A Wrench in the IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update for November 18th., 2025

EP 267 In this week’s update:Wealthy Bitcoin holders in Switzerland are now learning to bite through zip ties as 'wrench attacks' shift crypto threats from cyberspace to real-world violence.Iceland has officially classified a potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) as an existential national-security threat – the first time a climate phenomenon has reached its National Security Council.The ACLU and EFF have filed suit against San Jose, California, arguing that its blanket of nearly 500 Flock license-plate cameras creates an inescapable, year-long tracking database that violates state privacy protections.A deceptively simple enumeration trick allowed researchers to harvest 3.5 billion WhatsApp phone numbers, exposing once again that Meta’s contact-discovery feature has never truly been private.As nearly all enterprise work migrates to the browser, traditional security tools are going blind to the fastest-growing ungoverned data channel: generative AI accessed through personal accounts and unchecked extensions.Microsoft’s November 2025 update finally elevates third-party passkey managers like 1Password and Bitwarden to first-class status in Windows 11, marking a major step toward native, cross-device passwordless authentication.Google has launched Private AI Compute, a fully encrypted cloud enclave that lets Gemini-class models run sophisticated tasks on user data even Google itself cannot see - signaling a potential privacy pivot in big-tech AI.The U.S.-China contest for AI supremacy has hardened into a full-scale technological cold war, with both nations pouring billions into chips, power grids, and talent to decide who will own the defining technology of the century.We opened the whole toolbox this week. Grab the hammer and let’s see what else we can find!Find the full transcript to this podcast here.