Everybody talks about the weather…

https://www.bespacific.com/nyc-bar-association-follow-up-report-documents-escalating-constitutional-violations/

New York City Bar Association Follow-Up Report Documents Escalating Constitutional Violations

“The New York City Bar Association (City Bar) has released an update to its December 2025 report on presidential abuse of power, documenting a sharp escalation of constitutional violations by President Donald J. Trump and his Administration since that report was issued, and calling on Congress to act immediately, including by considering impeachment, to hold the President and his appointees accountable. “The question is no longer if, but when: Congress must act immediately to curb these abuses — including the illegal acts of aggression and unauthorized war against Iran launched on February 28, 2026 — and hold those responsible to account,” the report states. The update, titled “The Crisis Deepens: Congress Must Act Now to Address Escalating Abuses of Executive Power,” documents a wide range of intensifying constitutional abuses, including the militarized occupation of Minneapolis by federal immigration agents, unlawful acts of military force against foreign nations, and attacks on voting rights…”

Does the pentagon use zoom as frequently as it uses Powerpoint?

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/04/company-that-secretly-records-and-publishes-zoom-meetings.html

Company that Secretly Records and Publishes Zoom Meetings

WebinarTV searches the internet for public Zoom invites, joins the meetings, secretly records them, and publishes (alternate link ) the recordings. It doesn’t use the Zoom record feature, so Zoom can’t do anything about it.

Any new tool can cause injuries until you learn the proper way to use it.

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/03/nx-s1-5761454/penalties-stack-up-ai-spreads-through-legal-system

Penalties stack up as AI spreads through the legal system

… Last year saw a rapid increase in court sanctions against attorneys for filing briefs containing errors generated by artificial intelligence tools. The most prominent case was that of the lawyers for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who were fined $3,000 each for filing briefs containing fictitious, AI-generated citations.

But as a cautionary tale, it doesn't seem to have had much effect.

"Recently we had 10 cases from 10 different courts on a single day," says Damien Charlotin, a researcher at the business school HEC Paris who keeps a worldwide tally of instances of courts sanctioning people for using erroneous information generated by AI.

… Penalties are also on the rise, he says. A federal court may have set a new record last month with an order for a lawyer in Oregon to pay $109,700 in sanctions and costs for filing AI-generated errors.

Hacking for fun and profit.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/04/possible-us-government-iphone-hacking-tool-leaked.html

Possible US Government iPhone Hacking Tool Leaked

Wired writes (alternate source ):

Security researchers at Google on Tuesday released a report describing what they’re calling “Coruna,” a highly sophisticated iPhone hacking toolkit that includes five complete hacking techniques capable of bypassing all the defenses of an iPhone to silently install malware on a device when it visits a website containing the exploitation code. In total, Coruna takes advantage of 23 distinct vulnerabilities in iOS, a rare collection of hacking components that suggests it was created by a well-resourced, likely state-sponsored group of hackers.

[…]

Coruna’s code also appears to have been originally written by English-speaking coders, notes iVerify’s cofounder Rocky Cole. “It’s highly sophisticated, took millions of dollars to develop, and it bears the hallmarks of other modules that have been publicly attributed to the US government,” Cole tells WIRED. “This is the first example we’ve seen of very likely US government tools ­based on what the code is telling us­ spinning out of control and being used by both our adversaries and cybercriminal groups.”

TechCrunch reports that Coruna is definitely of US origin:

Two former employees of government contractor L3Harris told TechCrunch that Coruna was, at least in part, developed by the company’s hacking and surveillance tech division, Trenchant. The two former employees both had knowledge of the company’s iPhone hacking tools. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about their work for the company.

It’s always super interesting to see what malware looks like when it’s created through a professional software development process. And the TechCrunch article has some speculation as to how the US lost control of it. It seems that an employee of L3Harris’s surviellance tech division, Trenchant, sold it to the Russian government.

Just because this one is “major.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/01/fbi-hack-surveillance-system-major-incident-00854237

FBI declares suspected Chinese hack of US surveillance system a ‘major cyber incident’

The FBI last week deemed a recent China-linked cyber intrusion into a sensitive agency surveillance system a “major incident,” meaning it poses significant risks to U.S. national security, according to one congressional aide and two U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

The bureau first told Congress on March 4 that it was investigating suspicious activity on an internal agency system that contained “law enforcement sensitive information.” The FBI did not publicly identify who was behind the activity at the time, but POLITICO previously reported that China is suspected.

