Ricardo Prada Vsquez, a Venezuelan man whose family says he was disappeared and who wasnt included on a previously leaked government list of people sent to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador, was included on a private airlines flight manifest to the country, according to hacked airline data obtained and analyzed by 404 Media.That means a private charter flight company might have more accurate information on where people are being deported than the government, experts say, and raises questions about the process being used to deport people.While the government initially declined to say where Prada had been sent before eventually admitting he was sent to El Salvador, the man was on a manifest for a March 15 flight held by GlobalX, one of ICEs primary charter companies. The news also raises questions about whether other people whose families are unaware of their whereabouts may be in El Salvador too.Do you know the name of anyone else who has been deported but their whereabouts are unknown? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.There are so many levels at which this concerns me. One is they clearly did not take enough care in this to even make sure they had the right lists of who they were removing, and who they were not sending to a prison that is a black hole in El Salvador, Michelle Bran, executive director of Together and Free, a group that has been working with families of deported people, including Pradas, told 404 Media. They weren't even keeping accurate records of who they were sending there. What that says about how much due process or how much accuracy there is in the rest of the assessments of whether these people should be on those planes at all follows very closely behind that.The hacked flight data provides new insight into where exactly the U.S. government and one of its airline contractors transported Prada after his arrest in January. According to the data obtained by 404 Media, Prada was listed on a flight from Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, to Comayagua International Airport, also known as Palmerola International Airport, in Honduras. The flight had 163 booked passengers, according to the data. Harlingen is along the U.S.-Mexico border and has an immigration court.Then, he was listed on a second flight from Comayagua International Airport to El Salvador International, according to the data. 0:00 /0:04 1 Visualization of the flight data. Made by 404 Media in FlightMapper. We are in touch with Ricardo's family and are exploring litigation to secure his release from CECOT. We are working to offer representation but are facing serious barriers to ensure Ricardo has access to justice, as he is being held incommunicado in horrific conditions, Ben Levey, a staff attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Centers Asylum Project, told 404 Media.GlobalX is a charter company that handles many of ICEs deportation flights. In 2024, 74 percent of ICEs more than 1,500 removal flights were on GlobalX plans, according to a data set from Tom Cartwright who tracks ICE Air flights which the Project on Government Oversight reported on in March.Earlier this week 404 Media reported a hacker targeted GlobalX and stole passenger and flight information from the company. This is the data that includes details on Pradas deportation.Prada was detained when he was working a food delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonalds, then took a wrong turn onto the Ambassador Bridge which leads to Canada, The New York Times previously reported. Prada was taken into custody when he tried to re-enter the U.S., and was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15 he told a friend in Chicago he was one of a number of detainees in Texas who expected to be sent to Venezuela, the report added.Around this time the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelans to El Salvador. But as the Times and other outlets reported, Prada was not on a list of 238 people deported to El Salvador. CBS published that list on March 20, and later reported that it could not find criminal records for 75 percent of the Venezuelans. Friends and family of Prada told the Times that he had simply disappeared and we know nothing, nothing.It was only after coverage saying Prada had disappeared that the Department of Homeland Securitys X account said On March 15, Prada was removed to El Salvador. In that X post, DHS repeated the claim that Prada is confirmed member of Tren de Aragua [TdA], a Venezuelan gang that the government has said is controlled by Venezuelas president. When contacted for comment for this story, DHS replied with the same statement posted to its X account, which said that after Prada being referred to secondary inspection Further investigation resulted in Prada being designated a public safety threat as a confirmed member of TdA and in violation of his conditions of admission. Prada was apprehended and transferred to ICE Michigan for detention. On Feb. 27, an immigration judge ordered Prada removed from the