Shooting
Latest
iRobot's Roomba i7+ is half off and down to $500 for Prime Day
Amazon knocks 50 percent off iRobot's Roomba i7+, bringing it down to $500 for Prime Day.
Attorney General asks Apple to unlock naval base shooter's iPhones
Attorney General William Barr has joined the FBI in asking Apple to unlock two iPhones belonging to the man who attacked a naval base in Pensacola, Florida, in December. Barr also declared the shooting "an act of terrorism." Apple has given investigators details from Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani's iCloud account, but it rejected a plea from the FBI to unlock the phones. The company has claimed complying with such a request could set a precedent that may compel it to unlock a device whenever a federal agency asks it to. The Justice Department wants access to Alshamrani's phones so it can view encrypted messages on apps such as WhatsApp and Signal. It's hoping to determine whether he was acting alone or if others knew of his plans. Barr noted that both phones were damaged in the attack, but said FBI crime lab experts were able to make them operational. The attorney general claimed at a press conference Monday Apple "has not given us any substantive assistance" when it came to unlocking the devices. "This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that investigators be able to get access to digital evidence once they have obtained a court order based on probable cause," he said. "We call on Apple and other technology companies to help us find a solution so that we can better protect the lives of Americans and prevent future attacks."
Airbnb bans 'party houses' following Halloween shooting
Airbnb is tightening its rental policies following a Halloween shooting that left five dead in Orinda, California. CEO Brian Chesky has announced that the service is banning rentals for "party houses" like the mansion at the heart of the shooting, where over 100 people had gathered before the shooting started that night. Chesky also promised "immediate action" against people found violating the policy, including removing them from the service.
Facebook will train its content-removal AI with police camera footage
Facebook will use footage from police body cameras to train its automatic detection systems to spot and remove footage of mass shootings. The company announced Tuesday that it will partner with law enforcement in the US and UK to obtain footage from their firearms training programs. Data from those videos should help Facebook's systems detect real-world, first-person footage of violent events.
US Homeland Security Committee subpoenas 8chan owner
The House Committee on Homeland Security has subpoenaed 8chan owner Jim Watkins to testify before congress after the site was linked to a deadly mass shooting in El Paso. "At least three acts of deadly white supremacist extremist violence have been linked to 8chan in the last six months," wrote Chairman Bennie G. Thompson and Ranking Member Mike Rogers.
White House invites tech companies to discuss violent online extremism
The White House plans to host a meeting with tech companies to discuss the rise of violent online extremism. According to The Washington Post, this is the Trump administration's first major engagement on the issue after the recent mass shooting in Texas left 22 people dead. Trump is scheduled to be at fundraisers in the Hamptons, so he may not attend.
Cloudflare cuts off extremist site 8chan after multiple shootings
Cloudflare has announced that it will no longer provide security services to the far-right site 8chan following the deadly, mass shooting by a white nationalist in El Paso, Texas. That will open 8chan up to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, starting at midnight PDT, that could permanently disable the site unless it's able to find another security service.
Facebook's AI missed Christchurch shooting videos filmed in first-person
In the 24 hours after the Christchurch shooting, Facebook removed 1.5 million videos worldwide, but more than a month later, footage was still circulating on the platform. Now, the company says its AI had a hard time detecting the footage because of the way in which it was filmed.
Christchurch shooting videos are still on Facebook over a month later
Current methods for filtering out terrorist content are still quite limited, and a recent discovery makes that all too clear. Motherboard and the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center's Eric Feinberg have discovered that variants of the Christchurch mass shooter's video were available on Facebook 36 days after the incident despite Facebook's efforts to wipe them from the social network. Some of them were trimmed to roughly a minute, but they were all open to the public -- you just had to click a "violent or graphic content" confirmation to see them. Others appeared to dodge filtering attempts by using screen captures instead of the raw video.
House chair asks tech CEOs to speak about New Zealand shooting response (updated)
Internet companies say they've been scrambling to remove video of the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, but US politicians are concerned they haven't been doing enough. The Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson, has sent letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube asking them to brief the committee on their responses to the video on March 27th. Thompson was concerned the footage was still "widely available" on the internet giants' platforms, and that they "must do better."
YouTube bans secondary Alex Jones channel hosting NZ conspiracy videos
YouTube has terminated a channel Alex Jones was reportedly using to skirt his ban from the platform. On a video posted on Resistance News, which was a secondary Infowars channel according to Media Matters, Jones described last week's New Zealand mosque shootings as a "false flag" operation and attacked Muslims.