When self-driving cars are much more common they could become a serious weapon. (Can you say, ‘kamikaze cars?’)

https://thenextweb.com/news/baidu-apollo-go-robotaxi-wuhan-mass-malfunction

More than 100 Baidu robotaxis froze mid-traffic in Wuhan. The age of the mass fleet failure has arrived.

On Tuesday evening in Wuhan, more than 100 of Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis stopped moving. They did not pull over. They did not activate an emergency protocol. They simply froze, scattered across the city’s roads and elevated highways, some in the middle lane of ring roads with traffic streaming past on both sides. Passengers trapped inside called the police. Videos circulating on Weibo showed Apollo Go vehicles stranded at intersections, hazard lights blinking, going nowhere. One clip appeared to show the outage causing a highway collision, though Wuhan police said no injuries were reported and all passengers exited their vehicles safely.

They keep coming.

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/another-group-of-useful-maxims

Another Group of Useful Maxims

Truth, justice, and the American way!

https://www.bespacific.com/trumps-justice-department-dropped-23000-criminal-investigations-in-shift-to-immigration/

Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration

ProPublica: “In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors. In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica. The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement. But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis, which examined two decades of DOJ data, including the first six months of Trump’s second term. ProPublica determined the increase is not the result of inheriting a larger caseload or more referrals from law enforcement. In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration…”

See also The New York Times Editorial Board (Gift Article): The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree. Trump “has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts … Worst of all, Mr. Trump granted clemency on the first day of his second term to everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 … The results have been disastrous. At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack. The outcome was predictable.”

When “Best” is not so great.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-protect-your-phone-from-warrantless-search/

The best way to protect your phone from a warrantless search in 2026

• US authorities are getting more aggressive about detentions and seizures.

• No single law governs phone inspections.

• Devices configured for biometric unlocking remain highly vulnerable.

Weapons of modern war…

https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-war-israel-data-centers-hacking-47fc34e48f2f952583d14b6c0664fc37

Hacked hospitals, hidden spyware: Iran conflict shows how digital fight is ingrained in warfare

As they fled an Iranian missile strike, some Israelis with Android phones received a text offering a link to real-time information about bomb shelters. But instead of a helpful app, the link downloaded spyware giving hackers access to the device’s camera, location and all its data.

The operation, attributed to Iran, showed sophisticated coordination and is just the latest tactic in a cyber conflict that pits the U.S. and Israel against Iran and its digital proxies. As Iran and its supporters seek to use their cyber capabilities to compensate for their military disadvantages, they are demonstrating how disinformation, artificial intelligence and hacking are now ingrained in modern warfare.

The bogus texts received recently appeared to be timed to coincide with the missile strikes, representing a novel combination of digital and physical attacks, said Gil Messing, chief of staff at Check Point Research, a cybersecurity firm with offices in Israel and the U.S.

(Related)

https://thenextweb.com/news/iran-irgc-18-us-tech-companies-military-targets

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards just named 18 US tech firms as military targets. The age of the civilian data centre is over.

… The list reads like a roll call of the Nasdaq’s most valuable constituents. Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Dell, HP, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Tesla, General Electric, Boeing, and Palantir all appear alongside Spire Solutions and G42, the Abu Dhabi-based AI firm that has become a linchpin of the Gulf’s artificial intelligence ambitions. The IRGC gave employees at these companies across the Middle East an immediate evacuation warning, urging anyone within one kilometre of their facilities to leave.

As someday it may happen that a victim must be found

I've got a little list

I've got a little list

Of society offenders who might well be underground

And who never would be missed

Who never would be missed

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-trump-signs-executive-order-to-create-national-list-of-eligible-voters

WATCH: Trump signs executive order to create national list of eligible voters

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters, a move that is sure to draw legal challenges as the president continues to demand further restrictions on voting ahead of this year's midterm elections.

The order calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state, according to the White House. It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state's approved list, although the president likely lacks the power to mandate what the Postal Service does.

