Replacing lawyers with AI is probably not happening, yet.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/openai-hit-with-lawsuit-claiming-chatgpt-acted-an-unlicensed-lawyer-2026-03-05/

OpenAI hit with lawsuit claiming ChatGPT acted as an unlicensed lawyer

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has been accused in a new lawsuit of practicing law without a U.S. license and helping a former disability claimant breach a settlement and flood a federal court docket with meritless filings.

, opens new tab

Nippon Life Insurance Company of America alleged on Wednesday in a lawsuit ‌filed in federal court in Chicago that OpenAI wrongfully provided legal assistance to a woman who sought to reopen a lawsuit that was already settled and dismissed.

“ChatGPT is not an attorney,” the lawsuit said. Although OpenAI has shown ChatGPT can pass an attorney bar exam, Nippon said, “it has not ​been admitted to practice law in the State of Illinois or in any other jurisdiction within the United ​States.”

The lawsuit seeks an order declaring that OpenAI violated Illinois' unauthorized practice of law statute, as well as $300,000 in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages.

OpenAI in a statement on Thursday said “this complaint lacks any merit whatsoever.” [On the advice of their AI? Bob]

War tools. This likely written by Iran…

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/06/spyware_disguised_as_emergency_alert/

Spyware disguised as emergency-alert app sent to Israeli smartphones

Hamas-linked attackers are dropping spyware disguised as an emergency-alert app on Israelis' smartphones via SMS messages, according to security researchers.

Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) analysts discovered the malicious app - a trojanized version of the Red Alert rocket app used by millions of Israelis - on March 1, after multiple citizens began reporting the scam on social media.

That’s it?

https://cyberscoop.com/trump-cybersecurity-strategy/

The long-awaited Trump cyber strategy has arrived

President Donald Trump released his administration’s cyber strategy Friday, promoting offense operations in cyberspace, securing federal networks and critical infrastructure, streamlining regulations, leveraging emerging technologies and strengthening the cybersecurity workforce.

Trump also signed an executive order Friday directing agencies to take action to combat cybercrime and fraud.

A little more than half of the five pages of strategy text of the long-anticipated document is preamble, and two of its seven pages are title and ending pages. Administration officials have said the strategy is deliberately high-level, and the White House promised more detailed guidance in the future.

The strategy “calls for unprecedented coordination across government and the private sector to invest in the best technologies and continue world-class innovation, and to make the most of America’s cyber capabilities for both offensive and defensive missions,” the White House said in a statement accompanying its release.

The politics of health?

https://www.bespacific.com/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-policies-are-unreviewable-doj-lawyer-tells-judge/

RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine policies are “unreviewable,” DOJ lawyer tells judge

Ars Technica: “A lawyer for the Trump administration told a federal judge Wednesday that anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has such ample authority over the country’s vaccine policies that he is “unreviewable.” His unfettered powers even allow Kennedy the freedom to recommend, if he chose to do so, that people ditch vaccines and actively expose themselves to infectious diseases, the lawyer argued, according to Reuters. The comments came amid a lawsuit  filed against Kennedy by the American Academy of Pediatrics, several other medical groups, and three anonymous women. The suit challenges a number of Kennedy’s actions on vaccine policy since he took office, including his unilateral changes to COVID-19 vaccine policies, his firing of all 17 expert vaccine advisors  for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—whom Kennedy replaced with hand-picked anti-vaccine allies—and his decision to dramatically overhaul the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule to match that of the small country of Denmark, dropping the total number of recommended vaccinations from 17 to 11 and making the US an outlier among high-income countries…”

Well that clears everything up nicely.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2026/03/05/an-ai-disaster-is-getting-ever-closer

An AI disaster is getting ever closer

Although he was trying to sound decisive, Donald Trump accidentally conveyed something of the world’s ambivalence regarding the rapid development of artificial intelligence. On February 27th America’s president walloped the “leftwing nut jobs” of Anthropic, an American AI lab that works with the defence department, among other government agencies. “I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” he thundered on social media. Yet just a single sentence later he also vowed to “use the Full Power of the Presidency” to compel Anthropic to co-operate with the government for the next six months. Apparently, the nut jobs simultaneously pose an intolerable risk to the good functioning of the state and are so indispensable to the state’s good functioning that they must be forced to work with it, if necessary.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/27-ways-to-access-scientific-research/

