Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People

 It's insane how we're letting decrepit old white men and women, who won't even be around in 10 years, to destroy this planet for profits they can't take with them. 

Amen

Susan Collins’ brush with an FBI probe shows how Trump has enabled public corruption.

But there are clear ways for future presidents and lawmakers to end this era of graft.

FBI Builds Out National NSPM-7 Center to Track Dissent, Docs Show

TPM – Talking Points Memo: “IRS sent 10 agents and three analysts to national effort to police “anti-capitalism” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” The FBI has tapped employees from across federal law enforcement to crack down on dissent, including agents and analysts with the Internal Revenue Service, documents shared with TPM show. 

They’re working at the FBI’s NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center, per records obtained through FOIA by watchdog group American Oversight. In National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, the White House laid out a national strategy for federal law enforcement, directing it to treat beliefs like “anti-Americanism, anti-Capitalism, and anti-Christianity” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” as indicators of domestic terrorism. The records obtained by American Oversight include organizational charts for the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center and a list of thirteen IRS employees — names redacted — who are detailed to work at the center. 

Emails obtained by American Oversight between IRS employees, including one assigned to the Tax Exempt and Government Entities division and another assigned to Criminal Investigations, also reference a “Violent Anarchist Task Force Working Group Meeting.” The org charts, dated May 20, show that two attorneys from the DOJ’s Office of the Deputy Attorney General — the nerve center that runs the Justice Department — are a part of the Joint Mission Center.

The records reveal details of the architecture that federal law enforcement has built to implement NSPM-7 and fight “Antifa,” the loose network of anti-fascist activists that the administration has deemed a terrorist threat. The records are heavily redacted.

Massie, Khanna Say They Have Secured 218 Signatures for New Epstein Files Vote

MTN: “Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., announced Thursday that they have secured commitments for the 218 signatures needed to force a House vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act II. The announcement comes just hours after MeidasTouch reported that the discharge petition had reached 216 signatures, leaving Massie and Khanna just two short of the 218-member threshold. At the time, every House Democrat except Reps. John Garamendi of California and Adam Smith of Washington had signed. 

According to Khanna, those final two signatures are now accounted for. “Thomas Massie and I have defied history for a second time, securing 218 signatures on Epstein 2.0,” Khanna said in a video Thursday. Khanna said four Republicans had joined the effort and that the two remaining Democrats had been sick and would sign when Speaker Mike Johnson calls the House back into session. Massie made the same announcement, saying the four Republicans backing the petition are himself and Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

Four Republicans have signed the Epstein Files II discharge petition!” Massie wrote. “When we return from recess that Speaker Johnson imposed until the election, Rep. Ro Khanna & I will have 218 names required to force a vote!”

 

Exposing the Trump Family’s Unprecedented White House Cash Machine

Parnas Perspective: “Donald Trump did not just return to the White House in 2025. He returned to it as a business opportunity, and eighteen months in, the numbers show just how thoroughly he and his family have treated the presidency as a revenue stream rather than a public trust. Trump’s personal wealth has ballooned by more than 165 percent since his second inauguration, reaching an estimated $6.3 billion. His overall revenue jumped to at least $2.2 billion in 2025 alone, compared with a minimum of $622 million the year before he took office, according to his own financial disclosure. No American president in the 250-year history of the office has ever converted the job itself into personal income at this scale, and the money trail runs through crypto exchanges, defense contractors, foreign sovereign wealth funds, Wall Street trading desks, and a growing list of corporations writing checks to his pet projects…”

Serbia shows off Chinese robot dogs at military exercise Intellinews

We’re Already Living Through Journalism’s Dystopian Future Truthout

Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People

404 Media: “Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED, revealing in new detail how exactly Flock Safety’s cameras track the movements of both vehicles and people. The hackers say they are also publishing details on how they managed to obtain the software, in the hopes that other people may copy them. 

