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.

When you get serious…

https://www.bespacific.com/prompt-catalog-2026-for-artificial-intelligence/

Prompt Catalog 2026 for Artificial Intelligence

Via LLRX – Marcus P. Zillman’s  extensive bibliography covers numerous subject matter specific AI prompt resources, guides, templates, methodologies and best practices take you across applications, and leans into expert sources from LinkedIn.

Only the beginning…

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/traffic-violation-license-plate-reader-mission-creep-already-here

Traffic Violation! License Plate Reader Mission Creep Is Already Here

A new report from 404 Media sheds light on how automated license plate readers (ALPRs) could be used beyond the press releases and glossy marketing materials put out by law enforcement agencies and ALPR vendors. In December 2025, Georgia State Patrol ticketed a motorcyclist for holding a cell phone in his hand. According to the report, the ticket read, “CAPTURED ON FLOCK CAMERA 31 MM 1 HOLDING PHONE IN LEFT HAND.” 

Tools & Techniques.

https://fpf.org/blog/2026-chatbot-legislation-tracker/

2026 Chatbot Legislation Tracker

With nearly 100 chatbot-specific bills introduced across states in 2026, a complex and increasingly fragmented compliance landscape is quickly emerging. This tracker helps stakeholders understand that landscape by highlighting chatbot legislation advancing through initial chambers in state legislatures and Congress, and organizing key provisions across proposals to show what is coming and how requirements may vary across jurisdictions. The tracker is updated on Thursdays to reflect legislative movement and amendments.

https://fpf.org/2026-chatbot-legislation-tracker/

This tracker highlights chatbot-related legislation advancing through U.S. state legislatures and Congress in 2026. It includes bills that have passed at least one legislative chamber and is updated weekly to reflect movement and amendments. This tracker reflects a subset of FPF’s broader legislative tracking work. FPF members receive access to comprehensive tracking across the full AI policy landscape, including all chatbot and AI-related legislation. To learn more about corporate membership, visit FPF’s Become a Member page.

Worth considering…

https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-amplifies-whatever-you-feed-it-including-confusion

AI amplifies whatever you feed it, including confusion

Most organizations are not failing at AI because of technology. They are failing because they do not know which data actually matters, and they are scaling that confusion faster than ever. At a time when investment continues to surge, the expectation is that more intelligence will naturally follow. Instead, many teams are finding themselves overwhelmed. The issue is the inability to distinguish between signal and noise in a way that leads to confident decisions.

The broader landscape makes this tension hard to ignore. According to the State of Enterprise AI 2026, global spending is projected to reach $2.52 trillion, yet only 14% of CFOs report measurable returns. At the same time, 42% of companies abandoned most of their AI pilots in 2025. These point to a systemic disconnect between ambition and execution. As boards demand accountability and leaders look for proof of value, many organizations are confronting a difficult reality: they invested in capability without first ensuring clarity.

The usual explanation is that the data is not clean enough. That is not wrong, but it misses something more fundamental. Clean data has limited value if it is not relevant, connected, or usable in the context of real decisions. Over time, organizations have accumulated dashboards, reports, and tracking systems that create the appearance of visibility while leaving critical questions unresolved. Teams often cannot explain why a metric moves, how it connects to outcomes, or what action should follow. That gap between information and understanding is where progress stalls.

For my nerd friends…

https://www.bespacific.com/sorting-algorithms/

Sorting algorithms

tools.simonwillison.net colophon – Watch how different algorithms organize data, step by step. Explore and compare different sorting algorithms through interactive animated visualizations that display how each algorithm organizes data in real-time. The tool allows you to adjust dataset size and animation speed, run individual algorithms step-by-step or continuously, and race multiple algorithms simultaneously to see which performs best. Each algorithm includes detailed complexity analysis and visual indicators for comparisons, swaps, and sorted elements.

(Ditto)

https://www.bespacific.com/anything-counter/

Anything Counter

• What is AnythingCounter? A live dashboard that shows real-time estimates of what happens every second in the digital world. You see numbers for AI hallucinations, deepfakes, phishing, e-waste, jobs lost to automation, and more. We take global statistics and turn them into counters that update continuously so you can watch digital activity in real time.

• How are the statistics calculated? We use published yearly or periodic stats from international bodies, research institutes, and cybersecurity reports. Those figures get converted into per-second or per-day rates and shown as live counters. Full sources and how we calculate everything: our methodology page.

• Are the numbers real or estimated? They’re estimates based on real data. We take published statistics and convert them into real-time rates to show the scale of digital activity. Each counter links to its sources so you can check the underlying data.

• How often do the counters update? The numbers tick every second in your browser. The rates behind them come from the latest research and reports we could find; we update those when new data is published.

A preview of things to come in the US?

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/brit_law_maker_fails_to/

Brit lawmaker targeted by AI deepfake fails to get answers from US Big Tech

… Last autumn, Freeman was the subject of an AI-created fake that falsely claimed he had defected to a rival party, Reform. This was plausible enough, given several genuine Conservative defections in recent months, but entirely fabricated

Not only was it damaging to his reputation, but allowing political misinformation to continue to spread unchecked could end the democratic process in the UK, he argued. Freeman said platforms spreading the content are failing to respond. "There's no redress. There was no statement or principle that it was a problem," he said in Parliament yesterday, labeling the event a "serious disruption to democratic representation."