27 Ways to Access Scientific Research

Card Catalog: A complete guide to finding, reading, and evaluating scientific papers — and knowing what questions matter before you trust the findings. Hana Lee Goldin, MLIS: “We are living through a strange moment in the history of knowledge. More information is available to more people than at any point in human history, and yet the feeling of not knowing what to believe has never been more widespread. Studies get published on Monday and debunked by Thursday. Experts contradict each other with matching credentials and matching confidence. A headline announces a breakthrough; the fine print, buried three paragraphs down, reveals it was a study of fourteen mice. Somewhere in your feed right now, someone is citing “research” to support something that research does not actually support. The problem isn’t a shortage of information. It’s that most of us were never taught to navigate it at the level where it originates. Academic and scientific papers are where claims about the world are supposed to get tested. Where hypotheses meet methodology, where evidence gets weighed against competing explanations, where researchers have to show their work in a way that other researchers can scrutinize. The system is imperfect, sometimes deeply so, but it’s also the most rigorous process we have for building reliable knowledge. Understanding how it works, what it can and can’t tell you, and how to read the outputs for yourself is one of the most practically useful things you can learn. The good news is that you don’t need a PhD to do it. You just need a map…”

(Because)

https://www.bespacific.com/trump-administrations-continued-war-against-science-research-public-health-and-the-rule-of-law-part-7/

The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health, and the Rule of Law – Part 7

Via LLRX – The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health, and the Rule of Law – Part 7 – This article is the seventh in a series focused on how the second Trump presidency unleashed a causal chain that has rapidly morphed into an extensive continued attack against civil liberties, commerce, government funded programs, research and the rule of law. The attacks quickly escalated beyond the federal sector into the private and non-profit arenas. In alignment with the Project 2025 roadmap cultural, historical and political censorship has made deep inroads into many aspects of American life.  Sabrina I. Pacifici continues to identify new as well as expanded examples of administration directed censorship in the public and private sectors, along with the elimination of programs, services and data critical to education, healthcare, the environment, climate science, defense and the economy.

Perspective.

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/anthropic-vs-the-pentagon-ai-ethics-collide-with-government-power/

Anthropic vs. The Pentagon: AI Ethics Collide With Government Power

Can the Pentagon blacklist an American business for refusing to build killbots? The federal government demands tight controls for you, but wants unrestricted power for itself.

We can, therefore we must.

https://pogowasright.org/allstate-must-face-privacy-lawsuit-over-cellphone-tracking-of-drivers/

Allstate must face privacy lawsuit over cellphone tracking of drivers

Jonathan Stempel reports:

Allstate must ‌face a privacy lawsuit accusing the home and auto insurer of illegally tracking drivers through their cellphones without consent, using their data to raise premiums or deny coverage, and selling the data to other insurers.

In a decision on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Daniel in Chicago said drivers in the proposed class action can try to prove that Allstate violated the Federal Wiretap Act by monitoring their travel locations, trip distances, speed, acceleration, braking, phone usage and attention to the road, and tried to monetize that data to boost profit.

Read more at Reuters.

Tools of war.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/03/hacked-app-part-of-us-israeli-propaganda-campaign-against-iran.html

Hacked App Part of US/Israeli Propaganda Campaign Against Iran

Wired has the story:

Shortly after the first set of explosions, Iranians received bursts of notifications on their phones. They came not from the government advising caution, but from an apparently hacked prayer-timing app called BadeSaba Calendar that has been downloaded more than 5 million times from the Google Play Store.

The messages arrived in quick succession over a period of 30 minutes, starting with the phrase ‘Help has arrived’ at 9:52 am Tehran time, shortly after the first set of explosions. No party has claimed responsibility for the hacks.

It happened so fast that this is most likely a government operation. I can easily envision both the US and Israel having hacked the app previously, and then deciding that this is a good use of that access.

(Related)

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/04/iranian_hacking_attempts_ip_cameras/

'Hundreds' of Iranian hacking attempts have hit surveillance cameras since the missile strikes

Multiple Iranian hacking crews have been targeting internet-connected surveillance cameras across Israel and other Middle Eastern countries since the war started on February 28, according to Check Point security researchers.

… The countries targeted in these digital intrusion attempts - Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Cyprus, and Lebanon - are the same ones that have seen significant missile activity linked to Iran.

How modern war is waged.

https://databreaches.net/2026/03/03/israeli-spies-hacked-every-traffic-camera-in-tehran-to-plot-killing-of-irans-ayatollah-ali-khamenei/?pk_campaign=feed&pk_kwd=israeli-spies-hacked-every-traffic-camera-in-tehran-to-plot-killing-of-irans-ayatollah-ali-khamenei

Israeli spies ‘hacked every traffic camera in Tehran to plot killing of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’

Maira Butt reports:

Israeli spies hacked nearly every traffic camera in Tehran for years in order to monitor the movements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an unprecedented intelligence-gathering campaign, according to a report.

Officials surveilled highly trained and loyal security guards, bodyguards and drivers of senior Iranian officials  to pick up on their “pattern of life”, the Financial Times reported.

This real-time data, including from cameras focused on Khamenei’s personal compound, was encrypted and transmitted back to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel.

They were able to determine where the guards would park their cars via an infiltrated security camera facing the Ayatollah’s home.

Read more at The Independent.

(Related)

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/03/iran-cisa-cybersecurity-war-threat.html

The lead U.S. cyber agency is stretched thin as Iran hacking threat escalates

As the fighting in the Middle East roars on, cyber experts are increasingly warning of online attacks from Iran on U.S. businesses and infrastructure.

“From a timing perspective, it’s now or never,” said Pavel Gurvich, founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup Tenzai. “In that sense, the danger is meaningfully higher.”

Gurvich said Iran may have stored capabilities and is waiting for a high-risk moment to launch.

Perspective.

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/californias-age-verification-law-is-a-civil-liberties-test/

California’s Age-Verification Law Is a Civil Liberties Test

The law classifies user identities at the operating system level. Once embedded, that regulatory architecture of control is easy to expand and difficult to roll back.

Confusing at best… (If we can’t spy on them we can’t protect them?)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o

TikTok won't protect DMs with controversial privacy tech, saying it would put users at risk

TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption (E2EE) - the controversial privacy feature used by nearly all its rivals - arguing it makes users less safe.

… But critics have said E2EE makes it harder to stop harmful content spreading online, because it means tech firms and law enforcement have no way of viewing any material sent in direct messages.

The situation is made more complex because TikTok has long faced accusations that ties to the Chinese state may put users' data at risk.

… But the company has now told the BBC it believes the technology prevents police and safety teams from being able to read direct messages if they needed to.

It confirmed its approach in a briefing to the BBC about security at its London office - saying it wanted to protect users, especially young people, from harm.

Another slice of privacy…

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/03/chatbot_data_harvesting_personal_info/

Chat at your own risk! Data brokers are selling deeply personal bot transcripts

… These extensions may silently intercept users' communications with AI services like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and DeepSeek. They can do so by overriding the browser's native fetch() and XMLHttpRequest() functions in order to capture every prompt and every response.

"This data is captured from real people's private AI conversations via browser extensions, stored in a vector database, and exposed via API to authenticated customers," said Dryburgh in his report. "The panelists have pseudonymized IDs (SHA-256 hashes) but the content of their conversations is stored verbatim and searchable — and many prompts contain real names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, and diagnosis codes."

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/cbp-tapped-into-the-online-advertising-ecosystem-to-track-peoples-movements/

CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples’ Movements

404 Media [no paywall]: “Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought data from the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ precise movements over time, in a process that often involves siphoning data from ordinary apps like video games, dating services, and fitness trackers, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media. The document shows in stark terms the power, and potential risk, of online advertising data and how it can be leveraged by government agencies for surveillance purposes. The news comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) purchased similar tools that can monitor the movements of phones in entire neighbourhoods. ICE also recently said in public procurement documents it was interested in sourcing more “Ad Tech” data for its investigations. Following 404 Media’s revelation of that ICE purchase, on Tuesday a group of around 70 lawmakers urged the DHS oversight body to conduct a new investigation into ICE’s location data buying…”

Perhaps the President it not all powerful…

https://www.bespacific.com/trump-administration-to-drop-defense-of-law-firm-sanctions/

Trump Administration to Drop Defense of Law Firm Sanctions

Follow up to Trump Using Another Executive Order to Take Revenge on Law Firms – See also

• The New York Times – “The Trump administration on Monday abandoned its attempts to impose potentially crippling executive orders against law firms that refused to capitulate to the president, walking away from its appeal of victories the firms had won against the White House. With a brief due this week, Justice Department lawyers told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that they were no longer interested in pursuing the cases and were voluntarily asking the court to dismiss them. The decision is the White House’s most significant acknowledgment that the executive orders cannot be successfully defended in court. The move is particularly striking given that some firms opted to reach deals in a bid to head off executive orders that President Trump’s Justice Department said it would no longer stand behind. The battle over the executive orders had roiled the legal establishment and led many firms to submit to Mr. Trump rather than face the existential threat his directives represented. The orders barred the firms from government business and suggested that their clients could lose government contracts, spurring widespread panic in the legal profession…”

• WSJ.com / paywalled  – Justice Department plans to withdraw appeals defending punitive executive orders issued by the president, people familiar with the matter said..

• Reuters …The Trump administration plans to drop its appeals ‌defending executive orders ‌that sanctioned four major U.S. law firms, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The U.S. Justice Department is expected to abandon appeals to trial-court rulings against the actions targeting Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie and Susman Godfrey, the report said.

• See also Washington Post via MSN – Justice Dept. plans to abandon defense of orders targeting law firms. The Trump administration is planning to abandon its effort to punish several law firms that hired President Donald Trump’s perceived foes or took on cases he disliked, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move would effectively admit defeat and leave Trump’s sanctions on the firms lambasting his executive orders as unconstitutional and retaliatory… ”

• CNN – Trump administration drops suits against law firms with ties to Democrats and other Trump foes

Another ‘punishing those who don’t kowtow’ issue?

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/pentagon%27s-anthropic-designation-won%27t-survive-first-contact-with-legal-system

Pentagon’s Anthropic Designation Won’t Survive First Contact with Legal System

On Feb. 27, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic—the maker of the AI model Claude—a supply chain risk to national security. This came immediately after a Truth Social post from President Trump directing "EVERY Federal Agency" to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE” using Anthropic's technology. Hegseth’s designation includes a six-month transition period during which Anthropic will continue providing services to the military during the transition. Anthropic, in turn, has vowed to “challenge any supply chain risk designation in court.”

The escalation capped off a turbulent week. The dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic over two usage restrictions in Anthropic's military contract—prohibitions on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance—had been building since January, when Hegseth's AI strategy memorandum directed that all Department of Defense AI contracts adopt standard "any lawful use" language. Hegseth met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei earlier in the week and threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel the company's cooperation. But on Friday the Trump administration had apparently dropped the DPA threat in favor of something more dramatic: a formal supply chain risk designation and a government-wide ban.

From the government's perspective, Claude does pose some concerning vendor reliability issues. But the specific actions Hegseth and Trump took have serious legal problems. The designation exceeds what the statute authorizes. The required findings don't hold up. And Hegseth's own public statements may have doomed the government's litigation posture before it even begins.

Once upon a time we had this thing called privacy…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/03/llm-assisted-deanonymization.html

LLM-Assisted Deanonymization

Turns out that LLMs are good at de-anonymization:

We show that LLM agents can figure out who you are from your anonymous online posts. Across Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, and anonymized interview transcripts, our method identifies users with high precision ­ and scales to tens of thousands of candidates.

While it has been known that individuals can be uniquely identified by surprisingly few attributes, this was often practically limited. Data is often only available in unstructured form and deanonymization used to require human investigators to search and reason based on clues. We show that from a handful of comments, LLMs can infer where you live, what you do, and your interests—then search for you on the web. In our new research, we show that this is not only possible but increasingly practical.

Perspective.

https://stratechery.com/2026/anthropic-and-alignment/

Anthropic and Alignment

This is not an Article about the campaign being waged by the U.S. against Iran, but it’s a useful — and timely — analogy. There is a never-ending debate that can be had about the concept of International Law and who might be violating it. Some will argue that the U.S. is in violation for the attacks; others will note that Iran has been serially violating International Law with both its overt actions and its support of terror networks for my entire life.

What is important to note is that the entire debate is ultimately pointless: the very concept of “international law” is fake, not because pertinent statutes and agreements don’t exist, but because their effectiveness is ultimately rooted in their enforceability. That, by extension, means there must be an entity to enact such enforcement, with the capability to match, and such an entity does not exist.

Perspective.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trumps-way-war

Trump’s Way of War

Iran, Venezuela, and the End of the Powell Doctrine

War hacking: A long shot, but only one of many I’m sure…

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-strikes-2026/card/israel-hacked-popular-iranian-prayer-app-to-urge-defections-resistance-wtYyb29CmKrTXoJBIV3C

Israel Hacked Popular Iranian Prayer App to Urge Defections, Resistance

Israel hacked a popular Iranian prayer app to send notifications to potentially millions of phones Saturday morning urging the country’s military personnel to defect from the regime and join a fight to liberate the country, according to people familiar with the matter.

Toward AI recognition?

https://journal.carjj.org/index.php/AR/article/view/182

Legal protection of AI works in the absence of a human author

This research addresses the challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI) to traditional intellectual property frameworks, particularly in cases where creative or innovative works are produced without a direct human author. As AI systems become increasingly capable of self-learning and independently creating content, they challenge the fundamental legal assumption that authorship—and therefore legal protection—is exclusive to human beings. This research critically examines the capacity of current intellectual property laws to accommodate AI-generated works, the possibility of recognizing AI as a legal entity, and the implications of this for attribution and legal liability. Through a comparative legal analysis encompassing civil, Anglo-Saxon, and selected Arab legal systems, the research highlights the shortcomings and inconsistencies in existing legal frameworks. It advocates for the development of a specific legal framework that reflects the realities of the digital age, including a redefinition of the concept of "innovation" and the application of the principle of "responsible human agent." Ultimately, the research calls for a shift in legal philosophy that balances the need for legal certainty with the rapidly evolving nature of technological advancements in the field of intellectual property.

Do we move fast enough or too fast?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756061626000091

Intelligent justice: AI-driven forensics and legal process for criminal justice reforms

The accelerated development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in the field of criminal justice has triggered a paradigm shift in forensic science and legal procedures. The research, Intelligent Justice: AI-Driven Forensics and Legal Process for Criminal Justice Reform, critically examines the application of AI technologies in offering enhanced accuracy, efficacy, and fairness in forensic and judicial procedures. Informed by an interdisciplinary approach, the research discerns the necessity of balancing technological progress with essential values of justice, legality, and procedural rights.

The paper maps the modern landscape of AI technology in criminal law, from algorithmic risk profiling to predictive policing and legal analytics. Using the chosen case studies, the study illustrates the ability of AI systems to generate more precise evidence and accelerate investigation procedures.

Despite the benefits bestowed, the use of artificial intelligence raises serious legal and ethical issues. Some of the most important ones include uncertainty in algorithmic decision-making, the existence of possible biases within forensic algorithms, challenges of admitting evidence, and threat to procedural safeguards. In this research, it is recommended that a robust regulatory and normative framework be put in place to govern the use of AI within criminal justice settings with a strong emphasis on transparency, accountability, and human oversight. In promoting the notion of "Intelligent Justice," the paper contends that AI not merely must improve present practice but prove a force for reform, most importantly in advancing crime prevention, protecting rights, and enhancing a rehabilitative theory of justice.

Perspective.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-economics-of-technological-change

The Economics of Technological Change

What history and models can (and can’t) tell us about AI

Perspective.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/trump-iran-gamble-vaez

Trump’s Iran Gamble

How the Latest Strikes Risk Opening a Pandora’s Box in the Gulf