Russian authorities used Cellebrite phone-cracking technology to break into a device belonging to a prominent domestic human rights activist they arrested and imprisoned, despite the company canceling its contract with the Russian government, according to a report published Thursday.

The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab reached its conclusions after analyzing a phone belonging to Andrey Pivovarov and examining court documents he provided confirming the usage of Cellebrite’s UFED product.

Pivovarov was arrested in March 2021, sentenced in 2022 and released in 2024 as part of a prisoner exchange. Citizen Lab found evidence that authorities accessed his phone around June 2021 while the phone was in Russian government hands.

Investigators also said it appears Russian authorities might have used information it got from Pivoarov’s phone to surveil other regime opponents, combining information in the court documents with the later targeting of fellow dissident Anastasiya Burakova in a hacking campaign linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

“The historic architecture of Cellebrite forensic systems means that much of the functionality in the UFED product has continued to operate long after updates cease,” Citizen Lab said in its report. “Furthermore, Cellebrite systems have historically featured an offline mode. Consequently, the way Cellebrite’s technology was designed appeared to make it difficult for the company to meaningfully cut off problematic customers.

“While Cellebrite has argued that its cancellations in Russia … went beyond what was legally required, this investigation contributes evidence that the contract cancellation did not immediately block Russia from leveraging Cellebrite’s tools for political persecution,” it continued.

Cellebrite provided a response to Citizen Lab’s report, saying that Cellebrite’s technology would be ineffective in Russia today.

“Any use of legacy Cellebrite hardware in Russia after March 2021 is entirely unauthorized,” Cellebrite spokesperson Victor Cooper told CyberScoop, echoing the Citizen Lab response. “The Cellebrite hardware previously sold, prior to March 2021, would now be incompatible with modern devices and would operate without our technical support, our consent or any legal sanction from Cellebrite. Rapid technology advances render legacy digital forensic hardware and software ineffective within a short period of time. Russia remains permanently on our restricted-customer list.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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A federal court ruled Monday that the Trump administration’s national voter database violates federal privacy laws, interferes with Americans’ right to vote, and must be dismantled.

In the ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the District Court of Washington D.C. wrote that records reviewed by the court show federal agencies knew that the SAVE voter database violated federal laws like the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, but were “scrambling” to comply with President Trump’s executive order to create a system for mass voter verification.

That pressure resulted in agencies “haphazardly” combining and repurposing the personal information of millions of Americans from different government databases, including citizenship data they knew was unreliable.

“The Court therefore sets aside and vacates the 2025 SAVE modified system and the related notices because they were contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority, and without observance of procedure required by law,” Sooknanan wrote.

The League of Women Voters, its local affiliate groups and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the lawsuit last year. They argued the administration violated privacy laws that restrict the government’s ability to collect or combine private data without congressional authorization.

Sooknanan wrote that the SAVE database violates a prohibition in the Social Security Act against the disclosure of Social Security numbers and other related SSA records as well as substantive and procedural protections in the Privacy Act, which prevent the non-consensual disclosure of certain information both by federal agencies and between federal agencies and require notice and comment.

The court also ruled that SAVE violates the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs how the federal government develops regulations and makes official decisions to ensure they’re fair and impartial.

Sooknanan had earlier declined to rule the database illegal under the Administrative Procedures Act, saying the plaintiffs had failed to prove the data would cause  irreparable harm. In her final ruling, she changed course, writing that the states have since run their voter rolls through the federal government’s modified SAVE system, and some voters have been wrongfully identified as non-citizens and had their voter registrations canceled.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

The ruling reinforces longstanding objections from former government officials and privacy experts over the past year, who have said Congress has repeatedly passed privacy laws explicitly to prevent the executive branch from using Americans’ data in ways not proscribed through law. That is what DHS did last year when it took SAVE, a database meant to process government benefits for legal immigrants, and combined it with data from the Social Security Administration and other agencies to create a new massive database of American voters and their citizenship status.

John Davisson, deputy director of enforcement at EPIC, celebrated the decision in a statement, saying the ruling “underscores that government agencies must follow the law, defend privacy and remain accountable to the public they serve.”

 “Today’s decision is a victory for us all. By halting the illegal consolidation of sensitive personal data across federal agencies, the court has safeguarded not only our privacy rights but also the bedrock of our democracy: the right to vote,” said Davisson. 

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The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a new bill this week that seeks to prevent unauthorized deepfakes of American artists, performers and public figures. While the bill sailed through a committee voice vote, both Senators and outside groups say they’re worried it could become a tool for the powerful to quash free speech. 

The NO FAKES Act, introduced by Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., would give Americans near-exclusive rights to their own digital AI replicas, and those rights live on, passing to heirs, executors and estates for at least 70 years after an individual dies.

While living, creators would be able to essentially license their likeness and image to others, over 10-year contracts for adults and 5 years for minors.

It would also permit individuals to sue anyone who uses their AI-generated image without permission, and pay up to $750,000 for violations. Blackburn submitted letters of support for the bill from more than 40 groups, including the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the American Medical Association, Creative Artists Agency, the Broadcasters’ Associations and the Human Artistry Campaign.

“It is imperative that we put this national standard in place for voice and visual likeness protection of creators, to protect from proliferation of harmful AIgenerated deepfakes that are created without their consent,” said Blackburn in a Thursday markup of the bill.

The introduction of consumer-grade AI tools has made it trivial to create convincing deepfakes of real individuals and public figures. The harms are well documented: bad actors have used them to create nonconsensual pornography or sexualized media of people they know, create child sexual assault material (CSAM) , and blackmail or humiliate individuals.

Artists have faced real challenges in the AI era when it comes to controlling their digital likeness. Last year, the Better Business Bureau warned that its Scam Tracker had been flooded with complaints about AI-celebrity endorsement scams. These included  deepfakes of Oprah Winfrey promoting weight loss products, Kim Kardashian pleading for donations to fight California wildfires, and pop star Taylor Swift and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay endorsing cookware.

In the political arena, candidates now create deepfakes of their political opponents, putting words into their mouths or placing them in embarrassing or humiliating situations. Online, disinformation actors have repeatedly spread AI-generated videos and images of politicians like Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and even regional or local politicians saying or doing scandalous things.

The bill represents one of the most aggressive attempts by U.S. policymakers to protect the digital commercial rights of artists and public figures. New York, for instance, passed a law this month that requires film and television advertisers to publicize when they’re using deepfakes in ads, but does not create a similar copyright regime for artists’ likeness. A Tennessee law, The ELVIS Act, that prohibits the unauthorized use of an individual’s voice and likeness and creates secondary liability for large platforms that publish or distribute the content.

The NO FAKES Act faces opposition from an alliance of tech business and digital rights groups. They argue the bill  fails to balance the commercial rights of artists to control their own image with longstanding First Amendment constitutional rights to free speech and parody.

Amy Bos, vice president of government affairs at NetChoice, a trade association for online businesses, said that while her group supports legislation that prevents unauthorized AI generated deepfakes, “good intentions do not make good law.”

“As written, this bill creates a dangerous financial incentive for platforms to aggressively over-remove lawful content, burdens creators with an unworkable counter-notification system, and fails to deliver the uniform national standard its sponsors promised,” Bos said in a statement.

Many digital civil groups agree with that view. A broad coalition of policy groups – including the American Civil Liberties Union, the R-Street Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others – wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week to urge members to oppose the bill in its current form.

They argued the current bill creates a “Heckler’s veto” over most online content, allowing artists, public figures and advocacy groups to flood the notification system with takedown requests for content they don’t like. Similar to a law already on the books, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, virtually all the incentives in the bill push platforms to be overaggressive in taking down content, regardless of whether it violates the law or not.

This approach could end up quashing not just unauthorized ads but also scores of other likely First Amendment protected uses, such as education, humor, satire and parody.

In 2023, a humorous AI-generated image of Pope Francis in a puffy Balenciaga jacket went viral. Under the NO FAKES Act, the coalition says that post would be illegal for anyone to post until nearly 2100.

In the political arena, both Republicans like Trump and Democrats like California Governor Gavin Newsom have used AI deepfakes to skewer their political opposition.

“A law that undermines free expression will struggle to survive constitutional review,” the groups wrote. “In the meantime, it can do lasting damage, both to lawful speech and to the autonomy of the people it claims to protect. We urge the Committee not to advance the NO FAKES Act in its current form, to examine how existing state and federal law already addresses the legitimate harms the bill seeks to address, and to pursue narrowly tailored solutions only where a genuine gap remains. We would welcome the opportunity to assist.”

While the bill passed by voice vote and with broad support, multiple Republican and Democratic members of the committee said they had similar concerns and expressed a desire to continue tweaking the bill further before passage into law.

In the Senate meeting, Coons appeared to dismiss those charges, arguing that changes made to the bill ahead of markup adequately address any First Amendment concerns.

“I want to be clear, NO FAKES includes features that protect free speech,” Coons claimed. “Parody, satire documentaries, biopics, newscasts, they’re all protected and we built in appropriate counter notification processes and exempted research libraries and archives.”

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The U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security seized multiple internet domains this week, accusing them of being used to publishing thousands of AI or digitally-altered images and videos of nude women.

The domains, CFAKE.com and SOCFAKE.com, specialized in digital forgeries that “were made to appear to be sexual images of famous women, including politicians, first ladies of multiple countries, royalty, journalists, television presenters, athletes, entertainers, and others” either nude or engaged in sexual activity,” according to a Department of Justice release.

In addition to creating sexual images and videos of women without their consent, the service allowed people to browse by topics, including “rape,” “forced,” and “degradation.”

That description comes from a Department of Justice release describing the contents of its probable cause affidavit and search warrants. CyberScoop has not viewed the court documents.  

The sites were seized under the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a law passed last year giving federal authorities the ability to criminally prosecute those who create and distribute deepfake porn. The law was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement in Washington D.C., gaining support from both Democrats and Republicans who said their constituents were demanding tougher laws to curb the use of AI to create nonconsensual deepfake porn.

The operation marks one of the largest seizures since the law went into effect. The details of the operation disclosed by the government show how creators of deepfake porn rely on a web of international assets and infrastructure to evade law enforcement.

Robert Fraiser, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, said U.S. authorities worked in coordination with law enforcement agencies in France and Italy. According to U.S. officials, they were first notified about the website by Italian Polizia de Stato, while a parallel investigation run by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office in France resulted in the arrest of a suspect connected with the site, along with seized cryptocurrency funds.

“These seizures stopped a website that trafficked in humiliation, exploitation, and the violation of personal privacy on a massive scale,” said Frazer in a statement. “For the victims whose images were distributed without their consent, the harm is not virtual — it is deeply personal and often enduring.”

According to the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, Cyrille B., a 47-year-old French national was arrested and accused of being an administrator for CFAKE. A search of his home in Nice found computer equipment related to the site and a little more than $48,000 in Ethereum cryptocurrency that they said came from the site’s advertising.

The French investigation identified 300,000 images, 7,000 videos depicting 14,000 individuals from different countries. The site had approximately 200,000 user accounts, 4 million views per month and uploaded 50 pieces of new content every day.

The suspect had no prior criminal record, and will go to trial on July 7. The charges carry potential penalties of up to seven years in prison and €500,000.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigation division is leading the federal investigation, in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney’s office for New Jersey.

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Meta said Monday that it caught a spearphishing campaign linked to spyware maker NSO Group despite a court injunction, prompting the tech giant to file a contempt-of-court complaint.

The company won a civil case last year against NSO Group barring it from targeting WhatsApp users and securing $168 million in damages, although NSO Group has been appealing the ruling.

But Meta says NSO Group, makers of the Pegasus spyware, isn’t honoring the permanent injunction.

“We successfully disrupted NSO-linked social engineering attempts, after investigating user reports,” it said in a blog post. “They tried to trick people into clicking on malicious links to drive them to external websites outside of WhatsApp, similar to previously reported 1-click phishing campaigns linked to NSO. We also caught them creating test accounts and groups on WhatsApp, which we took down.”

Meta said the campaign resembled spyware infections that hit journalists and activists in Jordan from 2019 to 2023.

NSO Group didn’t respond to requests for comment about Meta’s accusations.

One top researcher who tracks spyware said NSO Group’s actions are an argument for keeping them on the U.S. sanctions “entity” list that the company has fought to be removed from since its designation in 2021.

“NSO’s own actions make the strongest argument for why they should stay on the Entity list,” John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, wrote on social media. “And reaffirm that the decision to put them there was the right one.”

Meta made the same argument.

“When a malicious company on the US government’s Entity List continues to defy US courts, existing restrictions must remain firmly in place,” it said in its blog post. “Easing them would undermine US national security and put American companies and billions of people worldwide who depend on secure communications at risk.”

Lawmakers have sought information on the federal government’s prospective use of NSO Group tech and other kinds of spyware, despite a blacklist, given close ties between the company’s new executive chairman and President Donald Trump.

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The Federal Trade Commission is set to begin enforcing a key provision of the Take Down Act on May 19, requiring websites and online services to remove nonconsensual deepfake media within 48 hours after a victim’s notice—or risk fines and FTC investigation.

The law, passed by Congress last year, allowed law enforcement to immediately prosecute individuals who create and post such content online. But platforms and websites that host the material were given a yearlong runway to build out their reporting and takedown system. Under the enforcement regime taking effect, businesses that fail to remove flagged media within the 48-hour notification window could face fines and an investigation from the FTC.

This week, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson sent letters to private-sector companies detailing how the commission intends to police compliance once enforcement begins. The FTC set a maximum civil penalty of – $53,088 per violation for companies that don’t take down content as required, and Ferguson’s letter outlines other requirements, including that companies make it easy and convenient for users to submit takedown requests.

“We stand ready to monitor compliance, investigate violations, and enforce the Take It Down Act,” Ferguson said in a statement. “Protecting the vulnerable—especially children—from this harmful abuse is a top priority for this agency and this administration.”

Ferguson’s letter sheds new light on how the FTC will enforce content takedowns under the law.  Both nonconsensual intimate imagery posted online using real photos of other individuals as well as AI-generated or modified “digital forgeries” would be considered violations.

Companies must also make it easy for victims without accounts to report potential violations, details their reporting and removal program on their website “in plain language” and provide “clear and conspicuous” notice to users about how to request removals.

According to the FTC, the law covers websites, apps, social media, image or video sharing services and gaming platforms. Ferguson’s letters were addressed to a who’s who of tech and social media companies, including Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Automattic, Bumble, Discord, Match Group, Meta, Microsoft, Pinterest, Reddit, SmugMug, Snapchat, TikTok and X.

Earlier this year, Grok, the AI service that X users have access to, was used to flood the social media site with nonconsensual, sexualized deepfakes of real people. Elon Musk, X’s owner, initially brushed off critics but has since been hit with multiple criminal and civil investigations stemming from the incident, as well as lawsuits and calls from some world leaders to ban the app entirely.

 The FTC is also recommending that companies implement hashing technologies “to prevent the reappearance of intimate content you already removed from your platform” and share their findings with nonprofits like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and StopNCII.org to track across other parts of the internet.

Becca Branum, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told CyberScoop that some elements of the FTC’s approach – like requiring clear and simple reporting options for victims – aligns with best practices established by civil society groups.

But she also said the FTC’s role under the Take It Down Act is materially different from anything the commission has done before. The sheer scale of enforcement and monitoring will require human and technical resources on par with those of major social media companies.

“I’m very concerned about the FTC and its ability to fairly enforce this law,” said Branum. “They are now in the business of regulating content moderation. That is hard work and not something they’re used to doing.”

Some legal and privacy experts pointed to the large financial penalties set by the FTC as a sign that policymakers are looking to put real teeth behind enforcement. Those penalties could pile up quickly if a business is hosting or publishing multiple copies of the same flagged media and declines to remove it within two days.

“For covered platforms, compliance with the Act is critical given the FTC’s emphasis on enforcement – reflecting White House priorities – and potential civil penalties up to $53,088 per violation,” wrote privacy attorneys Duane Pozza and Ian Barlow.

But Branum said the hefty fines also emphasize “just how much incentive will be in place for platforms to take anything that comes down the complaint line.”

While the Take It Down Act is designed to force companies to investigate claims and remove violating content, the regulatory and financial incentives push them to simply remove almost all content reported by default. That approach, which many of the same tech companies have taken under laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, can be exploited by bad faith actors seeking to shut down legal speech or content online.

“If you think there’s any given post [where] if you ask an attorney is it worth $53,000 for me to keep this post up, the answer is always going to be taken it down,” Branum said. “I can’t imagine any service wanting to risk that type of fine on edge cases or anything they can’t verify or account for within 48 hours.”

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Google launched a feature for Android phones Tuesday for dedicated forensic logs about intrusions from sophisticated attacks like those by spyware vendors, in what design partners at Amnesty International hailed as an important first.

The tech giant has been ramping up the new feature, Intrusion Logging, since last year, and has now begun rolling it out.

“The new intrusion logging feature promises to be a major aid to digital forensics researchers undertaking investigations into sophisticated attacks on Android devices,” Amnesty International said in a Tuesday technical briefing. “This is the first time a major device vendor has released a feature specifically to enhance the ability to forensically detect and respond to advanced digital threats.”

To date, independent investigators have relied on records and often short-lived log files that weren’t meant for forensic use, and Amnesty said surveillance groups have grown increasingly aware of those forensic efforts. Intrusion Logging, a feature of Android Advanced Protection Mode, is designed specifically to keep track of possible intrusions for forensic purposes. It keeps records of security incidents like device unlocking, physical access and spyware installation and removal.

Google’s annual security and privacy update for Android phones mentions the feature and its development with Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and others. It also touts new protections against banking scam calls, other features for detecting suspicious activity on Android phones, additional privacy safeguards and more.

The firm has been working on the feature since announcing it last year.

“Intrusion Logging enables persistent and privacy-preserving forensics logging to allow for investigation of devices in the event of a suspected compromise,” wrote Eugene Liderman, director of Android security and privacy.

Intrusion Logging joins an expanding slate of features from tech companies to fight sophisticated attacks like those from commercial spyware, among them Apple’s Lockdown Mode and Memory Integrity Enforcement and WhatsApp’s Strict Account Settings.

Intrusion Logging “promises to help shift the balance to the advantage of defenders, providing civil society investigators with the key evidence needed to detect and expose some of the most advanced attacks facing journalists and activists,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of the Amnesty International Security Lab, “With Intrusion Logging Google is the first major vendor to proactively address to challenge of detecting advanced attacks on device. By making more consensual forensic data available for researchers, we can make life more difficult for attackers and help civil society seek accountability when their devices are unlawfully targeted by spyware and mobile data extraction tools.”

The feature has some limitations, though, Amnesty said in its technical briefing. It requires Android 16 and is only available for now on Pixel devices; the device has to be linked to a Google account, and the logs may include sensitive information, like browser navigation history, so secure sharing of the logs is important.

The logs may also be deletable by attackers, Ó Cearbhaill told CyberScoop, but he said he understands there are plans to strengthen protections against that in future versions. And lots of attacks would be detectable in the logs where attackers wouldn’t necessarily have the root access needed to try to delete logs, he said.

To enable Intrusion Logging, users need to be using Android Advanced Protection Mode, and can find the feature at Settings > Security & privacy > Advanced Protection > Intrusion Logging. If users suspect some kind of security incident, they’ll need to export and share the logs with a forensic analyst.

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A House Democrat who’s been at the forefront of congressional efforts to scrutinize the federal government’s use of commercial spyware wants the Commerce Department to brief Capitol Hill amid apprehension that the Trump administration might further embrace the technology.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., sent a letter to the department Thursday seeking a briefing on several developments stemming from Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledging its use of Paragon’s Graphite spyware, as well as an American company purchasing a controlling stake in Israel’s NSO Group. The Commerce Department sanctioned NSO Group under former President Joe Biden after widespread abuse allegations, including eavesdropping on government officials, activists and journalists.

“The Trump Administration appears to be broadly receptive to using commercial spyware to infiltrate cell phones and allowing U.S. investment in sanctioned spyware companies like NSO Group,” Lee wrote in her letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, which CyberScoop is first reporting.

NSO Group’s new executive chairman, David Friedman, is a former Trump ambassador to Israel and was his bankruptcy attorney. He has said in November that he expects the administration will be “receptive” to using NSO Group tech.

“Given those close ties between NSO Group and the Trump Administration, and the serious concerns about how NSO’s technology could be used to spy on Americans, we write to request information regarding the purchase of NSO Group by an American company and the potential usage of NSO Group spyware by federal law enforcement,” wrote Lee, who sits on the Oversight and Government Reform panel and is the top Democrat on its Federal Law Enforcement Subcommittee.

Lee was one of the authors of a recent Democratic letter seeking confirmation of ICE’s use of Paragon’s Graphite, which ICE acknowledged. But they criticized the administration for not answering all their questions, in addition to being outraged.

In her latest letter, Lee asked the Commerce Department to brief Oversight and Government Reform Committee staff about internal department deliberations, Commerce communication with the White House and any outside conversations — including with Friedman — about government use of NSO Group technology or any other commercial spyware, and American investment in NSO.

NSO Group “appears to view the Trump administration as friendly to its interests in the United States, pitching itself as a vital tool for the U.S. government to safeguard national security,” Lee wrote, citing company court filings that it “is reasonably foreseeable that a law enforcement or intelligence agency of the United States will use Pegasus.”

The Biden administration sanctions, and court losses in a case against Meta, represented setbacks for NSO Group’s ambitions. And prior to the U.S. investment firm controlling stake purchase last fall, the Commerce Department under Trump rebuffed efforts to remove NSO Group from its sanctions list.

But the tens of millions of dollars worth of investment, following news that Israel had used Pegasus to track people kidnapped or murdered by Hamas, was a boon.

NSO Group maintains that its products are designed only to help law enforcement and intelligence fight terrorism and crime, and that it vets its customers in advance as well as investigates misuse. News accounts and other investigations have turned up a multitude of abuses.

There have been scattered reports of U.S. flirtation with using NSO Group technology. The FBI acknowledged it had bought a Pegasus license, but stopped short of deploying it. The Times of London reported that “it is believed” the Central Intelligence Agency used Pegasus spyware as part of a rescue mission last month for a U.S. airman downed in Iran.

You can read the full letter below.

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A 19-year-old woman is suing the makers of a dating app, alleging they took a video she posted online, repurposed it without her consent into an advertisement for the app, then used geofencing to target that ad to people in her area. 

According to the lawsuit filed Apr. 28 in Tennessee and an interview with her lawyer, the company allegedly used geotargeting to serve the ads on platforms like Snapchat to users near her, including men in her own dormitory. 

The allegations, if proven, offer another example of how modern technology has made it easier than ever today for bad actors to imitate, objectify, profit off and harass individuals, often women. Recent laws like the Take It Down Act have focused particularly on the use of AI to create sexualized imagery of their victims. In this case, the lawsuit alleges that Meete used not AI, but simple video editing, a voiceover and geofencing to create the same kind of deception. 

 On the day of her high school graduation, Kaelyn Lunglhofer posted a brief video to TikTok, wearing an orange outfit and saying a few words to her followers over background music. She went on to attend the University of Tennessee in the fall, where she began building a following as a TikTok influencer.

The complaint alleges that the makers behind the dating app Meete took that video without Lunglhofer’s consent, overlayed it with graphics advertising the app, and added a voiceover to make it appear she was saying “Are you looking for a friend with benefits? This app shows you women around you who are looking for some fun. You can video chat with them.”

Abe Pafford, Lunglhofer’s attorney, told CyberScoop that his client had no idea Meete was using her likeness until a male student in her dormitory told her he had repeatedly seen her in ads for the app on his Snapchat shortly after the two had met. 

Pafford called it “implausible” that this was a coincidence, pointing to Meete’s premise of connecting users with nearby women and the precision of geofencing technology. Before filing the case, Pafford’s law firm hired an investigative firm to gather additional evidence.

“I think the idea is they want[ed] viewers of these advertisements – and candidly this is pretty clearly targeted at male viewers – to have their eye caught by someone they may know or recognize or think they may have seen around, and that’s part of what makes it so disturbing,” he said.

Pafford said he believes Lunglhofer is far from the only person whose image Meete has misappropriated, and that most victims likely have no idea it’s happening. Lunglhofer herself only had evidence because the student who told her had saved recordings and screenshots of the ads featuring her video.

“The bottom line is we think there are likely others that have been victimized in a similar way, but finding out who they are and landing on tangible proof of that can be challenging,” he said.

After this story was published, Snap told CyberScoop it is investigating.

“Snap’s advertising policies require that advertisers have all necessary rights to the content in their ads, including the rights to any individuals featured,” Snap spokesperson Ahrim Nam said in an email. “Using someone’s likeness without their consent is a violation of our policies. Upon learning of these allegations, we are actively reviewing the matter and will take appropriate action.”

The lawsuit cites alleged violation of multiple federal and state laws, including the Lanham Act, the primary U.S. law governing trademark rights. The suit also alleges violations of Tennessee state law under the ELVIS Act, which prevents the unauthorized use of image or likeness for artists and musicians, and Tennessee common laws for defamation and right of publicity.

Lunglhofer is seeking $750,000 in punitive damages, as well as any revenue tied to the ads featuring her likeness. Pafford said that the advertisements damaged her online brand and reputation while also putting her at risk of harassment or falsely implying she was endorsing a local dating service and was open to casual hookups.

“It’s really kind of grotesque and it’s also kind of dangerous,” he said. “Someone may not be aware that this is happening and they’re targeted in this way, but you can put people at risk in ways that are really troubling if you stop to think about it.”

The suit names Quantum Communications Development Unlimited, based in the Virgin Islands, as well as Chinese companies Starpool Data Limited and Guangzhou Yuedong Interconnection Technology, as defendants. A judge has ordered representatives from all three to appear for depositions in the United States.

Quantum Communications Development Unlimited has a sparse internet footprint: their website consists of a single page with a message written in broken English and an email address that no longer appears to work. Efforts by CyberScoop to reach the company and other defendants for comment were not successful. The company is listed as Meete’s publisher on Apple’s App Store, where it describes the app as “a space where you can be yourself and meet people” and promises “safety and respect first” — adding that “Meete provides a secure environment where your privacy and safety are our top concerns.”

The description also claims the app adheres to Apple’s safety standards, citing a “Zero-Tolerance Policy regarding objectionable content and abusive behavior.” Listed safeguards include “24/7” manual reviews by moderation teams, instant reporting and blocking of other users, and AI filtering “to detect and prevent harassment before it happens.”

On Meete’s Google Play Store page, user reviews accuse the app of failing to match them to nearby users and being largely populated by bots posing as women to sell in-app currency.

Pafford acknowledged that the defendants being based overseas complicates efforts to hold them accountable under U.S. law, but argued that Meete is clearly designed to operate in the United States. The companies behind the app have filed U.S. patents and trademarks, for their business, and distribute their app through the Apple and Google Play Stores while advertising on major U.S. social media platforms like Snapchat.

Apple and Google did not respond to a request for comment.

You can read the full lawsuit below.

5/05/26: This story was updated to include comment from Snap received after publication.

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Congress extended a controversial surveillance law for 45 days on Thursday, hours before its latest expiration following an earlier extension.

The Senate passed — then the House cleared — a 45-day extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes warrantless surveillance of foreign targets. But those targets are sometimes communicating electronically with Americans, and intelligence officials can search the database using their identifying information, which has long given privacy groups and privacy-minded lawmakers heartburn.

The 45-day reprieve gives lawmakers more time to hammer out a lasting deal, and comes after the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to send a letter to the Director of National Intelligence and attorney general, seeking swift declassification of a letter on a classified ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., had sought release of that opinion, and had resisted giving unanimous consent for the latest short-term extension to move forward until Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and top panel Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia agreed to send the letter.

A declassification review was already underway, but the Cotton-Warner letter states that “We expect that this declassification review will be completed and the FISC opinion released publicly within 15 days,” according to Wyden, speaking on the Senate floor.

The March 17 opinion reportedly came with annual recertification of the warrantless surveillance program. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling because it blocked them from using certain tools to analyze communications.

“A few weeks ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found major compliance problems related to the surveillance law known as section 702,” Wyden said earlier this month. “These compliance problems are directly related to Americans’ Constitutional rights.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the extension will give lawmakers additional room to hold “discussion on reforms.”

The House this week had passed a 3-year reauthorization with some changes to the surveillance program, but key to doing so was leadership’s agreement to attach legislative language on a separate matter that would ban a central bank digital currency. Thune had said that language was going nowhere in the Senate.

On Thursday, the House voted 261-111 to extend the law for 45 days. President Donald Trump has sought a “clean” 18-month reauthorization of the surveillance powers.

The extension continues a perennial ritual for the Hill when it comes to Section 702: A deadline looms, and Congress kicks the can down the road repeatedly.

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Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez is taking over as the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security panel’s cybersecurity subcommittee, replacing former Rep. Eric Swalwell after his resignation.

Committee Democrats approved the change Tuesday at a meeting prior to a “shadow hearing” without the GOP majority, focused on protecting elections from Trump administration interference.

Ramirez first won election to Congress in 2022 and was reelected in 2024. She has served as the vice ranking member of the committee since 2023. She is now the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection.

She has leveled criticisms during committee hearings about the Trump administration’s personnel cutbacks at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and was critical of how data was secured under the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative led by Elon Musk.

“Under a Musk and Trump presidency, it’s clear that the security of Americans’ information is not a priority. I mean, a private civilian with no security clearance bullied his way into the Treasury, set up private servers, and stole sensitive information from an agency. If that isn’t a national security crisis, a cybersecurity  crisis –then I don’t know what is,” Ramirez said at an early 2025 hearing. “The true threat to our homeland security is ‘fElon’ Musk, Trump, and their blatant misuse of power to steal information and coerce employees to leave agencies.”

She cosponsored legislation last year meant to strengthen the cybersecurity workforce by promoting measures to help workers from underrepresented and disadvantaged communities to join the field.

But she also had criticisms of U.S. cybersecurity under the Biden administration, including of Microsoft’s role in the SolarWinds breach.

In a statement about her appointment Tuesday, Ramirez took aim at at Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and White House homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.

“It’s clear that the security of our communities’ information, federal networks, and critical infrastructure have not been priorities” under them, she said. “Between the security failures of DOGE, the abuses of immigrant families’ data, and the decimation of CISA’s workforce and resources, Republicans have demonstrated a lack of interest in safeguarding our nation’s cybersecurity and our residents’ civil rights and privacy. In neglecting necessary oversight, Republicans have deregulated emerging technologies, allowed bad actors to profit from violations of our civil rights, and consented to the weaponization of government systems. It is more critical than ever that we assert our Congressional authority and disrupt the blatant corruption making us all less safe.”

Swalwell left the position following his resignation from Congress as a representative from California amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Her ascension completes a full leadership turnover for the subcommittee. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., took over the gavel late last year after former chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., took over as chairman of the full committee.

The subcommittee is set to hold a hearing Wednesday on CISA and its role as the sector risk management agency for a number of critical infrastructure sectors.

Updated 4/28/26: to include comment from Ramirez.

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U.S. states issued $3.45 billion in privacy-related fines to companies in 2025, a total larger than the last five years combined, according to research and advisory firm Gartner.

The increase is driven in part by stronger, more established privacy laws in states like California, new interstate partnerships built around enforcing laws across state lines, and a renewed focus to how AI and automation affect privacy.

The data indicates that “regulators are shifting their efforts away from awareness to full scale enforcement,” marking a significant shift from even the last few years in how aggressively states are investigating and penalizing companies for privacy law violations.

“This is increasingly becoming the standard in 2026 and for the coming two years,” Gartner’s analysis concludes.

The California Consumer Privacy Act had consumer privacy provisions go live in 2023, but for years enforcement was largely dormant. According to Nader Heinen, a data protection and AI analyst at Gartner and co-author of the research, that enforcement lag mirrors the way other major privacy laws, like Europe’s Global Data Protection Regulation, have been carried out in order to “lead with a bit of guidance” for companies while using enforcement sparingly.

But that era appears to be over. In 2025, the California Privacy Protection Agency has used the law to pursue violators across a wide range of industries— not just large conglomerates, but smaller and mid-sized companies in tech, the auto industry, and consumer products, including off-the-shelf goods and apparel.

Heinen said some businesses “weren’t paying attention” and may have been lulled into a false sense of complacency as regulators spun up their enforcement teams, leading to a harsh 2025.

“Unfortunately what happens when so much time passes between the legislation and starting enforcement regularly, is a lot of organizations let their privacy program atrophy,” he said.

States have also sought to combine their resources to target and penalize privacy violators across state lines. Last year, ten states came together to form the Consortium of Privacy Regulators, pledging to coordinate investigations and enforcement of common privacy laws around accessing, deleting and preventing the sale of personal information.

Beyond laws like the CCPA, states have been updating existing privacy and data-protection laws to more directly address harms from automated decision-making technologies, including AI. State privacy regulators are especially focused on how personal or private data is used to train AI systems and  help it make inferences.

Gartner expects privacy fines to further increase in the coming years and Heinen said states will likely again lead the way on building the legal infrastructure to enforce data privacy in the AI age as they become the main conduit for lingering anxiety about the potential negative impacts of the technology.

“You have to put yourself in the position of these state legislatures,” Heinen said. “Their constituencies – the voting public – is telling them we’re worried about AI. AI anxiety is a thing. Everybody’s worried about whether AI is going to take their job or impact their capacity to find a job, so they want to see legislation in place to protect them.”

This past month, House Republicans unveiled their latest attempt to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation with a bill that would preempt tougher state laws like those in California. In particular, the CCPA gives residents a private right of action – the legal right to sue companies directly – for violation of privacy laws.

On Monday, Tom Kemp, executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, wrote to House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., to oppose the bill, arguing it would provide “a ceiling” for Americans’ data privacy protections rather than a “floor” to build on.

“Preemption would strip away important existing state privacy provisions that protect tens of millions of Americans now,” Kemp wrote. “That would be a significant step backward in privacy protection at a time when individuals are increasingly concerned about their privacy and security online, and when challenges from data-intensive new technologies such as AI are developing quickly.”

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Supreme Court justices lobbed sharp questions at both sides about the constitutionality of geofence warrants during oral arguments Monday in a case that could have broader implications for law enforcement collection of Americans’ data.

Chatrie v. The United States stems from the 2019 conviction of Okello Chatrie in a bank robbery, where authorities obtained location data from Google about people within a specific area at a specific time.

In questioning an attorney for the petitioner, Adam Unikowsky, a number of conservative justices — including Chief Justice John Roberts — asked why the government shouldn’t be allowed to access location data taken from a third party given that Chatrie had “opted-in” to share that data.

“I just don’t agree that one should have to flip off one’s location history as well as other cloud services to avoid government surveillance,” Unikowsky answered, raising whether the government was entitled to getting emails or calendar data that are also stored in the cloud. (Google has since moved location data to users’ individual devices.)

Some liberal justices, too, had skeptical questions for Unikowsky. “This identifies a place, a crime — a limited time frame, but a time frame,” Sonia Sotomayor said, referring to protections from open-ended searches under the Fourth Amendment. “So it’s not a general warrant in this historical sense.” But she also said that because location data follows users everywhere: “When the police are searching or asking for a search result, there’s no way to predict whether they’re going to invade your privacy.”

The line of questioning about how far a government request for bulk data can go continued from both conservative and liberal justices when it was the government’s turn to argue its position. Justices probed skeptically about what made emails or calendar data different, and whether the government could do a physical search of all of the lockers in a storage facility to find one gun they believed might be there.

It was an unusually long session for the Supreme Court, going two hours. A ruling could come in June or July. Predicting how a court will decide based on justices’ questions is famously fraught. Only one justice, Samuel Alito, hinted strongly at how he was likely to decide.

“I’m struggling to understand why we are here in this case, other than the fact that at least four of us voted to take it,” he said. He said he didn’t believe anything new of note could come out of the court based on lower court rulings during questioning of Unikowsky. “We are all free to write law review articles on this fascinating subject, but that seems like that’s what you’re asking for.”

Orin Kerr, a Stanford University law professor who filed a friend of the court brief on the government’s side, said he believed based on the oral arguments that the court will say geofence warrants can be drafted lawfully.

“The Justices seem likely to reject the broader argument Chatrie made about the lawfulness of the warrant,” he wrote on social media. “They’ll probably say the geofence warrants have to be limited in time and space.”

Casey Waughn, a privacy lawyer and senior associate at Armstrong Teasdale, was struck by the absence of a major focus on “third-party doctrine,” under which there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy when citizens give their information to an outside party like a bank. 

She also honed in on arguments Unikowsky made.

“His argument really gave two lines to go down for the judges, and one was that you have a property interest in your data on the cloud, and the other was that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy for your data on the cloud,” she told CyberScoop. “And historically, both of those avenues have been grounds on which the Court has found that …issue is protected under the Fourth Amendment, and therefore that the actions constituted a search. So I thought it was interesting that he went and kind of argued both of those lanes.”

Alan Butler, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center that filed a friend of the court brief on the side of the petitioner, said the stakes in the case are high.

“Today’s arguments underscored that the Supreme Court is weighing one of the most consequential privacy questions of the digital age: whether the government can use sweeping location data searches to identify a suspect,” he said in a statement after the arguments. “The Court should hold that the Constitution protects our digital data even when it is stored by an app or cloud provider. The Court should ensure that the highly sensitive records generated by our phones cannot be obtained without particularized suspicion and close judicial oversight.” 

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A bipartisan pair of senators want a company that operates a tip line for anonymously reporting school safety concerns to answer questions about hackers compromising sensitive student information.

Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., announced on Monday they’d sent a letter to the firm, Navigate360, about last month’s incident.

“We write to express significant concern about the risks to students, staff, and schools from a recent cyberattack on your company’s P3 Global Intel tip line,” they said in the April 24 letter. “We are particularly concerned by reports that the cyberattack exploited platform vulnerabilities in order to steal students’ highly sensitive personally identifiable information. We urge you to provide the public clarity regarding what data was stolen, how Navigate360 is responding, and what safeguards Navigate360 will put into place to prevent this from happening again.”

According to the company, more than 30,000 schools and 5,000 public safety agencies use Navigate360’s products. Hackers claimed to purloin 93 gigabytes of data from the firm.

“Your company markets its product as an anonymous tip line,” Hassan and Banks said. “However, the personally identifiable information recently released by the hackers suggests otherwise. This puts the safety of students at risk and undermines public trust in using such platforms to report suspicious activity. Education and school safety experts have expressed concerns that, without guaranteed anonymity, students will choose not to report safety concerns.”

At the time of the alleged breach, Navigate360 CEO JP Guilbault said the company was working to determine if there was an incident and if there was, its extent. He did not confirm that sensitive information was released. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the senators’ letter Monday.

A whopping 82% of K-12 schools said they experienced a cyber incident between July 2023 and December 2024, according to a report from the Center for Internet Security. The scale of cyberattacks on schools expanded during COVID-19. Hackers seeking student information usually have a financial motive, such as holding the information for ransom.

The hackers in the Navigate360 case were apparently motivated by hacktivism.

“Remember folks, don’t do the dirty work for the pigs,” they wrote. “Investigating crime is their job, not yours. They don’t care about you, they want convictions and prisoners to fuel the for-profit prisons.”

Hassan and Banks’ specific questions for Navigate360 included inquiries about its cybersecurity practices, what data was compromised, whether the tip line is fully anonymous and what kind of help the company has provided to school districts.

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The latest attempt to re-up a controversial expiring surveillance law has failed to placate vocal critics on both the left and right of the political spectrum.

Two House votes failed last week to extend the spying powers under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for 18 months without changes, leading to Congress instead passing a 10-day reauthorization. GOP leaders have been scrambling to find a bill they can pass since with the April 30 deadline approaching.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., introduced a bill Thursday to extend it for three years, with a section stating that government officials can’t use Section 702 to target Americans. Under Section 702, U.S. spies and law enforcement agencies can warrantlessly search electronic communications of foreign targets. But those targets are sometimes communicating with U.S. persons, and officials can search the communications database using their personal information.

But critics of the latest Johnson proposal say the language about targeting Americans is window dressing.

“On the whole, it is an empty-calories bill and nothing more that does not engage in reform,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the center’s security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a call with reporters Friday.

Civil liberties groups have long called for a warrant requirement for U.S. person-based searches.

“It doesn’t require a warrant or any kind of court process for U.S. person searches,” said Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s political advocacy division. “The main reform just restates existing law… . It’s also completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, because backdoor searches have never been the product of the government intentionally targeting U.S. persons under 702. The problem is that they are incidentally collecting U.S. person communications and searching the communications of Americans.”

Gene Schaerr, general counsel of the conservative Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability, called the proposal “smoke and mirrors.”

The legislation did win over at least one key lawmaker, however: Rep. Warren Davidson, who had earlier introduced an amendment to attach a ban on the government buying American’s information from third-party data brokers, and who was a chief co-sponsor of legislation requiring a warrant for U.S. person searches under Section 702.

“Collectively, this set of reforms provides robust privacy protections for American citizens. Congress should bank this win and reauthorize Section 702,” Davidson said on X. “Then, we should swiftly begin gutting the unmitigated surveillance state left growing unchecked during these 702 fights.”

But it doesn’t look like it has yet won over enough conservative House Freedom Caucus members, and few Democrats have been on board with Johnson’s plans.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., indicated on X in harsh terms that he doesn’t trust FBI Director Kash Patel with current Section 702 powers.

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Campaigns employing commercial surveillance vendors tracked targets by exploiting mobile phone network vulnerabilities in what researchers said Thursday was the first-ever linking of “real-world attack traffic to mobile operator signalling infrastructure.”

The two unknown parties behind the campaigns mimicked the identities of mobile phone operators with customized surveillance tools, and manipulated signaling protocols and steered traffic through network pathways to hide, according to research from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

“Our findings highlight a systemic issue at the core of global telecommunications: operator infrastructure designed to enable seamless international connectivity is being leveraged to support covert surveillance operations that are difficult to monitor, attribute, and regulate,” a report published Thursday reads.

“Despite repeated public reporting, this activity continues unabated and without consequence,” Gary Miller and Swantje Lange wrote for Citizen Lab. “The continued use of mobile networks, built on a close inter-operator trust model and relied upon by users worldwide, raises broader questions for national regulators, policymakers, and the telecom industry about accountability, oversight, and global security.”

The attackers relied on identifiers and infrastructure associated with operators around the world, including networks based in Cambodia, China, the self-governing Island of Jersey, Israel, Italy, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Poland, Rwanda, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

They shifted between SS7 and Diameter protocols, the signalling protocols known for 3G and 4G/most of 5G, respectively, according to the report. While Diameter was meant to be more secure than SS7, the Federal Communications Commission in 2024 opened a probe into both its vulnerabilities and SS7’s, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has asked for a Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency report about telecommunications vulnerabilities rooted in both protocols.

But identifying the vendors used in the two surveillance campaigns, or who was behind them, was beyond the researchers’ reach.

“The reality is that there are a number of known surveillance vendors and bad actors in this space, but given the opaque nature of telecommunications signalling protocols, those vendors are able to operate without revealing exactly who they really are,” Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, wrote in his newsletter. “Much of the malicious things they are doing blend into the otherwise voluminous flow of billions of normal messages and roaming signals. They are ‘ghost operators’ within the global telecom ecosystem.”

One of the operators mentioned in Citizen Lab’s report, Israel-based 019 Mobile, wrote back that it didn’t recognize the hostnames referenced in the report as 019 Mobile’s network nodes, and couldn’t attribute the signaling activity it represents to 019 Mobile-operated infrastructure.

Another operator, Sure, said it has taken preventative measures to defend against misuse.

“Sure acknowledges that digital services can be misused, which is why we take a number of
steps to mitigate this risk,” CEO Alistair Beak said in a statement to CyberScoop. “Sure has implemented several protective measures to prevent the misuse of signalling services, including monitoring and blocking inappropriate signalling. Any evidence or valid complaint relating to the misuse of Sure’s network results in the service being immediately suspended and, where malicious or inappropriate activity is confirmed following investigation, permanently terminated.”

019 Mobile and a third operator, Tango Networks UK, didn’t respond to requests for comment from CyberScoop. The Citizen Lab report afforded some grace to the operators.

“It is important to note that the operator signalling addresses observed in the attacks do not necessarily imply direct operator involvement,” it states. “In some cases, access to the signalling ecosystem can be obtained through third-party providers, commercial leasing arrangements, or other intermediary services that allow actors to send messages using operator identifiers from legitimate networks.”

Updated 4/24/26: to include quote from Alistair Beak.

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House Republicans unveiled on Wednesday Congress’ latest effort to tackle comprehensive digital privacy legislation for Americans.

The Secure Data Act would allow consumers to opt out of data collection for individual businesses for the purposes of targeted advertising, selling to third parties or for use in automated decisionmaking.

It would also require companies to inform consumers when their personal data is being collected or used, provide them with a portable version of that data, and give consent rights to parents over the data collection of teenagers.

“This bill establishes clear, enforceable protections so that Americans remain in charge of their own data and companies are held accountable for its safe keeping,” said Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., who led a working charged with developing the draft legislation, in a statement.

The draft bill also imposes new requirements on businesses and other organizations to limit their collection of personal consumer data to what is “adequate, relevant and reasonably necessary” and only for purposes that are disclosed to consumers in advance. They must also adopt new safeguards for customers’ personal data and disclose any third parties they share it or sell it to, including adversarial foreign governments like Russia and China.

The Federal Trade Commission would be given greater oversight of data brokers that buy, collect, repackage and sell personal data to the highest bidder. The draft bill requires data brokers to register with the FTC, comply with data minimization, disclosure and data security mandates, and creates a new national data broker registry.

Cobun Zwiefel-Keegan, managing director at the International Association of Privacy Professionals, told CyberScoop that based on the released draft and conversations on the Hill, the bill most resembles privacy laws passed by Virginia or Kentucky (the home state of Guthrie) in recent years, with an emphasis on providing notice and opt-out rights to individual consumers and often tying business compliance to “reasonable” standards of evidence that they acted to protect consumer data.  

At the same time, Zwiefel-Keegan said it could potentially further empower the Federal Trade Commission and state Attorneys General to investigate and sanction bad actors.

The bill is the product of more than 16 months of internal discussion and consensus-building within the GOP majority. While drafting it, a working group led by Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) and other House Republicans solicited feedback from 170 organizations and received more than 250 responses from the public to a Request for Information released last year.

While they have worked to achieve consensus within their own caucus, House Republicans did not involve Democratic members in the working group or drafting process, something observers said could make it difficult to attract bipartisan support.

Zwiefel-Keegan said that while the Republican drafters of the bill “would challenge Democrats to explain why they can’t support the type of bill that has been passed in blue states.”

But he also noted that there are “plenty of ways that people will point to how it’s weaker than a lot of blue state privacy laws,” including federal preemption of more robust state privacy laws like those in California, the lack of a private right of action allowing individuals to sue companies directly and a mandatory 45-day “curing” period that allows companies in violation of the law to come into compliance and avoid formal sanctions.  

“I think the privacy working group and the leadership of the committee thinks there’s a pretty strong chance of passing it out of committee.” After that the bill’s chances are likely dependent on other factors, like getting some Democrats on board and working with “red state representatives who may not like their own laws being preempted.”

Shortly after the draft bill was released, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he was opposed and accused House Republicans of having “lost the plot” on passing national privacy legislation.

“This Republican privacy bill protects corporations and their bottom line, not people’s privacy,” Pallone said in a statement. “We should be protecting the little guy with a bill that empowers consumers, not one that preempts consumer protections at the behest of Big Tech.”

Eric Null, director of the privacy and data project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, indicated that the Secure Data Act falls short, calling it full of “easily exploitable loopholes” that let companies “hide behind cookie banners and lengthy terms of service rather than establishing meaningful privacy protections.”

Null was also critical of the bill’s lack of substance around AI, saying that Large Language Models pose significant privacy challenges today that will only worsen over time.

“Any federal privacy law discussed in 2026 should be future-proofed by protecting against growing AI-related privacy harms, namely by limiting data collection for AI training and preventing use of the technology to discriminate against protected classes, but this bill does neither sufficiently,” he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union also came out against the bill, with senior staff attorney Cody Venzke saying the GOP-led bill “places the onus on regular people” to sift through complex privacy policies created by businesses to request opt out or deletion of their data.

“And it leaves us without real recourse – even blocking us from going to court – if our requests go unanswered,” said Venzke in a statement.

In their joint statement, Guthrie and Joyce said they “look forward to working with our colleagues to build support for this bill and advance data privacy protections fit for our 21st century economy.”

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The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in a case that could limit the government’s ability to obtain bulk digital data of device users with a single warrant, in a rare instance of the country’s top justices taking on digital rights.

Chatrie v. The United States is the first major Fourth Amendment case the court has taken up since 2018, despite the proliferation of technology that impacts privacy since then. At the center of what the justices will address are so-called geofence warrants, which compel companies to disclose user data from a certain time and location.

“It’s a really interesting question about a law enforcement tool that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago, where you can basically look at potentially every phone, for example, that passed through a particular area in a particular window,” said John Villasenor, a law professor at UCLA and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Both conservative and liberal civil liberties advocates have lined up in favor of the petitioner, leaving the United States government with fewer friend-of-the-court briefs on its side. Okello Chatrie was convicted for a 2019 bank robbery after police used a geofence warrant to obtain information from Google about users during a one-hour period and 17.5-acre area, then refined the search.

In Congress, Democrats have raised concerns about geofence warrants as they might pertain to abortion rights, while Republicans have raised concerns about their use in tracking suspects linked to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.

Courts have been divided on the legality of the geofence warrant in Chatrie’s case. Google has since stopped storing location data in the cloud and moved records directly to user devices, but those siding with Chatrie say it could have broader implications for financial records, search history records, chat bot records and more.

“We think it’s important that courts get it right and that, among other things, courts recognize that we have a property interest in many of our digital records,” said Brent Skorup, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute, which has filed an amicus brief on behalf of the petitioner. “If the government can get those digital records without a warrant, that renders the Fourth Amendment pretty empty and we’re not secure in our privacy and traditional rights to having control of our private papers and effects.”

The United States noted that Chatrie opted into Google’s storage of his location history, and that the information’s collection is not substantially different from identification of other markers of someone’s presence, like tire tracks or boot prints.

“Individuals generally have no reasonable expectation of privacy in information disclosed to a third party and then conveyed by the third party to the government,” it wrote. A collection of 32 attorneys general have sided with the U.S. government, as well as some law professors.

In the 2018 case, Carpenter v. The United States, the Supreme Court limited the applicability of that “third-party doctrine” — echoed by the U.S. government’s argument in the Chatrie case — to search and seizure of 127 days’ worth of someone’s cell site location information, ruling that it constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and therefore required a warrant.

The type of warrant is at issue in Chatrie v. The United States. A Virginia court ultimately found that geofence warrant unconstitutional because it was not sufficiently specific and was not supported by probable cause for every user whose data was collected. However, the court ruled the evidence was admissible in court, because law enforcement acted in “good faith” in the belief that it was constitutional.

Villasenor said the court could clear a lot up by addressing the good faith exception, something lower courts have used to sidestep substantial constitutional rulings, according to one study. But both Villasenor and Skorup say it’s possible that the Supreme Court also could fail to arrive at a conclusive ruling on the issues at stake in Chatrie.

While some civil liberties advocates are optimistic about the outcome due to the court’s ruling in Carpenter, three justices in that case have since been replaced by others.

The rarity of such digital privacy cases rising to the level of the Supreme Court might be simply a function of a crowded court agenda, but it’s not the only possibility.

“Part of it might be because the court has not developed a consensus view about how to approach these yet,” Skorup said. “It’s speculation on my part, but they probably have some ambivalence about taking up cases where they know that they’re not going to speak with one voice, or they know they might speak with fractured voices.”

Google itself filed a brief in the case, but sided with neither party, saying it took no position on the warrant in Chatrie’s specific case.

“But it urges the Court to hold that Google Location History and other similar digital documents stored remotely deserve the Fourth Amendment’s protection,” it wrote. “A contrary rule would leave the intimate details of millions of Americans’ daily lives — data that will exist in many forms as technology rapidly develops — exposed to warrantless surveillance.”

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Congress is grappling with renewal of a surveillance law set to expire at the end of this month that critics say is a mystery on how much of a difference it has made for controversial government spying authorities — for better or worse.

The 2024 law reauthorized so-called Section 702 powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes warrantless surveillance of electronic communications of foreign targets. Most controversially, the law allows U.S. officials to search (“query”) those communications databases using Americans’ personal information, as long as the American is  in contact with someone overseas, which raises significant privacy concerns.

Backers of the 2024 law, known as the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), point to 56 changes it made to deal with criticisms of Section 702, following a period where abuses came to light, including hundreds of thousands of improper searches. At the same time, the law made changes that some feared could actually expand Section 702 powers.

The House voted to extend the law as-is for 10 days early Friday. The Senate then did the same. The Trump administration has sought a 180-day “clean” reauthorization.

As Congress weighs potential extensions of the 2024 law without making changes to it, “I don’t think we know” what good has come of it, said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program. By the same token, it’s difficult to know whether some of the expansion fears have come to fruition, she said: “We don’t have reliable information on this.”

Added Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy and Technology: “There’s a lot of black boxes here.”

Examining Past Changes

Both Goitein and Laperruque are skeptical of any positive change from RISAA, though, and have long advocated for a warrant requirement for U.S. person searches. Intelligence agencies have resisted that addition, claiming that it would dramatically slow down time-sensitive national security investigations.

By contrast, Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel at the National Security Agency, said RISAA constituted “the most significant set of reforms to the statute since its adoption in 2008.” and that “those reforms have had a dramatic effect.” 

One major point of dispute is to what degree the number of U.S. person searches dropped, particularly because of a conclusion in last year’s Justice Department inspector general report finding that an “advanced filtering tool generated queries that were not tracked by the FBI.” 

As the report outlines, an FBI system has an “‘advanced filter function’ that allows users to select a specific FBI casefile number or ‘facility’ (e.g., a phone number or email address), using a drop-down menu or search bar, to review communications with targeted facilities.

“This functionality enables users to select from lists of ‘participants’ in communication with targeted facilities and review communications of those participants.In or around August 2024,” the report continues. The National Security Division of the Justice Department “became aware of the participants filter function in [the system] and was concerned that searches conducted through use of the participants filter constituted separate queries that must satisfy the query standard and comply with all query procedural requirements.”

By the intelligence community’s count, the number of U.S. person searches has otherwise mostly declined even going back to before the 2024 law’s passage: 119,383 in 2022, 57,094 in 2023, 5,518 in 2024 and 7,413 in 2025.

“It is quite clear that the searches that were run using this filter function met the statutory definition of queries, and yet the FBI for some significant period of time decided to not count them as queries,” Goitein said.

Laperruque, deputy director of CDT’s security and surveillance project, said an audit mandate in the 2024 law was potentially useful, but hasn’t proven to be in reality.

“At least it should mean that it should help try to detect abuse if it is happening,” he said. “The problem there, though, is you’re still relying on the FBI to properly log all of its quarries and hand them over for DOJ to be checked, which hasn’t happened. You’re trusting DOJ and the executive to engage in self-policing, and that’s something where folks rightfully have a lot of skepticism based on how DOJ has conducted itself recently.”

Gerstell, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points to numerous reviews — including a staff report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) — that indicate a drop in U.S. person searches. It’s the biggest change of RISAA, he said.

“The most significant one is a very substantial drop in the number of queries of the database for U.S. person information, which has been a big focus for privacy advocates, and there’s been a dramatic drop, so much so that both the Inspector General for the Department of Justice and the staff of the PCLOB have said, ‘I wonder if we’re overdoing it.’ … Every single one of them presents those numbers, without caveat.”

On the advanced filter function count, Gerstell acknowledged the ambiguity, but referred to reports that said, as he summarized, “If they had been considered queries, it appears that most would have been compliant anyway… because they were a subset of something that was already compliant. But we don’t know if any of them were noncompliant, and we don’t have the data.”

On the other side of the RISAA debate, critics argued that its revised definition of “electronic communications service provider” could dramatically expand surveillance to include businesses like coffee shops or landlords. The reported, but formally undisclosed, real target of the change was data centers.

“That was a pretty big expansion with a lot of potential abuse,” Laperruque said. But “we don’t really know much about how it’s changed” anything, he said.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, sought to advance clarifying language about that subject after RISAA’s passage, and the Biden administration said it would confine the provision’s use to the kind of undisclosed businesses that prompted the provision in the first place. Laperreque noted that the Trump administration has made no such promises, and Warner’s clarifying language never became law.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has issued its annual opinion re-certifying the Section 702 program for another year. However, the court reportedly took issue with the program’s f filtering systems, saying that when such a system is used to look for information on Americans it must be counted as a query, subjecting it to additional restrictions. The Trump administration plans to appeal the ruling.

Other critiques of the 2024 law include that many of its biggest changes weren’t changes at all, but instead codifications of changes that then-FBI Director Christopher Wray had implemented. Abuses continued after those changes, Goitein said.

Gerstell said enshrining those changes into law wasn’t a bad thing. “The statute expressly codified some but not all of Wray reforms — and some went beyond that in many ways,” he said. Those changes included requiring FBI deputy director approval of U.S. person queries that target elected officials, government appointees, political candidates or organizations, or media. Those were some of the more criticized prior targeting abuses.

The fight still ahead

Republicans remain divided over extending the law. Some who had reservations about a clean reauthorization have come on board, such as Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who had taken issue with limitations on congressional attendance of FISC proceedings but since has had that concern resolved.

Others may have been swayed by direct lobbying from the Trump administration, including a social media post from Trump himself this week, where he wrote, “I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!” Still others have had their position against a clean extension hardened by the FISC court opinion and additional concerns.

Other issues have become enmeshed in the reauthorization debate, such as calls to block government agencies from purchasing information from data brokers. But “this has nothing to do with this authority,” said George Barnes, former deputy director of the NSA. 

But lawmakers of both parties have complained for months that the administration was silent for too long as the law’s expiration loomed.

Only recently did the Trump administration share new examples of the law’s successes, including that it had thwarted a 2024 terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert. Barnes said releasing such examples might offer a public case for the law, but has its downsides, too.

“I was always understanding but frustrated by the need to release examples just because they choreographed to the adversary what we could do,” said Barnes, now Red Cell’s cyber practice president. 

Reauthorizing Section 702 is urgent, though, for cybersecurity purposes, he said.

“A lot of the impact that I saw the authority having over my time was in cybersecurity as well,” he said. “And so when you have foreign entities that are targeting the U.S., or U.S. interests overseas, that authority can be positioned to help eliminate those activities.”

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An apparent hack-for-hire campaign from a group with suspected Indian government connections targeted Middle Eastern and North African journalists and activists using spyware, three collaborating organizations said in reports published Wednesday.

The attacks shared infrastructure that pointed to the advanced persistent threat group known as Bitter, which most frequently targets government, military, diplomatic and critical infrastructure sectors across South Asia, according to conclusions from researchers at Access Now, Lookout and SMEX.

Each group took on a different piece of the puzzle:

• Access Now got calls on its helpline that led it to examine a spearphishing campaign in 2023 and 2024. It contacted Lookout for technical support about the malware it encountered.
• Lookout attributed the malware to Bitter, concluding it was a likely hack-for-hire campaign, using the Android ProSpy spyware.
• SMEX dived into a spearphishing campaign targeting a prominent Lebanese journalist last year, collaborating with Access Now to discover shared infrastructure between the campaigns.

One of the victims, independent Egyptian journalist Mostafa Al-A’sar, said he contacted Access Now after receiving a suspicious link from someone he’d been talking to about a job position. He was skeptical because his phone had been targeted before, when he was arrested in Egypt in 2018.

The lesson for journalists and civil society groups is that cybersecurity “is not a luxury,” he said.

“I feel like I’m threatened,” Al-A’sar said, and even though he was living in exile, he feels like “they are still following me. I also felt worried about my family, about my friends, about my sources.”

The combined research found a wider campaign than just the original victims.

“Our joint findings expose an espionage campaign that has been operational since at least 2022 until present day primarily targeting civil society members and potentially government officials in the Middle East,” Lookout wrote. “The operation features a combination of targeted spearphishing delivered through fake social media accounts and messaging applications leveraging persistent social engineering efforts, which may result in the delivery of Android spyware depending on the target’s device.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the campaign.

“Spying on journalists is often the first step in a broader pattern of intimidation, threats, and attacks,” said the group’s regional director, Sara Qudah. “These actions endanger not only journalists’ personal safety, but also their sources and their ability to do their work. Authorities in the region must stop weaponizing technology and financial resources to surveil journalists.”

Access Now said it didn’t have enough information to attribute who was behind the attacks it identified.

ESET first published research on the ProSpy malware last year, after finding it targeting residents of the United Arab Emirates.

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