The breach provides an unprecedented look inside a system that Flock has described as protected by on-device encryption. The hackers were able to copy the camera’s storage and recover an encryption key stored on the device, which unlocked videos of thousands of vehicle detections. The hackers shared the material with 404 Media and the transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which shared the data with WIRED. 404 Media and WIRED then analyzed those files as part of a joint investigation. 

While much of the automatic license plate reader’s (ALPR) most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible, the joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclist’s saddlebag…”

 

A stranger can learn a lot about you in 5 minutes online

ZDNET – how to check and delete it ASAP [with the caveat that such deletions may not stick as your personal data is constantly refreshed online]: ” You might be worried about cybercriminals scouring the internet for your data, but far more searches happen much closer to home. It takes a second for someone to look you up online, and the reasons they might do vary: 

a first date could be coming up and the person you’re meant to meet wants to make sure you are who you say you are; your new landlord wants to see what sort of person they are going to be renting to; past friends or no-contact family members might be trying to track you down; or the hiring manager of a job you applied for could be running a check to see how you behave on social media…There’s far more of your information out there than you realize, and with it, someone can work out your movements, habits, and more. Here’s how it’s done and what you can do to stop it…

Gemini Hacked Three Companies in First Known Breakout by Google’s AI

WSJ – no paywall – The episode resembled similar hacks by other AI models, but Google said it didn’t consider it an instance of model misalignment: “Google’s Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity capabilities, the first known example of the company’s artificial-intelligence systems autonomously committing such an act.

The hacks, which the company confirmed on Friday, occurred in May as part of a test run by the company Irregular, which was also involved in similar incidents disclosed by OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. In one of the cases, the model guessed passwords until it gained access to a protected system. In the other two cases, the model found credentials in a public repository that allowed it to then access protected systems. 

In each case, the model ended the intrusion after determining it had accessed a real company’s systems, Google said. Irregular notified Google about the hacks at the end of July, Google and Irregular said, in the wake of the discovery that OpenAI’s agents had hacked the AI software company Hugging Face.

 Google didn’t disclose the hacks until The Wall Street Journal reached out with inquiries this week. Companies are wrestling with how and when to disclose instances of security breaches and model misbehavior, amid a steady drumbeat of such incidents and rising fears over out-of-control AI. 

Some security breaches have been voluntarily disclosed by the companies themselves; others have been discovered by security researchers and revealed in the media, including a May cyberattack conducted by OpenAI agents against a popular online service for coders…”

Hackers Say They Have Data on All FBI Employees

Trump & Musk fired the Cyber Unit at the FBI. Crazy Eyes Patel couldn't find a snake in a snake pit.

404 Media: “A high profile hacking group [comprised of perhaps one person] claims it has breached multiple FBI-related services and stolen data “on all FBI employees and applicants.”

 A representative of the group, called ShinyHunters, told 404 Media the data includes FBI agents’ names, home addresses, phone number, and information on their spouse. The data breach could be massively significant and may have all sorts of national security and counterintelligence implications. 

Criminals from the same ecosystem as ShinyHunters have previously used hacked data like phone records to track, intimidate, and harass the FBI agents investigating them. The highly sensitive data could also be a boon to foreign intelligence agencies who want to better understand how one of the most important law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the U.S. operates. 

And if the data fell into the hands of more criminals, FBI agents and their spouses could face serious threats to their safety. “We hacked the FBI. We hold data on all FBI employees and applicants,” the representative of the group told 404 Media. 

The representative provided 404 Media with a sample appearing to contain the personal data of 5,000 FBI employees. That data included an alleged address, phone number, date of birth, and in some cases details on their spouse…”

“What worries me most is how any criminal with a grudge could use this data to target and physically harm not only the F.B.I. agents who investigated them, but also those agents’ families,” former senior FBI official Cynthia Kaiser said.

“Rich man’s war and a Poor man’s fight” - BBC Says War May Be Coming, but War Is Already Here

 We don't need to worry about AI killing us, we have TA, Trump Administration aka Krasnov Administration

Poland’s Ruling Liberals Appear To Be Plotting A Major Escalation Against Russia

Warsaw needs to justify the 4.8 percent of GDP being spent on war racket, but how far do some Cold War warriors want to go?