(Related)

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/03/as-the-us-midterms-approach-ai-is-going-to-emerge-as-a-key-issue-concerning-voters.html

As the US Midterms Approach, AI Is Going to Emerge as a Key Issue Concerning Voters

In December, the Trump administration signed an executive order that neutered states’ ability to regulate AI by ordering his administration to both sue and withhold funds from states that try to do so. This action pointedly supported industry lobbyists keen to avoid any constraints and consequences on their deployment of AI, while undermining the efforts of consumers, advocates, and industry associations concerned about AI’s harms who have spent years pushing for state regulation.

Trump’s actions have clarified the ideological alignments around AI within America’s electoral factions. They set down lines on a new playing field for the midterm elections, prompting members of his party, the opposition, and all of us to consider where we stand in the debate over how and where to let AI transform our lives.

Did Iran cross this line?

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/25/whats_scarier_than_a_swarm/

Only Trump can decide when cyberwar turns into real war

There's a theoretical red line with cyber warfare. Cross it, and the US will respond with a physical attack like missile strikes. And that line "is whatever the President says it is," according to former NSA boss retired General Paul Nakasone.

Nakasone, speaking during an RSA Conference keynote on Wednesday with three other former NSA directors and commanders of US Cyber Command, argued that there shouldn't be a well-defined red line. "The president should have a lot of leeway in which he determines whether or not the nation's going to respond kinetically."

Retired US Navy Admiral Mike Rogers, on the other hand, said he thinks there should be a "series of minimums, like loss of life, loss of infrastructure associated with health and well being."

This argument would seem to apply to any AI system.

https://www.bespacific.com/eff-sues-for-answers-about-medicares-ai-experiment/

EFF Sues for Answers About Medicare’s AI Experiment

EFF – Little Is Known About AI That Could Affect Millions of Seniors’ Care: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) seeking records about a multi-state program that is using AI to evaluate requests for medical care.  “Tasking an algorithm with making determinations about treatment can create unwarranted—and even discriminatory—delays or denials of necessary medical care,” said Kit Walsh, EFF’s Director of AI and Access-to-Knowledge Legal Projects. “Given these serious risks, the public requires transparency that it hasn’t gotten. We’re suing to get badly needed answers about how Medicare’s AI experiment works.”  Announced by CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz last year, the pilot program known as WISeR (Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction) uses AI to assess prior authorization requests from Medicare beneficiaries. Previously rare in original Medicare, prior authorization requires medical providers to obtain advance approval from a patient’s health insurer before delivering certain treatments or services as a condition of coverage.  Unfortunately, there is little information about how the AI algorithms used in WISeR work, including what training data they rely on. It remains unclear whether WISeR has any safeguards against systemic flaws such as algorithmic bias, privacy violations, and wrongful denials of care.  Healthcare experts, care providers, and lawmakers have all raised alarms that WISeR may cause serious harm to patients by relying on AI unless it has the necessary safeguards. Despite this widespread criticism, WISeR was rolled out in six states in January, potentially affecting as many as 6.4 million Medicare beneficiaries, according to one estimate…”

For the complaint: https://www.eff.org/document/complaint-eff-v-cms-medicare-wiser-foia

A tool for wholesale hallucinations?

https://www.bespacific.com/claude-meets-westlaw-and-lexis/

Claude Meets Westlaw and Lexis

Seth Chandler – “Something remarkable has happened in the last few months, and most of the legal academy has not noticed. Anthropic’s Claude—the AI assistant many of us have experimented with for drafting, brainstorming, and analysis—can now directly control a web browser. That means Claude can log into Westlaw or Lexis, run searches, read cases, pull up law review articles and treatises, and synthesize what it finds into polished work product, autonomously, in minutes, while you watch. Subscribers to this blog already know about tools like Midpage AI, which provides a dedicated connector between Claude and a legal database. I have described Midpage—rightly—as The Killer App. Its technology is sound: it uses modern MCP protocols and direct API calls, which are fast and reliable. A browser agent, by contrast, relies on primitive point-and-click methods developed in the 1970s that depend on visual interpretation of a webpage—something trivial for most humans but slower and more error-prone for computers. That disadvantage, however, is now offset in two important ways. First, browser access unlocks the far larger compendium of materials held by the legacy giants. Westlaw and Lexis maintain vast repositories of foreign-nation materials, far broader coverage of agency decisions, and enormous collections of secondary sources—law review articles and treatises whose utility one can question in the abstract but that in practice periodically prove invaluable. Second, the pay structure of legal database access works in your favor. Most ABA-accredited law schools provide Westlaw and Lexis access to faculty and students at no additional charge; there is no marginal cost per query—at least until Westlaw and Lexis move to shut down external agentic AI access to their repositories. Why pay $25 a month for a separate legal database subscription when Claude can navigate the ones you already have? In short, The Killer App is now even deadlier…”

Life lessons?

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/still-more-useful-maxims

Still More Useful Maxims