New Zealand ISPs block websites hosting Christchurch shooting video
Internet providers in New Zealand aren't relying solely on companies like Facebook and YouTube to get rid of the Christchurch mass shooter's video. Major ISPs in the country, including Vodafone, Spark and Vocus, are working together to block access at the DNS level to websites that don't quickly respond to video takedown requests. The move quickly cut off access to multiple sites, including 4chan, 8chan (where the shooter was a member), LiveLeak and file transfer site Mega. The block goes away the moment a site complies, and Vodafone told Bleeping Computer that a "number of sites" were unblocked that way.
Facebook pulled over 1.5 million videos of New Zealand shooting
Internet giants have been racing to pull copies of the New Zealand mass shooter's video from their sites, and Facebook is illustrating just how difficult that task has been. Facebook New Zealand's Mia Garlick has revealed that the social network removed 1.5 million attack videos worldwide in the first 24 hours, 1.2 million of which were stopped at the upload stage. This includes versions edited to remove the graphic footage of the shootings, Garlick said, as the company wants to both respect people affected by the murders and the "concerns of local authorities."
Right-wing haven Gab is back online
Gab is back online following a brief shuttering in the wake of the anti-Semitic shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue late last month. The social network had been banned by its hosting provider Joyent and domain registrar GoDaddy, and blacklisted by other services such as PayPal, Stripe and Shopify. The ban seemed to be in response to Gab moderators' inaction against the shooter's history of racist rants and hate mongering on the platform preceding the shooting.
'Madden' shooting survivor files lawsuit against EA and the venue
Last week, there was a tragic shooting at a Madden 19 tournament at a bar in Jacksonville, Florida. Two professional players were killed and 10 others were injured. Now, one of the victims who survived the attack has filed a lawsuit against EA, the studio behind Madden, the location where the shooting took place and six other defendants.
Mass shooting takes place at 'Madden 19' tournament in Florida
Multiple people have been killed and others injured at a mass shooting during a Madden 19 tournament at the GLHF Game Bar in Jacksonville, Florida. Details of what happened are still incoming, but the incident took place in the middle of a qualifying round and reportedly left at least three dead and eleven injured, one of which includes a suspect who appears to have shot themselves. One of the wounded includes CompLexity Gaming competitor Drini Gjoka, who escaped with a grazed thumb.
Google Assistant fired a gun: We need to talk
For better or worse, Google Assistant can do it all. From mundane tasks like turning on your lights and setting reminders to convincingly mimicking human speech patterns, the AI helper is so capable it's scary. Its latest (unofficial) ability, though, is a bit more sinister. Artist Alexander Reben recently taught Assistant to fire a gun. Fortunately, the victim was an apple, not a living being. The 30-second video, simply titled "Google Shoots," shows Reben saying, "OK Google, activate gun." Barely a second later, a buzzer goes off, the gun fires and Assistant responds, "Sure, turning on the gun." On the surface, the footage is underwhelming -- nothing visually arresting is happening. But peel back the layers even a little and it's obvious that this project is meant to provoke a conversation on the boundaries of what AI should be allowed to do.
Twitter tries to explain how it fights breaking news hoaxes
During the minutes and hours after shots rang out at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, many people used Twitter just as they have after other high-profile events: to spread fake information and hoaxes. In response to reports about how bad its "fake news" problem is (as a Buzzfeed reporter maintained a live thread collecting hoaxes, trolls started using an image of her in their fakes) Twitter published a post about "Serving the Public Conversation During Breaking Events." It didn't mention hoaxes like the infamous "Sam Hyde" images by name, or the hacking of YouTube's Vadim Lavrusk, but more broadly outlined its policies and aims for moderating posts during this type of event.
YouTube shooting suspect had been angry over filtering, demonetization
Tonight San Bruno police identified the shooter at YouTube's HQ as Nasim Aghdam, a 39-year-old woman from San Diego and said there is no evidence she knew the victims or that they were specifically targeted. While the sources have not confirmed a reason behind the attack, now that her name is known we've found a number of videos from her posted on YouTube and other sites saying that she was a vegan athlete and animal rights activist.
YouTube HQ shooting: Suspect dead, at least three others wounded
Multiple social media reports, including from YouTube employees, have indicated there is an active shooter at the company's northern California headquarters. The San Bruno Police have confirmed an active shooter at the address for the campus, and the ATF has responded to the site.