BBC Says War May Be Coming, but War Is Already Here

Rising economic instability, censorship, and polarization signal that we have quietly entered a new wartime era.

There is a growing number of indications that we should consider the period we are living in as wartime. Its effects are being felt throughout the world at different intensities, and if we actually consider it wartime, many of the things that are happening make sense. This is not to say that they are justified.

The BBC published an article on the 19th of September titled “War may be coming. Are we psychologically ready?” The article suggests that governments in Western Europe—and, since it’s the BBC, referring specifically to the UK—should prepare the population for war. Despite war being expressed as a possibility in the title, the piece actually takes for granted that it will happen. However, it could be argued that we are already in it.

This is a war by the U.S.-led West to retain power against rising contenders. Europe, in this scenario, is a secondary actor to the U.S., and the war in Ukraine proves the point. These contenders have distinct interests which converge in opposing or resisting the U.S.-led West. Over the past roughly 70 years, the U.S.-led West has been dominant in finance, resource control, the military and culture amongst other fields.

This dominance is being challenged in all spheres. That’s why this war is happening across many different arenas. It’s a financial war, a trade war, a technological war, and a cultural war. The discourses emerging and the decisions being made reflect all of these and other fronts.

The opposing sides are formed, but they also evolve with the conflict. In my understanding, there’s no right side because both are pursuing the same type of worldview and hold similar agendas, even if culturally different. That’s why some say this is not an actual war, but a managed systemic transition or an iteration of the system. Perhaps. But the effects are being felt very tangibly by ordinary people. That there’s no “right side” does not mean either that there’s no side with more rights. 

This war, at the moment, has two open, kinetic hot fronts and other secondary ones: Ukraine and the Middle East are the main battles, but conflicts between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, conflicts in Sudan, in Mali, or even in Myanmar, and the “war on drugs” in Latin America are related to it. So too are the trade war, the technological race, the sanctions battle, resource control and competition, migrant flows, and polarized cultural discourse. It is possible that other hot fronts might open between Russia and Western Europe.

What are some of the effects of these conflicts that characterize wartime periods? If we exclude those directly tied to the areas where kinetic war is happening—such as a severe increase in mortality, public health collapse, and a rise in preventable diseases—there are still many.

War radically distorts the way the economy functions, and it is undeniable that we are going through a period of economic instability and unpredictability. Markets take huge swings within a single day, and although in the U.S. they have been posting record numbers, much of this is manipulation. Few people doubt that there is a storm brewing, caused by or hidden under the AI financial bubble. Disrupted transport routes and panic buying cause price shocks in staples, fuel, and fertilizer.

In other countries that are closely connected to the U.S., such as Japan, South Korea, or those in Europe, the situation is increasingly worrying. In order to hide that these nations’ economies are shrinking, there is a growing reallocation of capital toward military development and purposes. It’s a telling sign of war when the economy becomes a war economy. This is where Europe, for example, is heading. Think of Volkswagen closing car factories and taking state contracts to build bombs.

This might create the illusion of economic growth, but only for a part of the population. The rest suffer through high inflation—even if it’s disguised—stagnation, and a rising cost of living, which is further worsened by national budgets diverting funds away from public education, welfare, and infrastructure toward military operations. The population suffers not only from falling living standards, but psychologically under the dread that what might come tomorrow will be worse than today.

War creates displacement. People flee their homes because life becomes unsustainable or dangerous. The global reach of these wars makes those flows of people move to distant places. A war in Syria creates an influx of refugees in Germany. A war in Ukraine drives people to Spain. The economic uncertainty created by disrupted trade flows and the power struggle for natural resources drives people to migrate from Africa or South America.