Recovery is unlikely.

https://www.bespacific.com/america-is-now-a-rogue-superpower/

America Is Now a Rogue Superpower

The Atlantic Gift Article: “Whenever and however America’s war with Iran ends, it has both exposed and exacerbated the dangers of our new, fractured, multipolar reality—driving deeper wedges between the United States and former friends and allies; strengthening the hands of the expansionist great powers, Russia and China; accelerating global political and economic chaos; and leaving the United States weaker and more isolated than at any time since the 1930s. Even success against Iran will be hollow if it hastens the collapse of the alliance system that for eight decades has been the true source of America’s power, influence, and security. For America’s friends and allies in Europe, the Iran war has been a significant strategic setback. As Russia and Ukraine wage a grinding war that will be “won” by whoever can hold on the longest, the Iran war has materially and psychologically helped Russia and hurt Ukraine. Even before Donald Trump lifted oil sanctions on Russia, oil prices were skyrocketing—and filling Vladimir Putin’s war chest with billions of dollars, just as Russia’s wartime deficits were starting to cause significant pain. The unexpected windfall gives Putin more time and capacity to continue destroying Ukraine’s economic infrastructure and energy grid. Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf states are burning through U.S.-provided stocks of air-defense interceptors, drawing on the same limited supply that Ukraine depends on to defend its largest cities from Russian missile strikes…”

Is that how it is supposed to work?

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/5806968-federal-courts-trump-doj-ethics/

Department of Justice proposes putting its attorneys above the law

… Rather than requiring more accountability of its attorneys, the department is proposing to eviscerate the controls that do exist, by making itself the judge of whether misconduct has occurred. This is why alarm bells should be sounded by the Department of Justice’s recent decision to issue a proposed rule which would turn the system on its head. 

The draft rule would effectively empower the department to indefinitely interrupt state disciplinary investigations by directing an internal “review” of allegations of misconduct against its own attorneys. Further, it ominously provides that should the relevant state bar disciplinary authority refuse the attorney general’s “request” to halt its investigation, “The Department shall take appropriate action to prevent the bar disciplinary authorities from interfering with the Attorney General’s review of the allegations.”  

My amusement continues.

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/yet-another-group-of-useful-maxims

Yet Another Group of Useful Maxims

If you weren’t paranoid before…

https://pogowasright.org/did-you-sign-up-for-the-new-white-house-app-dont-use-it-until-you-read-this/

Did you sign up for the new White House app? Don’t use it until you read this!

Did you sign up for the new White House app? Don’t use it until you read this, because it puts your privacy and data security at risk.

Patrick Quirk takes an impressive technical piece and distills it for those of us who are not developers or coders. His article is based on original research by Thereallo, published March 28, 2026. More technically savvy readers may want to just jump to Thereallo’s analysis.

For the rest of us, Quirk writes:

The Trump White House launched an official mobile app on March 28, 2026. They called it “Unparalleled access to the Trump Administration.” A security researcher who goes by Thereallo pulled the APK, threw it into JADX, and decompiled the entire thing.

What they found would get any cybersecurity student expelled, any pentester fired, and any company sued. But it’s stamped with a .gov badge, so apparently it’s fine.

This is not a political article. This is a technical audit of a government application that violates every principle the cybersecurity industry teaches. Every standard the federal government is supposed to uphold. Every ethical boundary we are told never to cross. I’m calling out everyone responsible.

Quirk identifies the significant findings Thereallo identified. Here are just some of them.

• Finding 1: GPS Tracking Pipeline — Your Location Every 4.5 Minutes

• Finding 2: JavaScript Injection Into Every Website You Visit

• Finding 3: Loading Code From a Random Person’s GitHub Pages

• Finding 4: More Third-Party Code Execution

• Finding 5: Your Data Goes Everywhere Except the Government

Read the details about these and other findings at ringmast4r.substack.com.

Worth a read.

https://www.bespacific.com/ai-in-discovery-some-tools-are-ready-others-are-not/

AI in Discovery: Some Tools Are Ready. Others Are Not.

Via LLRX – AI in Discovery: Some Tools Are Ready. Others Are Not.  Generative AI is coming for legal work, whether lawyers like it or not, and much of what it brings will be genuinely useful. Discovery, though, is a different conversation.  Jerry Lawson  discuses why technology-assisted review (TAR), the old, reliable workhorse, should remain a critical component of your organizations’ privileged document access management.

