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The Pentagon has confirmed what privacy advocates long feared — foreign adversaries have been purchasing commercial geolocation data to track and surveil American troops in the Middle East. The data didn't come from hacks or espionage. It came from legitimate data brokers. Elected officials say the Defense Department has been frustratingly slow to respond.
That story connects to a broader pattern. A new BBC investigation finds that modern cars are quietly collecting detailed information about drivers — location, behavior, even emotional state — and sharing it with insurers, advertisers, and governments. Automakers call it a feature. Critics call it surveillance on wheels, and they warn it's only getting started.
Meanwhile, the tension around AI-assisted coding boiled over in a striking way this week. A developer, apparently fed up with so-called vibe coders who rely on AI agents without understanding the underlying code, embedded hidden sabotage instructions inside a popular open source Java testing library. The move sparked fierce debate about trust, responsibility, and what it means to build software in the age of AI.
Those are the stories that matter today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