War also increases polarization. The need to name the enemy, to convince the public that it is a threat that needs to be eliminated at all costs, and that all resources should be dedicated to it—which comes to the detriment of the population—necessitates exaggerating the discourse. Things become black and white; you are either with us or against us. There’s no complexity. That is what is increasingly happening in public discourse throughout the West. And all those who can be labelled as enemies—first foreigners and then citizens—will be called out to be expelled or eliminated.

That also means more severe and extreme censorship. Public opinion needs to be managed; people have to believe a particular narrative, and any other narrative that doubts or contradicts it will be censored. Media will be increasingly centrally controlled or run by centralized actors. Those who do not comply with the official narrative will be shut down. Only a certain degree of criticism of war policy implementation is allowed; if you doubt the war itself or those managing it, you are an enemy.

This also leads to institutional erosion and lawlessness. Government checks and balances are dismantled, while opaque appropriations of funding and corruption flourish. Justice becomes a tool to discipline those who doubt the war’s purpose and remains favorable toward those who support it, even if they are known criminals. State bureaucracy gives priority to war efforts, and institutions become intimately tied to war, with funding and research directed toward those purposes.

War also creates scarcity, and shortages of food, fuel, and other supplies drive up prices for obvious reasons: disruption of production and supply chains, as well as countries curbing or banning exports in order to secure their own consumption needs. That means trade wars, sanctions, and state control of private companies—in some cases, full nationalization.

These are just some of the general effects that we can attribute to war and that we can expect during wartime. And all of them are taking place right now, at the same time. When one, two, or a few of them happen in isolation, they can be attributed to different causes; but when all of them are happening at once, there can only be one deduction: we are in a wartime period.

Perhaps, and hopefully, neither you nor I will have to suffer the extreme and tragic consequences of being on the front lines or close to them. But we are experiencing the consequences of war. And I think if we look at what’s happening throughout the world, especially in the West, through this lens, then it makes sense. The economic uncertainty, the shortages, the increase in the cost of living, the censorship, the capture of the state and its institutions, the political polarization, and even the lies and corruption are all part of wartime.

Perhaps war and peace are two constant dynamics, or, as Tolstoy described them, two states of mind. There are wars that happen when there is no sound of cannons, and peace can be found in the midst of conflict. I subscribe to this, but it is essential to be lucid and clear about the times we are living in, in order not to be swept along by them.

Viva La Difference

 

"Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind." ~ Virginia Woolf

Do we really have the nerve to reprint this – 20 pieces of advice that are now 20 years old!  How do they hold up in today’s VUCAA world?

KR, September 2026

Viva La Difference

Published February 2005.

Human progress was never reasonable. It is driven by flashes of inspiration, streams of emotion and buckets of passion. Across time, a burning drive to make a difference has been the difference. Never truer than in this crazy age. Here’s 20 ways you can make a difference in 2005.

SIRENS

1. Be Soft

Soft is strong. King Kong (and its director Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings) are big softies. And a kangaroo can’t jump unless its tail is touching the ground. The future will belong to soft connections. Emotion not reason. Software not hardware. Soft not hard power. Soft is transparent. Soft is enabling. Soft is flexible. Soft is inclusive. Soft is slow Italian Food not Fast Fat Food. Soft.

2. Be in Spirit

To be inspired means to be “in spirit.” To be an Inspirational Player, a radical optimist, wherever you stand or fall. Remember the return of Steve Jobs and Apple’s “Think Different” campaign? Says Jobs: “That ad was to remind us of who our heroes are and who we are”. Want to be in spirit? By the end of this month pass on the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given to ten people under 20.

3. Be Sensuous

Touch. Sound. Scent. Sight. Taste. Designing products, services and experiences around the five senses calibrates a better world. Holistic is the new reality. In the food business? Sell all fruit with leaves attached so consumers see it’s fresh. With all five senses put on high alert, magic happens.

4. Simply Sustain

Jeffrey Sachs’ UN Millennium Project Report on poverty is required reading. An aperture is opening. A beam of light shines, one energized by low-cost simplicity. Every month 150,000 African children die of malaria because they don’t have bed nets to keep out mosquitoes. Nets in Africa and Asia could save one million children this year. How about “Adopt a Landmine”? You send the $300 it takes to dig one up and disarm it; you get sent a certificate with your mine’s code number.

