] In addition to monetary damages, the non-profit also seeks injunctive relief. The motion doesn't specify the requested measures, but the original complaint sought an order that prevents Anna's Archive from scraping WorldCat data going forward. In addition, all previously scraped data should no longer be distributed. Instead, it should be destroyed in full, including all the torrents that are currently being offered.

Andy Maxwell reports via TorrentFreak: On November 4, 2022, the United States Department of Justice and the FBI began seizing Z-Library's domains as part of a major operation to shut down the infamous 'shadow library' platform. A criminal investigation had identified two Russian nationals, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, as the alleged operators of the site. On October 21, 2022, at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Judge Sanket J. Bulsara ordered their arrest. They were detained in Argentina on November 3, 2022. After arriving at the Ambrosio Taravella International Airport, the unsuspecting couple cleared customs and hired a car from a popular rental company. The United States Embassy informed local authorities that the pair were subject to an Interpol Red Notice.

At what point the Russians' phones were tapped is unclear but, under the authority of a Federal Court arrest warrant, Argentinian law enforcement began tracking the couple's movements as they traveled south in their rented Toyota Corolla. [...] [F]ollowing a visit to El Calafate, the pair were arrested by airport security police as they arrived in Rio Gallegos, Santa Cruz. They were later transferred to Cordoba. In January 2023, Judge Miguel Hugo Vaca Narvaja authorized the Russians to be detained under house arrest. Approval from Cordoba prosecutor Maximiliano Hairabedian, who was responsible for the request to extradite Napolsky and Ermakova to the United States, was not obtained. With a federal indictment, alleging criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering offenses, waiting for them in the United States, the priority for Napolsky and Ermakova would soon be their fight against extradition. [...]

Patronato del Liberado (Patronage of the Liberated) is responsible for assisting people who have previously been detained by the authorities with family and social reintegration. It's also tasked with monitoring compliance of those on probation or subject to house arrest. According to unnamed 'judicial sources' cited by La Voz, which receives full credit for a remarkable scoop, when the group conducted a regular visit in May, to verify that Napolsky and Ermakova were in compliance with the rules set by the state, there was no trace of them. Patronato del Liberado raised the alarm and Judge Sanchez Freytes was immediately notified. Counsel for the defense during the extradition hearings said that he hadn't been able to contact the Russians either. The Judge ordered an international arrest warrant although there appeared to be at least some hope the pair hadn't left the country. However, that was many weeks ago and with no obvious news suggesting their recapture, the pair could be anywhere by now.

Boeing agreed on Sunday to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the government in a case linked to crashes of its 737 Max jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people -- a stunning turn for the aerospace giant after the Justice Department determined that Boeing failed to live up to terms of a 2021 deal to avoid prosecution. Washington Post adds: Prosecutors alleged that two Boeing pilots concealed key information from the Federal Aviation Administration about a new automated control system on the Max. The system was implicated in both crashes, causing uncontrollable dives. By agreeing to plead guilty to the single felony count just before a midnight deadline Sunday, the company will avoid going to trial in the high-profile case.

The Justice Department filed documents related to the deal in federal court in Texas late Sunday night, setting up a planned hearing where family members -- who have criticized the pending agreement -- will be permitted to speak out. The court subsequently must decide whether to accept the plea agreement. Boeing had already agreed to $2.5 billion in penalties and payouts in 2021. As part of the new deal, the company will pay an additional $487.2 million in penalties, agree to oversight by an independent monitor, spend at least $455 million to strengthen compliance and safety programs and be placed on supervised probation for roughly three years, according to a Justice Department official. The agreement also included one thing crash victims' families long sought: a meeting with Boeing's board of directors.

As Amazon's stock hits a record high (rising 32% just this year), long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: GeekWire reports that Jeff Bezos keeps selling Amazon stock after announcing his move away from Washington state — and its 7% tax on capital gains of more than $262,000 from the sale of stocks and bonds — to Florida, which does not have a capital gains tax (like WA, FL also does not tax personal income).

Taylor Soper writes, "Bezos saved more than $600 million by moving to Miami and avoiding Washington's capital gains tax, CNBC reported in February, based on his sale of 50 million shares [$8.5 billion] earlier this year. With the sale of 25 million additional shares [$5 billion], revealed this week in a regulatory filing, Bezos will likely have saved close to $1 billion in total so far. It's a giant chunk of change that would have otherwise gone to the state of Washington."