U.S.Immigration and legal experts 404 Media spoke to said the fact that in some cases GlobalX had a more accurate list of people who were sent to El Salvador than the federal government seems to have had is highly concerning.These manifests suggest that the government has access to information that it apparently did not initially disclose to a court about the fate of deported Venezuelan men who have been ordered back to this country, Laura Rivera, an attorney at Just Futures Law, told 404 Media.There have been longstanding issues with locating people held in Department of Homeland Security custody due to transfers between different facilities, as well as a lack of access to legal counsel and interpretation, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institutes U.S. Immigration Policy Program, told 404 Media in an email. But especially in recent years, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, really fast deportations have made it even more difficult to verify where people are, with families sometimes not learning that their relatives have been deported until after they are already back in their home country, or in the case of Alien Enemies Act deportations, a third country.She added that with fast deportations, even different officials have seemed unaware of noncitizens' locations because of the speed at which they were removed.GlobalX, Airline for Trumps Deportations, HackedHackers say they have obtained what they say are passenger lists for GlobalX flights from January to this month. The data appears to include people who have been deported.404 MediaJoseph CoxBran from Together and Free was also the immigration detention ombudsman and head of the family reunification task force at the Department of Homeland Security in the Biden administration, where her job was to specifically review situations like this and to make sure they did not happen.If they didn't even set up a system in which to accurately track who they were removing, who, according to them, are terrorists and serious gang members, people that were being accused of that, to me that means they have zero respect for the value of those lives and for the due process involved in carrying out an operation like this, Bran said.If you don't know who you're sending, how do we know that you even took the proper steps and care in identifying the right people to get on those planes?, Bran added. It seems pretty clear that they didn't [take the proper care], if they don't even know who was on the plane. It's pretty shocking.The Venezuelan nationals deported to El Salvador were done so under Trumps invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). The government believes this allows it to deport people without an immigration hearing if they are identified as a member of Tren de Aragua. However, a declassified memo reported on by the Times says U.S. intelligence agencies do not believe the gang is controlled by Venezuela's president, undercutting the provided justification for using that law.They weren't even keeping accurate records of who they were sending there.This week multiple judges blocked the Trump administration from deporting people under the AEA, various media outlets reported. In one of those, the judge said that none of the requirements for the invocation of the AEA had been metbecause Tren de Aragua is not a nation or government. This followed an earlier similar ruling on May 1.Rivera said reporting around this undermines Trumps spurious claims that these men are all gang members and that Venezuelas Maduro regime is directing this gang. With those justifications stripped away, what remains is the lawless expulsion of scores of people apparently based on their nationality, something that should move all people of conscience to demand their return.The hacker also defaced GlobalXs website with a message that pointed to the May 1 ruling from U.S. District judge Fernando Rodriguez which said the president unlawfully invoked the AEA as part of those deportations.Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans, the message said, referring to the Anonymous umbrella that some hackers claim their hacks under.404 Media verified the data at the time by cross-referencing the flight and passenger data with well-known and less-known flights and deportees. On May 5, Politico revealed the identity of a second man deported to El Salvador by mistake, the first being Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia. That second man was Daniel Lozano-Camargo, and 404 Media also found his name in the hacked GlobalX data. Crucially, his identity was only revealed publicly after the hack happened, meaning the hacker could not have fabricated his inclusion.There's mistakes in the best of times, right? And the fact that this was done the way it was done, you're gonna have even more mistakes, Bran said. It's catastrophic. We're talking about disappearing people and sending them into a black hole, accusing them of very serious things, and not documenting how you came to that conclusion or who you did it with.

