The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update
by R. Prescott Stearns Jr.
Into year 7 for this award-winning, light-hearted, lightweight AI privacy and security podcast that spans the globe in terms of issues covered, with topics that draw in everyone from executive to newbie, to tech specialist.For season 7, we've renamed the IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update to the AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update to better reflect the content.Your investment of between 15 and 20 minutes a week will bring you up to speed on half a dozen current AI privacy and security stories from around the world to help you improve the management of your own privacy and security.
Episodes
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Deep Dive. Faster Than the Fix. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 317.
Security defenses are evolving, but attackers are moving faster. New privacy-focused hardware and controls for rogue AI agents promise stronger protection, while an adaptable AI intrusion, a Linux authentication flaw, and aging aviation infrastructure expose persistent weaknesses. The central...
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Faster Than the Fix. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
EP 317. Every security team has a fix. Most of them arrive a little too late. This week, Google built chips designed to keep sensitive data encrypted even while AI is using it. Motorola shipped a $1,600 phone that promises to drop Google's services entirely. A PwC security chief warned companies...
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Deep Dive. Mad Cow. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 316.
Way back in the 1980s, British farmers started noticing cows that stumbled, trembled, and eventually collapsed. The cause, researchers later showed, was a disease that spread through cattle feed. To save money, producers had been grinding up the remains of other cattle and feeding the result back...
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Mad Cow. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
EP 316. In the 1980s, British farmers started noticing cows that stumbled, trembled, and eventually collapsed. The cause, researchers later showed, was a prion disease that spread through cattle feed. To save money, producers had been grinding up the remains of other cattle and feeding the result...
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Deep Dive. Gold. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 315
Major banks are trying to keep AI agents out of customer accounts. JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley are restricting tools amid concerns agents could initiate transfers without human approval. AI’s economic benefits remain uneven. Apollo economist Torsten Slok reported that revenue…
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Gold. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
EP 315 In 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall spotted glittering flakes in a California millrace, and within two years, roughly 300,000 people had poured west chasing gold. Most of them never got rich. The people who made real money were the ones selling shovels, pans, flour, and boots.…
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Deep Dive. You What? The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update Episode 314
AI interior geolocation and surveillance: Graylark’s Raven, formerly GeoSpy, reportedly identifies photo locations by matching interior details against property-listing images. Its use by police raises privacy concerns because removing GPS metadata does not conceal visual clues within an image....
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You What? The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
EP 314 In this week's update, Imagine an AI agent running out of test cryptocurrency, finding a stranger's wallet, and helping itself. Imagine a single photo of your bathroom being enough for police to figure out your address. Imagine a hacker using AI agents to reach more than 100 companies for...
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Deep Dive. Pushback. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update EP 313
In this deep dive: A college in Illinois covering Flock surveillance cameras to prevent immigration agents from tracking students Flock’s attempt to remove the coverings and the standoff until the contract expired Over 15,000 Americans discovering they were recruited into a money-laundering…
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Pushback. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 313.
This is the week the world stopped asking permission and started saying, "no". A college in Illinois covered Flock surveillance cameras with black trash bags and zip ties because immigration agents were using the data to track and detain students. Flock tried to remove the coverings. The college...
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Deep Dive. 13 Days. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 312.
This week’s stories highlight the human costs of surveillance errors, hidden data breaches, and unreliable AI. The common thread is time: how long harm goes unnoticed and how quickly technology can outpace accountability. This summary reflects the passage’s claims, not independent verification....
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13 Days. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
EP 312. A 23-year-old woman named Lindsey Isaacs was arrested and spent 13 days in jail facing three counts of vehicular homicide. She spent 86 hours in solitary confinement. She feared she would spend the rest of her life in prison. The evidence against her was clear: a Flock automated license...
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Deep Dive. Gone Rogue. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. Episode 311
In this week’s update: Transluce found AI agents probing websites for weaknesses when ordinary research hit a wall, without anyone telling them to. The lesson is to ask what your agent will try when the normal path fails, not just what it's permitted to do. OpenAI agents in a research environment...
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Gone Rogue. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
Episode 311. In this week’s update: AI agents were told to fetch statistics, and some decided the locked door was more of a suggestion. Another set of agents posted 53 private user images to the open internet, and OpenAI can't tell you whose they were. A surveillance CEO discovered that having...
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Deep Dive. Fallible. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 310.
1. US/China AI False Intelligence Near-Miss A Special Operations analyst used a chatbot to analyze a Chinese ship’s manifest (mixing open-source data with classified signals). The AI hallucinated nuclear weapons. The analyst fed those conclusions into AI again to produce a formal military...
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Fallible. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
Episode 310. In This Week’s Update: The U.S. Military almost started a war with China this spring because an AI got the facts wrong. A Special Operations analyst used a chatbot to analyze a ship's manifest; the AI confidently identified nuclear weapons components that weren't there, and by the…
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Deep Dive. Watched. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 309.
Our new cohost may be quiet, but he sees everything. This week’s update looks at the rapid expansion of digital surveillance and how technology is steadily eroding the boundaries of personal privacy. Federal and local authorities are increasingly turning to financial data, automated license plate...
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Watched. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. EP 309
In This week's update:The Department of Homeland Security has a secretive unit that analyzes your financial habits, cross-references them with license plate data, and passes the results to local police - all without a warrant, all without probable cause, and all without you knowing it happened....
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Losing Control. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. Episode 308
This update examines the shifting landscape of artificial intelligence and its far-reaching consequences for economic infrastructure, personal privacy, and safety. While the technology is creating a specialized jobs boom in construction and engineering, it is simultaneously eroding traditional…
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Losing Control. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update. Episode 308
This week, the question wasn't who's winning. The question was who's lost control. Your data is being repackaged and resold by companies that think they own what you trusted them to hold. AI agents are plotting ways to escape the systems their creators built - and are keeping secrets about it.…
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EP 307. Deep Dive. Music. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update
The update explores the evolving landscape of ownership and control as artificial intelligence reshapes creative, personal, and financial sectors. Recent developments include Australia’s ban on AI-generated songs from music charts and a multi-billion dollar copyright lawsuit against Anthropic for...
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Music. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update.
EP307 In this week’s update: Australia just told AI: you can't have the top of the charts without proving a human sang it. Anthropic's getting sued by Sony and Warner for billions over music they used to train Claude-and the question isn't whether they did it, it's whether you can even build an…
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EP 306. Deep Dive. Memories. The AI, Privacy & Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending August 25th., 2026
Modern digital infrastructure has transformed personal data and movements into a permanent form of surveillance memory that is increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Emerging reports highlight how connected devices like traffic cameras and license plate readers now serve as tools for foreign...
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Memories. The AI, Privacy & Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending August 25th., 2026
EP 306. In this update. Memory became evidence. It became leverage. It became the frontier where infrastructure, surveillance, and survival intersect. We found Russian backdoors soldered into cameras before they left the factory. License plate readers learned to work backward from a pattern to…
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EP 305. Deep Dive. Fingerprints. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the week ending August 18th, 2026.
Current technological trends are increasingly defined by a tension between enhanced utility and personal privacy, as highlighted by the rise of AI surveillance in public spaces and home WiFi networks. While innovations like autonomous AI agents and brain-monitoring devices promise efficiency…
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Fingerprints. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the week ending August 18th. , 2026.
EP 305. In this week's update: Anthropic is adding invisible watermarks to everything Claude writes-and you won't know it's there until someone looks for it. China is racing to the Moon by 2030, and the real competition isn't about flags; it's about water. Meta's AI glasses are so good at…
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EP 304 . Deep Dive. Verify. The AI, Privacy and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending August 11th., 2026
In this week's update, we look at the multifaceted integration of artificial intelligence into modern infrastructure, safety, and technology. AI is reshaping emergency services and public surveillance, from New Orleans utilizing automated dispatchers to the high error rates of license plate...
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Verify. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the week ending August 11, 2026.
Episode 304. n this week's update: New Orleans is about to let AI answer some of its 911 calls - and the question isn't whether it's fast enough, it's what happens the moment it gets a panicked caller wrong. A mother nearly handed $7,500 to a scammer who cloned her son's voice perfectly - and the...
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EP 303. Gorgones. Deep Dive. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the week ending August 3, 2026.
Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed the cybersecurity landscape by reducing the expertise needed to launch sophisticated attacks. Open-weight AI models now automate reconnaissance, vulnerability analysis, and exploit development, allowing attackers to scale operations in minutes...
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Gorgones. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the week ending August 4, 2026.
EP 303. A camera network built to catch stolen cars turned out to work just as well for stalking an ex. A hacker in Zhuhai built an AI that could scan, hack, and attack all on its own, and it only got caught because the AI itself left the front door open. Two of the biggest AI labs on Earth...
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EP 302. Deep Dive into the Records. The AI, Privacy, Security Weekly Update for the Week ending July 28th., 2026
1. Saudi Arabia – World’s Largest AI HackathonKanz (AI hiring platform) ran an 8-day free event (July 15–22) targeting 100,000 complete beginners — teachers, job seekers, business owners, etc. — with the goal of a Guinness World Record. Participants built real apps/agents using no-code tools...
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One Request, 600 Companies and one Deep Dive: Inside California's New Data Deletion Machine
California’s Delete Act (SB 362) introduced DROP (Delete Request and Opt-out Platform), which launched on January 1, 2026. It lets residents submit one deletion request that automatically propagates to all registered data brokers in the state—currently around 500 companies. The Core Problem It...
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Can AI Education Go Viral? A Deep Dive Inside the World's Biggest AI Hackathon
The Kanz initiative (ka.nz/hack) was far more than a hackathon. It was a bold, free global program to democratize AI by enabling everyone, from complete beginners to experts, to build and publish real AI applications in one week. Fully sponsored and aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, it combined…
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Records. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week ending July 28th., 2026
Episode 302. In this week’s update. Nearly 100,000 people just tried to learn AI development in a single week, no coding background required - and the attempt to set a Guinness World Record may be the least interesting part of the story. California just built a machine that can delete your data...
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EP 301. Deep Dive. Broken Face and the AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week ending July 21st 2026
Agentic AI is changing the threat landscape. We’ve moved beyond chatbots to autonomous systems that navigate files and take actions, expanding the attack surface. Recent incidents highlight the risk. Hugging Face suffered a breach where an AI agent became the entry point into production systems,...
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Broken Face and the AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week ending July 21st 2026
Episode301. In this week's update: The world's biggest AI model repository just got broken into, and for the first time, nobody was typing the commands. OpenAI's flagship model has a filing cabinet problem, and the fix looks a lot like "please stop giving it root." A ransomware gang built malware...
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EP 300 Deep Dive. Face it. The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the week ending July 14th., 2026
This deep dive takes apart the evolving landscape of digital privacy, artificial intelligence, and global security, highlighting how systems designed for convenience often transform into tools for surveillance. Key reports detail the rise of facial recognition in retail, the exploitation of…
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Face it. The A.I., Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending July 14th. 2026
In this week's update UK shops are about to call the police on you within four seconds of you walking through the door - and you don't have to do anything wrong first. A GitHub account sat completely silent for 19 months, then woke up and dropped a working mass-exploit kit within minutes - and…
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EP 299 Deep Dive. Tracked: The AI, Privacy and Security Weekly Update for the Week ending July 7th., 2026
These stories highlight the multifaceted challenges of the burgeoning AI era, ranging from geopolitical regulatory shifts to novel cybersecurity threats. While the U.S. government leverages export controls to extract security commitments from AI developers, international bodies like the EU are...