5. Sleep

Joan Klempner said: “To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.” With 24/7 lifestyles, we’re getting less and sleep. Yet for success, achievement, and happiness, sleep is fundamental. Now science says our best ideas surface when we drift into sleep. Anytime sleep is pure competitive advantage. Walt Disney got it right: “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

GLOBAL RAP

6. Go LoGlo

The local / global debate is the soap opera of business. ‘Should I be thinking local?’ ‘Should I be thinking global?’… ‘Should I be glocal? Start with action in the local (there are no global consumers!). Then cross boundaries. Wherever you are, export is the way to go. It’s not about thinking. It’s about acting, and going. Act Local; Go Global. Go LoGlo.

7. Learn to say “Ni Hao”

Unlike other Asian countries China was “born global”. The dragon opened up and ventured out simultaneously, putting the globe in a spin. China is an Aladdin’s Cave for enterprise. Open it! Learn to say in Chinese “Hello”, “I love you” and “Pass the pasta” before the 2008 Olympics.

8. BRIC it!

Brazil, Russia, India and China is where the action is. BRIC’s share of world growth is predicted to rise from 20 per cent in 2003 to more than 40 per cent in 2025. Global economic activity is re-positioning from the developed to the developing world. Demand for consumer goods will boom. BRIC is the next Big Bang. Strike the match.

9. Don’t invent; innovate

The difference? World-changing. Arno Penzias, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, makes the distinction. An invention is the product of a creative or curious mind. Innovation, however, changes customers’ lives in some way or the world in which customers experience things.

10. Be Irreplaceable and Irresistible

Hating America while loving all things American is the 21st century paradox says Louis Chunovic. Wherever you stand, America’s creative spirit remains irresistible and a beacon for modern enterprise. Brands set national and cultural boundaries. Lovemarks explode through them. They dazzle.

Love is the Potion

11. Don’t be a Polar Bear

Polarization of values – cultural conflict – is as a bigger opportunity as a threat. Brands that take sides will lose. Brands that listen and bring sides together can become Lovemarks. In the US, stone barricades erected near government buildings post-9/11 have been replaced with stone-containers filled with plants. Lovemarks are part of a human conversation. They make the world a better place.

12. Join the Consumer Republic.

Manufacturers and retailers now work for consumers – not vice versa. Technology has given power to consumers. We’re in the Consumer Republic – at last! It’s a time of instant of connectivity, transparency and accountability. Message to marketers? Stimulate me, surprise me, intrigue me, involve me, entertain me, love me – just don’t bore me.

13. Be an Inspirational Consumer

The people who love a brand are its Inspirational Consumers. The passionate advocates, the radical optimists, the storytellers, the trendsetters, the moral guardians, the reconcilers of “stuff” and “spirit”. Is it really impossible to lick your elbow? Go ask an Inspirational Consumer. She’s the medium.

14. Touch technology

Smart objects like Adidas smart shoe. Content co-creation like blogging. Customization like Ipod. All are part of this power and control shift to consumers. Question du jour – does technology make people happy? No. Does it make people happier? Yes. Lets get over this one and move on. It’s technology and happiness. It’s And / And not Either / Or.

15. Build it, they will come

Globally, the supermarket experience is a 20-minute dash through hell. Radio, lighting and air con should be done for assault. The Store – where 80% of purchase decisions are made – is the last mass medium and the biggest opportunity in business today. Solution? Drip it with mystery, sensuality, intimacy. Build a theatre of dreams.

Lightening Strikes

16. Build windmills

A Boeing 747’s wingspan is longer than the first flight of the Wright brothers. You can resist change and go backwards or embrace it and go forwards. When hurricanes come, build windmills! Pursue failure – you discover your limits when you crash up against them. When others Zig, Zag.

