Security, Spoken

Just 17 months after leading chants of “Lock her up” at the Republican National Convention, protesting FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn himself faced the inside of a Washington courtroom Friday morning. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You may not realize it, but the cell phone in your pocket creates a time-stamped map of everywhere you go: where you shop, where you receive medical care, and how often you frequent a church, school, or gun range. That's because cell phones automatically connect to the nearest cell phone tower, and by doing so, constantly determine and record the user's location. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Andrew D. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's increasingly unremarkable for consumers to use artificial intelligence tools in their daily lives. Machine learning algorithms power your smart assistants, organize your vacation photos, and even analyze your health data. But human beings pick up the slack for those automated technologies more often than you might realize. And that means that real people can sometimes access user data that customers thought would only be seen by machines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The intersection of quantum computing and espionage may feel like a faraway future. But in his latest novel, David Ignatius, Washington’s own John le Carré, tackles just that. The Quantum Spy, out now, revolves around a central theme of spy literature: the race for a new technology, to discover something new that, even if only for a moment, will provide a geopolitical advantage. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There are hackable security flaws in software. And then there are those that don't even require hacking at all—just a knock on the door, and asking to be let in. Apple's macOS High Sierra has the second kind. On Tuesday, security researchers disclosed a bug that allows anyone a blindingly easy method of breaking that operating system's security protections. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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As you emerge from your turkey-induced coma, take a moment to reflect on the past week in security, which despite the holiday was chock-full of wonderments. From Uber shadiness to Android location-tracking, it was quite the whirlwind. Uber made headlines midweek when it came out that the company had not only been breached a year ago—coughing up the personal info of 57 million users—but paid the hackers $100,000 to keep it quiet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Intelligence agencies have a limited number of trained human analysts looking for undeclared nuclear facilities, or secret military sites, hidden among terabytes of satellite images. But the same sort of deep learning artificial intelligence that enables Google and Facebook to automatically filter images of human faces and cats could also prove invaluable in the world of spy versus spy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Ahmed Younis first took a job at the State Department in September of 2016, the cross-country commute between his office in Washington, DC and his home in Los Angeles, where his wife and daughter live, seemed worth it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Security researchers have raised the alarm for years about the Intel remote administration feature known as the Management Engine. The platform has a lot of useful features for IT managers, but it requires deep system access that offers a tempting target for attackers; compromising the Management Engine could lead to full control of a given computer. Now, after several research groups have uncovered ME bugs, Intel has confirmed that those worst-case fears may be possible. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices