US Border Patrol Surveils Millions of American Drivers
▼ Summary
– WhatsApp’s contact discovery feature still allows mass extraction of user phone numbers eight years after initial warnings, creating what researchers call the largest phone number exposure ever.
– US schools are installing vape detectors with surveillance capabilities in bathrooms, raising privacy concerns despite efforts to curb nicotine and cannabis use.
– Cisco warns that AI tools are making it easier for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities in outdated networking equipment, urging companies to upgrade their infrastructure.
– The US Border Patrol uses covert license-plate readers and predictive algorithms to monitor drivers far inland, raising Fourth Amendment concerns about tracking Americans’ movements.
– Microsoft mitigated a record 15.72 Tbps DDoS attack from the Aisuru botnet, while the FBI accessed encrypted Signal chats of immigration court watchers, labeling them as extremist actors without evidence of violence.
A significant investigation has revealed that the US Border Patrol is operating a predictive-intelligence program that monitors millions of American drivers far from the nation’s borders. According to the Associated Press, a network of covert license-plate readers, often hidden inside traffic cones, barrels, and roadside equipment, collects data fed into an algorithm designed to flag “suspicious” travel patterns. These include routes near border regions, quick turnarounds, and other movements deemed unusual. Local police departments then receive alerts, leading to traffic stops for minor violations like overly tinted windows, dangling air fresheners, or slightly exceeding the speed limit. Police records reviewed by the AP show that drivers were frequently questioned, searched, and sometimes arrested, even when no illegal items were discovered.
Internal group chats, obtained through public records requests, show Border Patrol agents and Texas deputies sharing real-time information about US citizens. This data included hotel records, rental car statuses, home addresses, and social media details. Officers coordinated what they refer to as “whisper stops” to conceal federal involvement in these operations. The AP identified plate-reader locations more than 120 miles from the Mexican border in the Phoenix area, as well as sites in metropolitan Detroit and near the Michigan-Indiana state line that capture traffic headed toward Chicago and Gary. Border Patrol also taps into DEA license-plate reader networks and has accessed systems operated by private companies like Rekor, Vigilant Solutions, and Flock Safety.
While US Customs and Border Protection states the program operates under “stringent” policies and constitutional safeguards, legal experts told the AP that its massive scale raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns. An official from UC Law San Francisco described the system as a “dragnet” that tracks Americans’ daily movements, associations, and routines.
In other security news, Microsoft reported mitigating the largest distributed denial-of-service attack ever recorded in a cloud environment. On October 24, a single Azure endpoint in Australia faced a barrage reaching 15.72 Tbps and 3.64 billion packets per second. Microsoft attributed the attack to the Aisuru botnet, a Turbo-Mirai-class network of compromised Internet of Things devices like home routers and cameras. Over 500,000 IP addresses participated in the assault, which generated a massive flood of traffic with very little spoofing. Microsoft confirmed its global Azure DDoS Protection network successfully absorbed the attack without any service disruption. Although Microsoft labeled this the largest DDoS attack observed in the cloud, Cloudflare recently reported an even larger flood measuring 22.2 Tbps. Researchers note that the Aisuru botnet has launched multiple attacks exceeding 20 Tbps and is expanding its capabilities to include credential stuffing, AI-driven data scraping, and HTTPS floods using residential proxies.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its remaining claims against SolarWinds and its Chief Information Security Officer, Tim Brown, concluding a long-running lawsuit related to the company’s 2020 supply-chain hack. Russian SVR operatives were alleged to have compromised SolarWinds’ Orion software, leading to widespread breaches across government and private industry. The SEC’s 2023 lawsuit, which focused on allegations of fraud and internal control failures, was largely dismissed by a federal judge earlier in 2024. SolarWinds called the full dismissal a vindication, stating its disclosures and conduct were appropriate. The company expressed hope that the outcome would ease concerns among other CISOs about the case’s potential chilling effect on the security industry.
Law enforcement documents show the FBI accessed messages from a private Signal group used by New York immigration court-watch activists. This network coordinates volunteers who monitor public hearings at three federal immigration courts. According to a two-page FBI and NYPD “joint situational information report” dated August 28, 2025, agents quoted chat messages and labeled the nonviolent court watchers as “anarchist violent extremist actors,” circulating this assessment nationwide. The report did not explain how the FBI penetrated the encrypted Signal group, only stating the information came from a “sensitive source with excellent access.”
The documents, first reported by the Guardian, were originally obtained by the government-transparency organization Property of the People. They show activists discussing how to enter courtrooms, film officers, and gather identifying information about federal personnel, but provide no evidence supporting the FBI’s claim that a group member had previously advocated for violence. A separate set of records obtained by the same group shows the bureau framed ordinary observation of public immigration hearings as a potential threat. This comes at a time when Immigration and Customs Enforcement has escalated courthouse arrests, setting up what advocates call “deportation traps.” Civil liberties experts told the paper that this surveillance mirrors earlier FBI campaigns targeting lawful dissent and risks chilling constitutionally protected political activity.
(Source: Wired)