17. Live on the Edge

Edge of the world. Edge your seats. Edge of your dreams. And edge of time in my home New Zealand, half a day ahead of Italy. Edge is a big idea. Where will competitive edge cluster? In regions with technology, talent and tolerance. These will attract and unleash deep emotional intelligence.

18. Surprise with the Obvious

The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad. No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times. The stall closest to the door in a bathroom is the cleanest, because it is the least used. Obvious. Overlooked. For cut-through innovation, communication, surprise with the obvious.

19. Get Together

To be inspired Europe needs to be together. Airbus A380 knows it (now so does Boeing). A belly from Spain, wings from Britain, a nose from France, interior from Germany, fuselage from Italy. The headline: “New technology from ‘Old Europe’ overwhelms old technology from new America.” Creativity is connecting things.

20. Make Love

It’s a timeless classic: “what the world needs now is love sweet love.” Italy, with its chronic population challenge could sure use some. Go to work for Italy!!

ATO culture keeps a cap on agentic AI ambitions

 

Elite law firm Sullivan & Cromwell admits to AI ‘hallucinations’

FT.com Firm whose partners bill more than $2,000 per hour apologises to judge for software-driven errors in bankruptcy case [no paywall] – Sullivan & Cromwell told a US federal bankruptcy court that a major filing it made in a high-prrofile case contained multiple “hallucinations” made by AI software. 

Andrew Dietderich, the head of S&C’s restructuring practice, apologised in a letter to New York federal judge Martin Glenn on Saturday for mistakes that included misquoting the US bankruptcy code and citing cases incorrectly in a court filing made on April 9. “We deeply regret that this has occurred,” he said in the letter. 

Dietderich said the firm’s policies on the use of AI had not been followed when the document was prepared, and it was considering whether it needed to make “further enhancements” to its internal training and review processes. 

The letter did not say which lawyers prepared the documents or whether they were still at the firm. S&C declined to comment. The errors are the latest example of a professional services firm grappling with the use of cutting-edge technology to speed up laborious research and cut down on staffing while also trying to maintain quality standards…

S&C has an enterprise licence for ChatGPT according to multiple people familiar with the firm’s operations. According to S&C’s website, at least five high-level partners have been assigned to the Prince Group bankruptcy case. The firm’s partners typically charge more than $2,000 per hour in bankruptcy cases. The firm earned several hundred million dollars in fees in representing crypto exchange FTX in its bankruptcy liquidation. Boies Schiller Flexner, the law firm representing Prince and Zhi, spotted the errors in S&C’s filing. In a document filed last week, BSF said words that S&C had quoted in its motion “do not appear in chapter 15 of the US Bankruptcy Code” and pointed to “multiple cited decisions” that were “misquoted or misidentified”. It said a case cited by S&C in the motion “is not a case” and the reference was to “a different decision in a different circuit”. S&C told the court that the firm maintained “rigorous” standards when using AI tools and that it “instructs lawyers to ‘trust nothing and verify everything’”. Failure to verify AI-generated output “constitutes a violation of firm policy”, it said. It is the latest in a series of errors by law firms using AI tools. Last year, Latham & Watkins admitted that one of its lawyers had used Anthropic’s Claude model to help draft a filing which contained an apocryphal title and author for a journal article. In another instance, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ordered a $2,500 sanction against a lawyer who had submitted a brief with 21 errors or fabrications that had been inserted by AI. Separately, in September John Kucera, then a partner at BSF, said in a case against Amazon that a document for which he was responsible, prepared using AI tools, contained “material citation errors” due to his “failure to verify” details. “I am embarrassed by and very much regret these errors”, he said in the filing. BSF did not respond to a request for comment. S&C told the judge overseeing the Prince Group case that its document review also showed “non-substantive and/or clerical errors in other filings in this matter”. The firm said those errors were made by humans, not AI…”

ATO culture keeps a cap on agentic AI ambitions

By Ry Crozier

Sep 23 2026 

KEY POINTS

• The ATO believes agentic AI might only be needed for a small portion of an end-to-end process, with re-engineering, automation and machine learning covering most use cases.
• Copilot Chat is available to as many staff as possible, but its agentic component remains switched off due to the ATO's sensitive data holdings.
• The ATO has shifted from 'human in the loop' to 'human at the helm' to ensure accountability for AI-driven outcomes.

