Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily look at the stories shaping our digital world.
France's tax authority is dealing with a serious breach after a cybercriminal operating under the name ZeroBytes advertised what they claim is a stolen database of two million taxpayer records on a dark web forum. The General Directorate of Public Finances confirmed the intrusion occurred back in June, meaning the data sat exposed for months before this week's public disclosure.
Meanwhile in California, cargo thieves are getting dangerously sophisticated. A WIRED investigation reveals that armed criminals used the PIT maneuver and rear-ending tactics to disable private security escorts on state highways, then made off with millions of dollars in AI data center hardware. Both shipments were headed from Silicon Valley to Southern California, and neither truck has been found.
And Meta is pushing the boundaries of what its AI smartglasses could eventually do. A newly published patent describes glasses that use facial recognition to identify people in the frame, track their movements, and automatically stitch together a highlight reel of the gathering. The dinner party example in the filing is charming on the surface, but the privacy implications are anything but.
Three stories, one thread running through all of them — our data, our hardware, and our faces are increasingly up for grabs. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