General Motors will pay nearly $146 million in penalties to the U.S. government, reports the Associated Press, "because 5.9 million of its older vehicles do not comply with emissions and fuel economy standards." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement Wednesday that certain GM vehicles from the 2012 through 2018 model years did not comply with federal fuel economy requirements. The penalty comes after the Environmental Protection Agency said its testing showed the GM pickup trucks and SUVs emit over 10% more carbon dioxide on average than GM's initial compliance testing claimed.

The EPA says the vehicles will remain on the road and cannot be repaired. The GM vehicles on average consume at least 10% more fuel than the window sticker numbers say, but the company won't be required to reduce the miles per gallon on the stickers, the EPA said... GM said in a statement that it complied with all regulations in pollution and mileage certification of its vehicles. The company said it is not admitting to any wrongdoing nor that it failed to comply with the Clean Air Act...

The enforcement action involves about 4.6 million full-size pickups and SUVs and about 1.3 million midsize SUVs, the EPA said. The affected models include the Chevy Tahoe, Cadillac Escalade and Chevy Silverado. About 40 variations of GM vehicles are covered. GM will be forced to give up credits used to ensure that manufacturers' greenhouse gas emissions are below the fleet standard for emissions that applies for that model year, the EPA said. In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, GM said it expects the total cost to resolve the matter will be $490 million. Because GM agreed to address the excess emissions, EPA said it was not necessary to make a formal determination regarding the reasons for the excess pollution.
According to the article, David Cooke, senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, "said it's possible that GM owners could sue the company because they are getting lower gas mileage than advertised."

The article also notes that in 2014, Hyundai and Kia "entered into a settlement in which they had to pay a $100 million civil penalty to end a two year investigation into overstated gas mileage on window stickers of 1.2 million vehicles."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Business Insider: It's a political tale as old as time: put up a campaign poster in your yard, and thieves come to snatch it. But according to The Wall Street Journal, those fed up with front lawn looting are embracing a modern solution. Apple's geo-tracking AirTag devices are helping owners find their signs — and sometimes, even the people who stole them.

The practice has already led to charges. In one example cited by the outlet, Florida politician John Dittmore decided to hide the coin-sized gadget on one of his posters after waking up to a number of thefts in May... [Two teenagers were charged with criminal mischief and the theft of nine signs.]

In other cited cases, stolen signs don't end up with teens, but in the homes of electoral opponents. After Chris Torre became the victim of poster snatching, AirTags led him to the residence of Renee Rountree, the Journal said. Both were running for a seat on the Isle of Wight County Board of Supervisors in Virginia. Her son-in-law was charged with a misdemeanor for stealing the property, while Rountree faced a misdemeanor for receiving stolen goods. In a December trial, she noted plans to return the signs. Rountree has since been ordered to 250 hours of community service.

"I would like to think that this will have a huge deterrent effect," the trial's judge said in the court's transcript, quoted by WSJ.

Longtime Slashdot reader Artem S. Tashkinov shares a report from The Hacker News: A group of security researchers from the Graz University of Technology have demonstrated a new side-channel attack known as SnailLoad that could be used to remotely infer a user's web activity. "SnailLoad exploits a bottleneck present on all Internet connections," the researchers said in a study released this week. "This bottleneck influences the latency of network packets, allowing an attacker to infer the current network activity on someone else's Internet connection. An attacker can use this information to infer websites a user visits or videos a user watches." A defining characteristic of the approach is that it obviates the need for carrying out an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attack or being in physical proximity to the Wi-Fi connection to sniff network traffic. Specifically, it entails tricking a target into loading a harmless asset (e.g., a file, an image, or an ad) from a threat actor-controlled server, which then exploits the victim's network latency as a side channel to determine online activities on the victim system.

To perform such a fingerprinting attack and glean what video or a website a user might be watching or visiting, the attacker conducts a series of latency measurements of the victim's network connection as the content is being downloaded from the server while they are browsing or viewing. It then involves a post-processing phase that employs a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained with traces from an identical network setup to make the inference with an accuracy of up to 98% for videos and 63% for websites. In other words, due to the network bottleneck on the victim's side, the adversary can deduce the transmitted amount of data by measuring the packet round trip time (RTT). The RTT traces are unique per video and can be used to classify the video watched by the victim. The attack is so named because the attacking server transmits the file at a snail's pace in order to monitor the connection latency over an extended period of time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: With dozens of millions of monthly visits, Animeflix positioned itself as one of the most popular anime piracy portals. The site also has an active Discord community of around 35k members, who actively participate in discussions, art competitions, even a chess tournament. While rightsholders take no offense at these side-projects, the site's core business was streaming pirated videos. That hasn't gone unnoticed; last December Animeflix was listed as one of the shutdown targets of anti-piracy coalition ACE.