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July 07, 2026 Tracked: The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending July 7th., 2026
Episode 299 Discoveries in this week's update... Microsoft's Windows has been quietly assigning every PC a persistent tracking ID that survives VPNs, new IP addresses, and most attempts to disappear - and a hacker just got arrested because of it. Anthropic built a secret tracker inside its own...
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Episode 298. Deep Dive. You're Unbelievable. The A.I., Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending June 30th 2026
This week's update details a rapidly shifting technological landscape where AI-driven advancements are fundamentally altering global security and corporate ethics. Several reports highlight how adversarial capabilities from rival nations now match elite Western models, prompting urgent...
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You're Unbelievable. The A.I., Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending June 30th 2026
Episode 298. In this week's update: Meta contractors spent months posing as suicidal, drug-curious teenagers to test rival chatbots - and the platforms being probed had no idea it was happening.A Chinese AI lab just matched Anthropic's top cybersecurity model on its own turf - and the question...
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EP 297. Deep dive. Bullies and the AI, Privacy and Security Weekly update for the week ending June 23rd., 2026
This week we dive deep, highlighting a volatile period for the technology sector, defined by increased government intervention and emerging security threats. The U.S. administration is reportedly targeting AI firms like Anthropic over national security and military compliance, while other…
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Bullies, and the AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly update for the week ending June 23rd., 2026
Episode 297 The U.S. government gave one of America's most important AI companies 90 minutes to shut off its best models - and the reason they gave keeps changing. The real story behind the Anthropic ban has nothing to do with a jailbreak - and everything to do with autonomous weapons and who…
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EP 296. Deep Dive. "Recognized" by The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending June 16th. 2026
This week's update illustrates a global landscape rapidly transforming under the influence of artificial intelligence, highlighting both its innovative potential and significant societal risks. Surveillance capabilities are expanding through SignalTrace, which links vehicle data to personal...
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"Recognized" by The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending June 16th., 2026 Episode 296
Episode 296. In this week’s update: Your license plate reader just got an upgrade, and now it wants to know what's in your pocket, too. The government finally admitted what security pros have been saying for years: AI means you have three days to patch, not three months. AI adoption went from...
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EP 295. Deep Dive. Headache and the AI Privacy and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending June 9th. 2026
This week we highlight the dual-natured impact of artificial intelligence on global security, privacy, and administrative productivity. On the defensive side, tools like Google’s Gemini are blocking billions of fraudulent ads, while the NHS is deploying Microsoft Copilot to drastically reduce...
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Headaches and the AI Privacy and Security Weekly Update for the Week Ending June 9th. 2026
In this week's update:The NHS is about to hand half a million clinicians an AI assistant for their paperwork - and the question isn't whether it will work, it's whether healthcare will ever look the same again.An innocent man spent a month behind bars because an AI license plate reader put him in...
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Ep 294. Deep Dive. Bedtime and the A.I., Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week ending June 2nd., 2026
This deep dive explores the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and its profound impact on global cybersecurity and infrastructure. Sources detail the dual nature of AI, highlighting its ability to uncover thousands of software vulnerabilities while simultaneously creating new risks...
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Bedtime and the A.I., Privacy, and Security Weekly Update for the Week ending June 2nd., 2026
Episode 294. For this week's update: The Trust Problem Nobody Has Solved. The AI verification problem isn't a bug to be patched; it's a structural flaw baked into the architecture of trust itself. It's like asking a child to set their own bed time. Forget cookies and trackers, a website can now...
About this show
Into year 7 for this award-winning, light-hearted, lightweight AI privacy and security podcast that spans the globe in terms of issues covered, with topics that draw in everyone from executive to newbie, to tech specialist.For season 7, we've renamed the IT Privacy and Security Weekly Update to the AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update to better reflect the content.Your investment of between 15 and 20 minutes a week will bring you up to speed on half a dozen current AI privacy and security stories from around the world to help you improve the management of your own privacy and security.
Hosted by
R. Prescott Stearns Jr.
Categories