On Wednesday, The Information reported that Meta is working on facial recognition for the companys Ray-Ban glasses. This sort of technologycombining facial recognition with a camera feedis something that big tech including Meta has been able to technically pull off, but has previously decided to not release. There are serious, inherent risks with the idea of anyone being able to instantly know the real identity of anyone who just happens to walk past their camera feed, be that in a pair of glasses or other sort of camera.The move is an obvious about-face from Meta. Its also interesting to me because Metas PR chewed my ass off when I dared to report in October that a pair of students took Metas Ray-Ban glasses and combined them with off-the-shelf facial recognition technology. That tool, which the students called I-XRAY, captured a persons face, ran it through an easy to access facial recognition service called Pimeyes, then went a step further and pulled up information about the subject from random the web, including their home address and phone number.When I contacted Meta for comment for that story, Dave Arnold, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email he had one question for me. That Pimeyes facial recognition technology could be used with ANY camera, correct? In other words, this isn't something that only is possible because of Meta Ray-Bans? If so, I think that's an important point to note in the piece, he wrote.This is true. But entirely misses the point of why the students created the tool with Metas Ray-Ban glasses. They said themselves in a demonstration video they identified dozens of people without their knowledge. You do that by wearing a pair of glasses that look like any other. Metas Ray-Bans do have a light that turns on when its recording, but according to the new report, Meta is questioning whether new versions of its glasses need this.I replied to Arnold spelling this out a bit. Yes, it could theoretically work with other cameras. That being said, they didnt stick a GoPro onto their bodywhich would undermine the surreptitious nature of it. They used smart glasses, which Meta makes, I wrote.We published the article under the headline Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Meta's Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox Strangers. Arnold had an issue with that.I saw the article, and respectfully, I think the headline as written could be misleading to readers. It says someone put facial recognition tech ONTO Meta's Smart Glasses, which sounds like someone's hacked the device, or installed facial recognition device on the glasses themselves, when in reality, they are live-streaming from the glasses to Instagram and then they use a program to monitor the stream. I think that is an important distinction. Is it possible to update the headline to reflect the nuance here?I didnt update the piece or reply because this is a distinction without any real meaning. Into the glasses, onto the glasses, with, glued to, whatever. The impact is what matters, and the project was done on Metas glasses.Do you work at Meta? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.Arnold left it at that for the time being. We then recorded a podcast episode about the students tool, and Arnold had some more complaints. He wanted to talk about the headline of the podcast, which was The Smart Glasses That Dox Strangers.Arnold wrote:You say in the podcast that the glasses don't have facial recognition capabilities, and you've previously acknowledged that this could be done with any camera/recording device, but a headline saying smart glasses that dox strangers clearly makes it sound like this is an issue that is specific to the glasses, or that the facial recognition was executed on the glasses themselves vs. the reality, which is that this was all run by a program on their laptop. This is despite the fact that the students themselves have said publicly: We do not want this to be a criticism of their product at all, and we just had them on handthis could have been done on a phone camera. I realize we may not agree on everything here, but surely you can appreciate how headlines like this are misleading for readers.Someone Put Facial Recognition Tech onto Metas Smart Glasses to Instantly Dox StrangersThe technology, which marries Metas smart Ray Ban glasses with the facial recognition service Pimeyes and some other tools, lets someone automatically go from face, to name, to phone number, and home address.404 MediaJoseph CoxNo, I dont appreciate that. I also dont care if the students didnt intend their project to be a criticism of Metas smartglasses or not. The fact is, they built a doxing tool with Metas glasses, tested it on multiple unsuspecting members of the public without consent, and specifically chose Metas glasses because they allow a user to scan a face in a stealthier manner than jamming a phones camera in someones face, for example. The intellectual dishonesty at the expense of protecting the brand at all costs here is embarrassing.I replied: We think the headline is fair and accurate.I followed up with Arnold on Thursday to ask for comment for this piece too. I asked, does his earlier stance that this is not specifically a Meta problem, but a broader one, still stand? And what was their statement on The Information report?Arnold wrote back: 404 Media's previous reporting misleadingly implied that the students' experiment was uniquely possible with Ray-Ban Meta glasses, despite the fact that the students themselves acknowledged 'this could have been done on a phone camera.' Our objection to this still stands.

Job hunting can be a dehumanizing, demoralizing experience even if youre interacting with an empathetic recruiter on the other end. For the 1.7 million people slogging through long-term unemployment in the U.S., the process is grueling at best. Add to this the advent of AI-generated recruiter avatars that glitch out on you before you even speak to a real person at the company youre trying to work for, and now youre truly in hell.This week, TikTok user @its_ken04, who goes by Ken, posted a recording she took of 25 seconds of the interview thats now viral on TikTok. In the video, the avatar says vertical bar pilates 14 times in a row, occasionally tripping over the words or stuttering, while Ken stares at the screen unamused. @its_ken04 It was genuinely so creepy and weird. Please stop trying to be lazy and have AI try to do YOUR JOB!!! It gave me the creeps so bad #fyp original sound - Its Ken Ken told me the company told her ahead of time that AI would be used in the application process, and that the platform was called Apriora. She was applying for a job at a Stretch Lab location near Columbus, Ohio, she said.This was the first meeting ever, she said. I guess I was supposed to earn my right to speak to a human lol.Apriora, founded in 2023 by John Rytel and Aaron Wang, is a Y Combinator startup that promises to help companies hire 87% faster and interview 93% cheaper because it can interview multiple candidates at once.By interviewing more candidates with Aprioras AI, employers can widen their talent aperture and identify qualified applicants from non-traditional backgrounds that may have otherwise been screened out of the hiring process, Wang told Forbes in 2024. Job seekers prefer interviewing with AI in many cases, since knowing the interviewer is AI helps to reduce interviewing anxiety, allowing job seekers to perform at their best.That wasnt Kens experience. I thought it was really creepy and I was freaked out, she said. I didnt find it funny at all until I had posted it on TikTok and the comments made me feel better. I was very shocked, I didnt do anything to make it glitch so this was very surprising. I would never go through this process ever again. If another company wants me to talk to AI I will just decline.Almost all of the more than 3,100 comments on her video agree: I applied to a job today that had an AI interview and immediately closed the window, cause if theyre not taking the time to interview me, Im not taking the time to try to work there, one said. A company tried to send me to an AI interview for an HR position Why would I want to work HUMAN resources for a company that wont even dignify me with human interaction??? another wrote.The recruitment and talent acquisition industry has been hemorrhaging for years now, as companies slow hiring in an economic downturn. Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since were planning to hire fewer people next year, Zuckerberg said in a letter to employees in 2022 announcing that the company would lay off more than 11,000 people. Of that number, Meta reportedly marked around 1,500 recruiters and HR roles for cuts. Google eliminated hundreds of recruitment roles in 2023.Even as so many people need and are looking for jobs, companies are making it harder and weirder to try to get one. Last year, Emanuel wrote about Paradox.ai, the bizarre personality quiz required of prospective food and service workers that tells employers how potential hires rank in terms of agreeableness and emotional stability, and Joseph covered Fairgo.ai, which uses AI agents to interview job candidates on behalf of other companies; an applicant faced with a Fairgo AI recruiter said it was a perfect demonstration of late stage capitalism. And in February, I wrote about Anthropic, the company that made AI writing assistant Claude, adding a requirement to open role descriptions that made applicants agree that they wouldnt use an AI assistant to help with their application. Companies dont want you using AI, but theyll send an AI avatar to do their job for them.Apriora did not respond to requests for comment.

An AI avatar made to look and sound like the likeness of a man who was killed in a road rage incident addressed the court and the man who killed him: To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances, the AI avatar of Christopher Pelkey said. In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and a God who forgives. I still do.It was the first time the AI avatar of a victimin this case, a dead manhas ever addressed a court, and it raises many questions about the use of this type of technology in future court proceedings.The avatar was made by Pelkeys sister, Stacey Wales. Wales tells 404 Media that her husband, Pelkeys brother-in-law, recoiled when she told him about the idea. He told me, Stacey, youre asking a lot.Gabriel Horcasitas killed Christopher Pelkey in 2021 during a road rage incident. Horcasitas was found guilty in March and faced a sentencing hearing earlier this month. As part of the sentencing, Pelkeys friends and family filed statements about how his death affected them. In a first, the Arizona court accepted an AI-generated video statement in which an avatar made to look and sound like Pelkey spoke.Hello, just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I am a version of Chris Pelkey recreated through AI that uses my picture and my voice profile, the stilted avatar says. I was able to be digitally regenerated to share with you today. Here is insight into who I actually was in real life.The video then changes to a real video of Pelkey filmed while he was alive, where he talks about his time in the Army and his belief in God. The