Whether these early enforcement efforts were responsible for the site's closure is unclear. In May, rightsholders increased the pressure through the High Court of India, obtaining a broad injunction that effectively suspended Animeflix's main domain name; Animeflix.live. This follow-up action didn't seem to hurt the site too much. It simply moved to new domains, Animeflix.gg and Animeflix.li, informing its users that the old domain name had become "unavailable." Yesterday, the site became unreachable again, initially returning a Cloudflare error message. This time, the domain wasn't the problem but, for reasons unknown, the team decided to shut down the site without prior notice.

"It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix. After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years." "Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms," the Animeflix team adds. The Animeflix team doesn't provide any insight into its reasoning, but it's clear that keeping a site like that online isn't without challenges. And, when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role. It's clear that rightsholders were keeping an eye on the site, and were actively seeking out options to take it offline. That might have played a role in the shutdown decision but without more information from the team, we can only speculate.

China has requested significantly more generative AI patents than any other country, the U.N. intellectual property agency (the World Intellectual Property Organization) is reporting. According to WIPO's first-ever report on GenAI patents, China submitted over 38,200 inventions in the past decade, dwarfing the United States' 6,300 filings. South Korea, Japan, and India rounded out the top five. The study tracked approximately 54,000 GenAI-related patent applications from 2014 to 2023, with over a quarter emerging in the last year alone.

Top Eurocops are appealing for help from lawmakers to undermine a privacy-enhancing technology (PET) they say is hampering criminal investigations -- and it's not end-to-end encryption this time. Not exactly. From a report: Europol published a position paper today highlighting its concerns around SMS home routing -- the technology that allows telcos to continue offering their services when customers visit another country. Most modern mobile phone users are tied to a network with roaming arrangements in other countries. EE customers in the UK will connect to either Telefonica or Xfera when they land in Spain, or T-Mobile in Croatia, for example.

While this usually provides a fairly smooth service for most roamers, Europol is now saying something needs to be done about the PETs that are often enabled in these home routing setups. According to the cops, they pointed out that when roaming, a suspect in a criminal case who's using a SIM from another country will have all of their mobile communications processed through their home network. If a crime is committed by a Brit in Germany, for example, then German police couldn't issue a request for unencrypted data as they could with a domestic operator such as Deutsche Telekom.

ZipNada writes: A federal court in Texas has partially blocked the government's ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4. An estimated 30 million people, or one in five American workers, are bound by noncompetes. The employment agreements typically prevent workers -- everyone from minimum wage earners to CEOs -- from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.

In its complaint, Ryan LLC accused the FTC of overstepping its statutory authority in declaring all noncompetes unfair and anticompetitive. Judge Brown agreed, writing, "The FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition." Through a statement Wednesday evening, the FTC said its authority is supported by both statute and precedent. "We will keep fighting to free hardworking Americans from unlawful noncompetes, which reduce innovation, inhibit economic growth, trap workers, and undermine Americans' economic liberty," wrote FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar. The FTC has long argued that noncompetes hurt workers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Hikari-no-Akari, a long-established and popular pirate site that specializes in Japanese music, is being targeted in U.S. federal court by Sony Music. [...] The music download portal, which links to externally hosted files, has been operating for well over a decade and currently draws more than a million monthly visits. In addition to the public-facing part of the site, HnA also has a private forum and Discord channel. [...] Apparently, Sony Music Japan has been keeping an eye on the unauthorized music portal. The company has many of its works shared on the site, including anime theme music, which is popular around the globe.

For example, a few weeks ago, HnA posted "Sayonara, Mata Itsuka!" from the Japanese artist Kenshi Yonezu, which is used as the theme song for the asadora series "The Tiger and Her Wings." Around the same time, PEACEKEEPER, a song by Japanese musician STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION, featured in the third season of the series "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime", was shared on the site. Sony Music Japan is a rightsholder for both these tracks, as well as many others that were posted on the site. The music company presumably tried to contact HnA directly to have these listings removed and reached out to its CDN service Cloudflare too, asking it to take action. [...] They are a prerequisite for obtaining a DMCA subpoena, which Sony Music Japan requested at a California federal court this week.

