On this episode of Uncanny Valley, we dive into the differences between what the US government said about a Jeffrey Epstein video it released and the story told by its metadata.
Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”
There is no evidence the footage was deceptively manipulated, but ambiguities around how the video was processed may further fuel conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death.
Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding.
Army intelligence analysts are monitoring civilian-made ICE tracking tools, treating them as potential threats, as immigration protests spread nationwide.
Plus: A 22-year-old former intern gets put in charge of a key anti-terrorism program, threat intelligence firms finally wrangle their confusing names for hacker groups, and more.
A requirement that ICE agents ensure courthouse arrests don’t clash with state and local laws has been rescinded by the agency. ICE declined to explain what that means for future enforcement.
Everyone knows what it’s like to lose cell service. A burgeoning open source project called Meshtastic is filling the gap for when you’re in the middle of nowhere—or when disaster strikes.
Customs and Border Protection has swabbed the DNA of migrant children as young as 4, whose genetic data is uploaded to an FBI-run database that can track them if they commit crimes in the future.
Plus: 12 more people are indicted over a $263 million crypto heist, and a former FBI director is accused of threatening Donald Trump thanks to an Instagram post of seashells.
Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has canceled plans to more tightly regulate the sale of Americans’ sensitive personal data.
CBP’s acting commissioner has rescinded four Biden-era policies that aimed to protect vulnerable people in the agency’s custody, including mothers, infants, and the elderly.
Plus: France blames Russia for a series of cyberattacks, the US is taking steps to crack down on a gray market allegedly used by scammers, and Microsoft pushes the password one step closer to death.
Plus: Another DOGE operative allegedly has a history in the hacking world, and Donald Trump’s national security adviser apparently had way more Signal chats than previously known.
WIRED has found four new Venmo accounts that appear to be associated with Trump officials who were in an infamous Signal chat. One made a payment with a note consisting solely of an eggplant emoji.
A WIRED review shows national security adviser Mike Waltz, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and other top officials left sensitive information exposed via Venmo—until WIRED asked about it.
Plus: A nominee to lead CISA emerges, Elon Musk visits the NSA, a renowned crypto cracking firm’s secret (and problematic) cofounder is revealed, and more.
Google enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies—as well as the makers of classified defense technology, a WIRED investigation has found.
A Florida data broker told a US senator it obtained sensitive data on US military members in Germany from a Lithuanian firm, which denies involvement—revealing the opaque nature of online ad surveillance.
Data WIRED collected during the 2024 Democratic National Convention strongly suggests the use of a cell-site simulator, a controversial spy device that intercepts sensitive data from every phone in its range.
The inside story of the teenager whose “swatting” calls sent armed police racing into hundreds of schools nationwide—and the private detective who tracked him down.
Misconfigured license-plate-recognition systems reveal the livestreams of individual cameras and the wealth of data they collect about every vehicle that passes by them.
A network of Facebook pages has been advertising “fuel filters” that are actually meant to be used as silencers, which are heavily regulated by US law. Even US military officials are concerned.
Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, was apprehended on Monday after visiting a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
The FTC is targeting data brokers that monitored people’s movements during protests and around US military installations. But signs suggest the Trump administration will be far more lenient.
More than 3 billion phone coordinates collected by a US data broker expose the detailed movements of US military and intelligence workers in Germany—and the Pentagon is powerless to stop it.
Alan Filion, believed to have operated under the handle “Torswats,” admitted to making more than 375 fake threats against schools, places of worship, and government buildings around the United States.
A bug that WIRED discovered in True the Vote’s VoteAlert app revealed user information—and an election worker who wrote about carrying out an illegal voter-suppression scheme.
From Trump campaign signs to Planned Parenthood bumper stickers, license plate readers around the US are creating searchable databases that reveal Americans’ political leanings and more.
Plus: The FBI dismantles the largest-ever China-backed botnet, the DOJ charges two men with a $243 million crypto theft, Apple’s MacOS Sequoia breaks cybersecurity tools, and more.
Using special software, WIRED investigated police surveillance at the DNC. We collected signals from nearly 300,000 devices, revealing vulnerabilities for both law enforcement and everyday citizens alike.
Plus: Meta pays $1.4 million in a historic privacy settlement, Microsoft blames a cyberattack for a major Azure outage, and an artist creates a face recognition system to reveal your NYPD “coppelganger.”
The Republican VP nominee's Venmo network reveals connections ranging from the architects of Project 2025 to enemies of Donald Trump—and the populist's close ties to the very elites he rails against.
AWS hosted a server linked to the Bezos family- and Nvidia-backed search startup that appears to have been used to scrape the sites of major outlets, prompting an inquiry into potential rules violations.
A WIRED investigation shows that the AI-powered search startup Forbes has accused of stealing its content is surreptitiously scraping—and making things up out of thin air.
A WIRED investigation, based on more than 22 million flight coordinates, reveals the complicated truth about the first full-blown police drone program in the US—and why your city could be next.
A WIRED investigation found thousands of Eventbrite posts selling escort services and drugs like Xanax and oxycodone—some of which the company’s algorithm recommended alongside addiction recovery events.
Plus: China is suspected in a hack targeting the UK’s military, the US Marines are testing gun-toting robotic dogs, and Dell suffers a data breach impacting 49 million customers.
A WIRED investigation uncovered coordinates collected by a controversial data broker that reveal sensitive information about visitors to an island once owned by Epstein, the notorious sex offender.
Plus: An ex-Google engineer gets arrested for allegedly stealing trade secrets, hackers breach the top US cybersecurity agency, and X’s new feature exposes sensitive user data.
Registered Agents Inc. has for years allowed businesses to register under a cloak of anonymity. A WIRED investigation reveals that its secretive founder has taken the practice to an extreme.
The locations of microphones used to detect gunshots have been kept hidden from police and the public. A WIRED analysis of leaked coordinates confirms arguments critics have made against the technology.
Plus: China’s Volt Typhoon hackers lurked in US systems for years, the Biden administration’s crackdown on spyware vendors ramps up, and a new pro-Beijing disinformation campaign gets exposed.
For nearly two years, police have been tracking down the culprit behind a wave of hoax threats. A digital trail took them to the door of a 17-year-old in California.
A California teenager who allegedly used the handle Torswats to carry out a nationwide swatting campaign is being extradited to Florida to face felony charges, WIRED has learned.
Police around the US say they're justified to run DNA-generated 3D models of faces through facial recognition tools to help crack cold cases. Everyone but the cops thinks that’s a bad idea.
A WIRED investigation into internet censorship in US schools found widespread use of filters to censor health, identity, and other crucial information. Students say it makes the web entirely unusable.
A WIRED analysis of leaked police documents verifies that a secretive government program is allowing federal, state, and local law enforcement to access phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.
Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup conducted years of tests at UC Davis, a public university. A WIRED investigation reveals how Neuralink and the university keep the grisly images of test subjects hidden.
A civil liberties group has asked the DOJ to investigate deployment of the ShotSpotter gunfire-detection system, which research shows is often installed in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
SoundThinking is purchasing parts of Geolitica, the company that created PredPol. Experts say the acquisition marks a new era of companies dictating how police operate.
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