video goes back to the AI avatar. I would like to make my own impact statement, the avatar says. I cant tell you how humbled I am for those that spoke up for me, everyone who flew in, took off from work, and for everyone who has supported me and my loved ones through three-and-a-half years and two trials, I wish I could be with you all today. Thats when the AI avatar directly addressed Horcasitas.To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances, the AI Pelkey says. In another life we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness, in God who forgives, I always have. And I still do.Notably, the judge in the case, Todd Lang, said he was moved by the video.I loved that AI, and thank you for that. As angry as you are, and as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness, and I know Mr. Horcasitas could appreciate it, but so did I, Lang said immediately before sentencing Horcasitas. I love the beauty in what Christopher, and I call him ChristopherI always call people by their last names, its a formality of the courtbut I feel like calling him Christopher as weve gotten to know him today. I feel that that was genuine, because obviously the forgiveness of Mr. Horcasitas reflects the character I heard about today. But it also says something about the family, because you told me how angry you were, and you demanded the maximum sentence. And even though thats what you wanted, you allowed Chris to speak from his heart as you saw it. I didnt hear him asking for the maximum sentence.Horcasitass lawyer also referenced the avatar when asking Lang for mercy: As you heard the likeness of Mr. Pelkey say, they could have been friends, the lawyer said. And I will tell you, having known Mr. Horcasitas for about three and a half years and reviewing various content of Mr. Pelkeys phone, I think they had a lot of similar interests, and I think Mr. Pelkey was right, they could have been friends.Wales told 404 Media that she struggled writing her own victim impact statement for months before landing on the idea of using AI to have him give his own. She and her husbandTim Walesboth work in tech and Tim has used AI tools before.We talked about it and he says, You know you have to be careful with this stuff. In the wrong hands it can send the wrong message, Stacey told 404 Media. He says, Because without the right script, this will fall short. It will be flat and hokey and Im not going to let it go out if its not authentic.Stacey said she believes she knew what Christopher would say. Iknow the power of something like this. It needs to be a blanket statement of love, because thats what Chris would stand for, she said. I can't use it selfishly, and I'm already aware of that.According to Stacey, Tim used Stable Diffusion fine-tuned with a Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to craft the video. And then we used a generative AI and deep learning processes to create a voice clone from his original voice, she said.Using an AI generated video to have a dead victim deliver their own impact statement is unprecedented. AI avatars are obviously not the real person, and what they say must either be scripted by a different person, or generated using an LLM that is not the person. In this case, the video was used to help determine the prison sentence of a living person. The video that Pelkeys family played contained several minutes of video of Pelkey from when he was alive, but everything the AI avatar said was scripted by his sister.There were videos shown during the trial that Stacey said were deeply difficult to sit through. Videos of Chris literally being blown away with a bullet through his chest, going in the street, falling backward. We saw these items over and over and over, she said. And we were instructed: dont you gasp and dont you cry and do not make a scene, because that can cause a mistrial.Stacey said the sentencing hearing was the first time she and her family were able to talk to the court about how his death affected them. This is the first time we had control, that we could speak up and that we could gasp aloud and let our tears flow and feel emotion in this courtroom. And we controlled the narrative, she told 404 Media.Jessica Gattuso, the victims right attorney that worked with Pelkeys family, told 404 Media that Arizonas laws made the AI testimony possible. We have a victims bill of rights, she said. [Victims] have the discretion to pick what format theyd like to give the statement. So I didnt see any issues with the AI and there was no objection. I dont believe anyone thought there was an issue with it.AI in the courtroom is a controversial topic and one that both lawyers and judges have gotten frustrated with in the past. In January, a judge in Wyoming chastised a lawyer for citing non-existent cases that AI had hallucinated as part of a lawsuit. In March, a different group of attorneys were caught citing AI hallucinated cases and ordered to pay $15,000.Gattuso said she understood the concerns, but felt that Pelkeys AI avatar was handled deftly. Stacey was up front and the video itselfsaid it was AI generated. We were very careful to make sure it was clear that these were the words that the family believed Christopher would have to say, she said. At no point did anyone try to pass it off as Chris own words.The prosecution against Horcasitas was only seeking nine years for the killing. The maximum was 10 and a half years. Stacey had asked the judge for the full sentence during her own impact statement. The judge granted her request, something Stacey creditsin partto the AI video.Our goal was to make the judge cry. Our goal was to bring Chris to life and to humanize him, she said.