Errors we learned to avoid years ago keep reappearing. Perhaps AI coding is to blame?

https://thehackernews.com/2026/03/the-state-of-secrets-sprawl-2026-9.html

The State of Secrets Sprawl 2026: 9 Takeaways for CISOs

Secrets sprawl isn't slowing down: in 2025, it accelerated faster than most security teams anticipated.  GitGuardian's State of Secrets Sprawl 2026 report  analyzed billions of commits across public GitHub and uncovered 29 million new hardcoded secrets in 2025 alone, a 34% increase year over year and the largest single-year jump ever recorded.

Perspective.

https://www.bespacific.com/artificial-intelligence-in-federal-courts-a-random-sample-survey-of-judges/

Artificial Intelligence in Federal Courts: A Random-Sample Survey of Judges

Anika Jaitley, Daniel W. Linna Jr., Hon. Xavier Rodriguez, V.S. Subrahmanian & Siyu Tao, Artificial Intelligence in Federal Courts: A Random-Sample Survey of Judges, 27 SEDONA CONF. J. _____ (forthcoming 2026). “The purpose of this study is to understand how, and to what extent, federal judges and other personnel who work in their chambers use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their judicial work. We selected a stratified random sample of 502 federal bankruptcy, magistrate, district court, and court of appeals judges from a population of 1,738 current federal judges. Of the 502 judges that we surveyed via email, 112 responded (22.3% response rate). Although a majority of responding judges at least occasionally use AI tools in their judicial work, relatively few report using AI on a daily or weekly basis. Approximately 38% of judges reported that they did not use AI at all in their work. This pattern suggests that AI is present in federal judicial chambers but not yet a routine, embedded part of most judges’ decision-making processes. Respondents report more frequent use of legal-specific AI tools integrated into established research platforms (such as Westlaw’s AI- Assisted Research and similar tools) than of stand-alone, general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini. This pattern indicates that vendor familiarity and perceived reliability may strongly shape which AI tools judges are willing to deploy in chambers. Judges’ attitudes toward AI are almost evenly split between optimism and concern. Many respondents simultaneously recognize AI’s potential efficiency gains and express unease about hallucinations, “zombie cases,” and skill atrophy. When AI training is offered by court administration, most judges attend, but a sizeable majority have not been offered such training or are unsure whether training has been available, suggesting unmet demand for high-quality, judiciary-specific education on AI.”

Is the strategy for defeating AI?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-27/ai-changed-chess-grandmasters-now-win-with-unpredictable-moves?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc3NDY4MDEzNSwiZXhwIjoxNzc1Mjg0OTM1LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUQ0pTVzdLSVAzSkwwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIwNEFGQkMxQkYyMTA0NUVEODg3MzQxQkQwQzIyNzRBMCJ9.nIWazrd0HBbGwk_nzijL8lTm8uyCPXr1F7molURiExg&leadSource=uverify%20wall

AI Perfected Chess. Humans Made It Unpredictable Again

Artificial intelligence drove chess toward perfect play, leading to more draws at top tournaments. Now grandmasters are winning by making less optimal moves.

Perhaps we’ll get a Donald avatar…

https://nypost.com/2026/03/27/us-news/trump-white-house-launches-own-app-after-cryptic-social-media-teases/

Trump White House launches own app after cryptic social media teases

The Trump administration announced the launch of the White House app on Friday, promising news “straight from the source, no filter.”

The administration announcement followed a series of social media teases in recent days, causing frenzied speculation about what was coming.

Upon opening the app, users were greeted with a short video featuring snippets of President Trump at work. From there, technical difficulties took over.

… The app includes sections labeled “news,” “live,” “social,” and “gallery” — all of which were empty at launch on Friday morning.

The news section features press releases from the Trump administration and links to articles from outside news sources. The gallery contains photos from recent events, including first lady Melania Trump’s summit with world spouses and the president’s meeting with the Japanese prime minister.

Tactical shortage or strategic problem? (How will China or North Korea view a US with no weapons?)

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-war-news-alarmingly-low-pentagon-scrambles-after-us-fires-850-tomahawks-at-iran-11275393

"Alarmingly Low": Pentagon Scrambles After US Fires 850 Tomahawks At Iran

It can take up to 2 years to build a Tomahawk, costing $3.6 million a piece, according to the report. Moreover, last year's budget had included only 57 of them.

The US army has fired over 850 Tomahawk missiles in four weeks during its war with Iran. Only a few hundred Tomahawk missiles are manufactured every year, and the rate of firing has alarmed some Pentagon officials who are in talks about how to make more of the missiles available, The Washington Post reported.