Security News This Week: ICE Can Now Spy on Every Phone in Your Neighborhood

After a federal An agent fatally shot Renée Good, 37, in Minneapolis on Wednesday, WIRED reported in December on ICE shooter Jonathan Ross’ testimony in federal court. He said he was a firearms trainer and that he had had “hundreds” of encounters with drivers in a professional capacity during enforcement actions. Additionally, we examined how the tactics behind policing protests evolve toward intentional antagonism. If you haven’t seen it, here’s our guide to protesting safely in the age of surveillance.

Meanwhile, the AI-powered chatbot Grok, developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, was everywhere this week because the platform expanded access to digital “undressing” capabilities that allow users to generate nude images of people and then post them to the social media platform available on Grok’s official website and which is even more explicit than the content on X. All of this has left researchers and activists wondering why Grok and On Friday, X appeared to take steps to limit who can generate images with Grok to paying, “verified” users. In practice, however, the chatbot is still used to create sexualized images of “undressing” on the platform, although this functionality is no longer as accessible as before.

If, like billions of other people around the world, you’re a WhatsApp user, we have tips on features of the end-to-end encrypted communications app that can improve its privacy and security even further. Additionally, although invasive spyware is still relatively rare, it continues to proliferate around the world. So we have a guide to protecting your smartphone.

And there’s more! Every week, we round up security and privacy news that we haven’t covered in depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Documents obtained by 404 Media shed new light on how surveillance tools Tangles and Webloc from a company called Penlink can provide information to ICE agents after the agency contracted those services in September. Social media and phone surveillance platforms can be used to monitor neighborhoods or blocks for cell phones and track devices over time, potentially revealing where people live, work and visit. Penlink purchases vast amounts of commercial location data to augment and expand the network.

“This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an uncontrollable agency. This granular location information paints a detailed picture of who we are, where we go, and who we spend time with,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media.

Over the past two weeks, thousands of Iranians have demonstrated against the country’s brutal regime and leaders, calling for reforms after protests over poor economic conditions began. In response to the growing unrest, the country’s supreme leader has indicated that severe crackdowns could take place. As part of the country’s response, the country initiated a complete internet shutdown: since January 9, Iranians had been without connection for more than 24 hours. Reports indicate that people have been unable to access social media, leaving them without contact with family members and preventing them from using ATMs and bank cards.

This is not the first time that Iran has cut off the Internet for millions of people. The country, which has for years developed the technical capabilities to digitally isolate itself from the global internet, has already cut connections in 2025, 2022 and 2019. These internet shutdowns have often been designed to prevent protesters from communicating with each other and organizing, to limit the spread of information and to prevent video footage of law enforcement brutality from spreading around the world. They also cause enormous economic damage to Iran.

In October, officials in the United States and the United Kingdom sanctioned Cambodian national Chen Zhi and his company, Prince Holding Group, for allegedly running forced labor fraud complexes across Cambodia — and a $15 billion fraud operation in the process. This week, Chen was extradited from Cambodia to China. He was shown on television wearing a balaclava and handcuffs as he was escorted off a plane in Beijing. The Guardian reports that the charges against Chen in China are “not immediately clear,” although officials have said his case is part of a broader crackdown on the notorious fraud schemes that have bilked billions of people around the world.

China’s notorious state-backed spy hacker Salt Typhoon allegedly compromised the email accounts of a number of US congressional committee staffers in a campaign detected in December. The attackers targeted the communications of staff of the House of Representatives China Committee as well as those of the Intelligence Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. This incident is just the latest in a wide-ranging series of public and private sector breaches by Salt Typhoon that have given Chinese intelligence services deep insight into U.S. government communications.