The Australian Taxation Office is taking a cautious approach with agentic AI, reflecting its internal culture, risk appetite and sensitive data holdings, but is undertaking some initial architectural preparation work.

Assistant commissioner for strategy, design and architecture Jimmy Tzimopoulos told an IBM-run session at Gartner’s IT Symposium/Xpo that, at present, the internal view is that agentic AI might be utilised in only a small portion of an end-to-end process.

“What we’ve found, especially with agentic AI, [is that] you can achieve a lot of the use cases, but just because you can, doesn't mean that you should,” Tzimopoulos said.

“There's a tendency to say, ‘I'll just get it all done by agentic.’ 

“But when we really assess the different use cases, we might find that 95 percent of them could be achieved through some form of re-engineering of process and then driving business automation, then maybe some machine learning, and then a bit of agentic at the end or as a component of it.

“I think that's the thing for us that we're learning about.”

Tzimopoulos highlighted the importance of safely learning about what agentic AI is and isn’t useful for.

“You've got to create an environment for people to learn with this capability,” he said.

Copilot could become a way that many staff are exposed to agentic technology within the ATO, although Tzimopoulos indicated that agentic capabilities for Copilot Chat are yet to be switched on.

“In the ATO, we use Copilot Chat, so we're making that available to as many people as possible to use,” he said.

“We haven't turned on the agentic component of that because we've got sensitive data, and we want to make sure that we understand how we use that.”

Tzimopoulos said the ATO is “architecting for the agentic space” - suggesting some behind-the-scenes preparatory work - but that the design and progress reflects ATO’s culture and risk appetite.

“As you would expect, we are a very risk-averse organisation,” he said.

“We've got the largest and most valuable data store of personal and business financial information in the country. 

“So naturally, we're very cognisant and cautious to make sure that we treat that information appropriately.”

Tzimopoulos said that one of the principles guiding the ATO’s approach with agentic AI is its internal culture.

“You've got to architect your AI based upon the culture of your organisation,” he counselled. 

“If you're risk-averse, make sure that you've got that reflected in how you deploy AI. Don't be someone that you're not.”

The ATO has also adapted the ‘human in the loop’ safeguard for AI to ‘human at the helm’.

“I know it's only a slight tweak of language, but it goes to the accountability piece,” he said.

“Excuse the language - someone's arse has got to be on the line for what you're trying to achieve because in the end, we're accountable for the outcomes to all citizens and residents of Australia, and therefore, that human really needs to be accountable for that.”

Forensic value analysis

Tzimopoulos also theorised that the AI era would create demand for “IT forensic accountants”, a role more commonly seen in financial crime contexts.

He suggested that such accountants could bring the skills required to forensically understand “the true total cost of ownership of delivering a service” that utilised AI componentry.

“We're investing a lot for our use [AI] cases to actually understand what is the right financial models that support that, and also how do we present that information back to our business?” he said.

“For us, we've got an idea of potentially a balance sheet. Obviously the ATO will understand that. 

“But if we can actually present to a business line a balance sheet that shows who's using it, and what the TCO is, and then they can correlate that back to how much they're actually paying for the service, you’re starting to actually get them to think about what is the true value of this end-to-end process.

“You’re also getting them to think, ‘Do I need to do [a process] holistically using agentic, or can I actually compartmentalise it?’”

Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here

 The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got In The Way Even Navatek’s executives were surprised at how far their money went in D.C.

Even Navatek’s executives were surprised at how far their money went in D.C. “It was eye-opening for me, frankly. ‘Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale,’” Eric Schiff, a former Navatek executive, told ProPublica.