Sony requested two DMCA subpoenas, both targeted at hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co. The latter domain receives the bulk of its traffic from the first, which isn't a surprise considering the 'hnadownloads' name. Through the subpoena, the music company hopes to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites. That includes, names, IP-addresses, and payment info. Presumably, this will be used for follow-up enforcement actions. It's unclear whether Cloudflare will be able to hand over any usable information and for the moment, HnA remains online. Several of the infringing URLs that were identified by Sony have recently been taken down, including this one. However, others remain readily available. The same applies to private forum threads and Discord postings, of course.

OpenAI's ChatGPT app for macOS contained a security vulnerability until Friday, potentially exposing users' conversations to unauthorized access, according to a developer's findings. The flaw allowed stored chats to be easily located and read in plain text on users' computers. Pedro Jose Pereira Vieito demonstrated the issue on social media, showing how a separate application could access and display recent ChatGPT conversations.

The FTC has issued warnings to several tech firms, including PC manufacturers ASRock, Gigabyte, and Zotac, regarding potential violations of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. The agency expressed concerns that the companies' warranty and repair policies may be infringing on consumer rights. PCWorld adds: While the specific concerns vary by company, the FTC reminded the three companies that they can't, for example, place stickers on a laptop that caution consumers that opening or repairing the laptop violates warranty policies.

Neither can they state or imply that their products can only be repaired via an authorized service from the company. In the letter sent to Gigabyte (PDF), the FTC said that its staff is "concerned" by the Gigabyte written warranty, which includes the phrase: "If the manufacturing sticker inside the product was removed or damaged, it would no longer be covered by the warranty."

Proton, the privacy-focused technology company, has launched Proton Docs, a new document editing tool that bears a striking resemblance to Google Docs. The service, launched as part of Proton Drive, offers features such as rich text editing, real-time collaboration, and multimedia support.

Brazil's national data protection authority ruled on Tuesday that Meta must stop using data originating in the country to train its artificial intelligence models. The Associated Press reports: Meta's updated privacy policy enables the company to feed people's public posts into its AI systems. That practice will not be permitted in Brazil, however. The decision stems from "the imminent risk of serious and irreparable or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights of the affected data subjects," the agency said in the nation's official gazette. [...] Hye Jung Han, a Brazil-based researcher for the rights group, said in an email Tuesday that the regulator's action "helps to protect children from worrying that their personal data, shared with friends and family on Meta's platforms, might be used to inflict harm back on them in ways that are impossible to anticipate or guard against."

But the decision regarding Meta will "very likely" encourage other companies to refrain from being transparent in the use of data in the future, said Ronaldo Lemos, of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, a think-tank. "Meta was severely punished for being the only one among the Big Tech companies to clearly and in advance notify in its privacy policy that it would use data from its platforms to train artificial intelligence," he said. Compliance must be demonstrated by the company within five working days from the notification of the decision, and the agency established a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,820) for failure to do so. In a statement, Meta said the company is "disappointed" by the decision and insists its method "complies with privacy laws and regulations in Brazil."

"This is a step backwards for innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Brazil," a spokesperson for the company added.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to a Texas law requiring age verification to access online pornography, which opponents argue violates the First Amendment by discouraging adults from viewing such material due to privacy concerns. A federal judge blocked the law citing its chilling effect on free speech, but a divided appeals court upheld it, emphasizing the government's interest in protecting minors; the case will now be reviewed by the Supreme Court. The Texas bill in question, HB 1181, was passed into law last June. The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a challenge to a Texas law that seeks to limit minors' access to pornography on the internet by requiring age verification measures like the submission of government-issued IDs. A trade group, companies that produce sexual materials and a performer challenged the law, saying that it violates the First Amendment right of adults. The law does not allow companies to retain information their users submit. But the challengers said adults would be wary of supplying personal information for fear of identity theft, tracking and extortion. [...]

In urging the Supreme Court to leave the law in place while it considers whether to hear the case, Ken Paxton, Texas' attorney general, said pornography available on the internet is "orders of magnitude more graphic, violent and degrading than any so-called 'girlie' magazine of yesteryear." He added: "This statute does not prohibit the performance, production or even sale of pornography but, more modestly, simply requires the pornography industry that make billions of dollars from peddling smut to take commercially reasonable steps to ensure that those who access the material are adults. There is nothing unconstitutional about it."