Kremlin-Backed Forgery Scheme Routed 6.9bn Through Global Banks

Financial Times reports leaked A7 files show a Kremlin-backed fintech used shell companies and forged paperwork to move more than $6.9bn through banks despite Russia sanctions.An investigation by the Financial Times reveals that a Kremlin-backed fintech group utilized an extensive network of shell companies and forged paperwork to route more than $6.9 billion through major international banks in circumvention of sanctions. The scheme, co-founded by a sanctioned Moldovan oligarch and backed by Promsvyazbank, processed illicit funds through institutions such as First Abu Dhabi Bank, Standard Chartered, and DBS

Method: Utilized old-fashioned money laundering, forged invoices, and front companies to bypass sanctions. 
Purpose: Acted as a cross-border payment provider for imports and sensitive military/security purchases. 
Origins: Created in Russia and Kyrgyzstan by Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor with backing from Promsvyazbank (PSB). 

📉 Implicated Global Banks

Standard Chartered (Hong Kong): Received $1.1 billion (Late 2024–August 2025). 
DBS (Hong Kong): Received $273 million.
Citigroup Clients: Received $74 million.
Deutsche Bank Clients: Received approximately $18 million. 

Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here

Wall Street Journal gift article: “Trump officials say the oil-market disruption is temporary, but Chevron’s Mike Wirth and others warn global supplies are running low, with no respite in sight American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here. Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further. 

Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate. “All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.” It is hard to predict where oil prices will go, he added, but at the moment, it is difficult to envision prices coming back down quickly. 

“I wish I could tell you that I saw some reason why things would ease, but it’s difficult right now to see that happen,” he said. Veteran energy advisers say that with no resolution to the Iran war in sight, the situation risks spinning out of control. Diesel prices have soared to a record $6.23 a gallon and gasoline prices, which slipped below $4 a gallon this summer, have rebounded to $4.32. Some energy analysts say they have been fielding investor questions about when consumers pinched by the high prices will start pulling back on new purchases. 

The Trump administration has repeatedly promised Americans that prices at the pump would decline and that energy flows out of the Middle East would keep increasing. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a Houston G-20 event on Monday that “the prices in the prior administration were this high anyway” and that Americans would have paid those prices permanently because former President Joe Biden was “pursuing a policy of energy subtraction and shutting down refineries.” …

See also New York Times (Gift Article): Rising Fuel Prices Set Off Anger and Protests Around the World. “The world is furious — again — over rising energy prices caused by the American-Israeli war against Iran. 

Since the latest surge pushed oil above $100 a barrel, protesters have burned tires and cars in Guatemala and Syria to express their rage. Portugal’s roads have featured cars crawling in protest with honking horns after diesel reached a record high of more than $9 a gallon. And especially in the developing countries of Asia, which are heavily reliant on Middle Eastern energy and deep in debt from earlier efforts to offset the war’s impacts, transport systems and governments are facing another round of enormous strain.”

‘DOJ seeking reporter’s LinkedIn records’ in secretive court fight

Politico: “A secret, months-long battle between tech titans and the Justice Department — over prosecutors’ effort to obtain details on a journalist’s LinkedIn interactions for use in a national security leak probe — spilled into view Tuesday during a federal court argument in Virginia. 

Though the details of the case remain sealed, a panel of the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals described the stakes in stark terms: a fight to find balance between the government’s life-and-death national security interests and the First Amendment protections for reporters to maintain the secrecy of their sources, particularly when investigators seek to obtain them from third-party companies. Joshua Ferrentino, a Justice Department national security attorney, told the court that prosecutors are demanding details of about 1,900 LinkedIn interactions from six users as part of the unspecified probe…

The fight comes at a sensitive moment for national media, which has seen reporters targetedby subpoenas and search warrants in leak probes. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel have said they aren’t seeking to prosecute journalists but don’t view their testimony or data as off limits when pursuing leaks of national security information. Courts have bristled at investigators’ tactics, contending that they have failed to follow procedures intended to make the pursuit of reporters’ information a last resort…”