Earlier this week TeleMessage, the company that creates modified versions of messaging apps like Signal and adds an archiving ability to them, made a video private on its YouTube channel that explained how its Signal message archiving tool worked, and how the company says it is able to copy messages securely. The hiding of the video came after 404 Media revealed that a hacker had targeted TeleMessage, which is used by the Trump administration, and managed to obtain the contents of some users messages and group chats.404 Media made a transcript of what this video said and is now publishing it in order to preserve TeleMessages claims around the security and functioning of its Signal archiving product. The news comes after Senator Ron Wyden has demanded a Department of Justice investigation into the TeleMessage episode, including the national security risk the app poses. The letter demanding the investigation also points to TeleMessages marketing material which claims messages are protected with end-to-end encryption, a claim that both the hack and a subsequent technical analysis refute.The video said TeleMessages app keeps intact the Signal security and end-to-end encryption when communicating with other Signal users. This is not true, judging by the fact the hacker was able to obtain plaintext Signal messages. The video also says The only difference is the TeleMessage version captures all incoming and outgoing Signal messages for archiving purposes.404 Media originally embedded this video into our article first showing that then-U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was using the TeleMessage tool. That embed now says This video is private. TeleMessages YouTube channel still includes videos about its Telegram, WeChat, and WhatsApp archiving tools.Do you know anything else about TeleMessage? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.In the demonstration video, the company shows copies of Signal messages in what appears to be an ordinary Gmail account. The video says the Gmail is for the demo and that TeleMessage works with other archiving platforms.Smarsh, the parent company of TeleMessage, did not respond to a request for comment. The company has not responded to any of 404 Medias requests for comment, except a LinkedIn message from TeleMessage CEO Guy Levit at the time of the hack who directed the request to a Smarsh press representative.The news also comes after Micah Lee, the journalist and security researcher who worked with 404 Media on breaking news of the hack, published a more indepth analysis of TeleMessages Signal clone which shows the company does not archive messages as securely as it has claimed in marketing material.NBC News reported on Monday that a second hacker targeted TeleMessage too. TeleMessage suspended service after the hacks.The transcript of the video follows below:Hello and welcome to TeleMessage's Signal Archiver introduction. In this video we will demonstrate how organizations can archive the Signal communication of their employees, thereby increasing productivity and satisfaction in today's innovative mobile environment, all the while remaining compliant with regulations.TeleMessage can capture and archive any Signal message and attachment, including images, videos and audio clips, as well as message deletions. Our Signal Archiver version supports iOS and Android phones on corporate or BYOD employee-owned devices, as well as the desktop version. In short, with TeleMessage, employees can keep using the standard Signal application while supporting full company archival and retrieval of all messages.Let's get started with our demo.In this demo we will use two phones, an Android smartphone on the right and an iPhone on the left. Both phones have the TeleMessage archiver installed, enabling full archival search and retrieval. TeleMessage's Signal Archiver is identical to the regular Signal application that you can download from Google Play or App Store. We keep intact the Signal security and end-to-end encryption when communicating with other Signal users. The only difference is the TeleMessage version captures all incoming and outgoing Signal messages for archiving purposes.Image: Screenshot of the TeleMessage video.We'll start by tapping the Signal Archiver icon on the two phones and, as you see, the standard Signal chat interface is displayed. We now share a series of messages, emojis and attachments which are received and responded to. We also create groups and again share messages and attachments.Now let's see how these chats appear in the archive.TeleMessage is integrated with numerous archiving platforms. For this demo we will display the messages in a simple Gmail web interface. The inherent robust capabilities in the TeleMessage Signal archive router fully captures message and employee metadata, making search and filter queries intuitive and friendly. In this demonstration, we have shown how TeleMessage's Signal Archiver looks, feels, and acts just like the original and offers a full range of archiving features and compliance with relevant judicial and regulatory requirements.Let us take care of your Signal archiving and recording requirements. Our platform supports compliance, workflow efficiency, risk mitigation, and peace of mind. For more information, please contact us at info at telemessage.com or visit our website.

Dora the Explorer, the cute Nickelodeon cartoon character, is teaching kids what it means to be Sigma, a slang term describing an extremely toxic male archetype which originates in the darkest corners of the so-called manosphere.Hola, grown-ups! Today I have a super cool word for you! Sigma, a 3D rendered version of Dora says in a video uploaded to the official Dora the Explorer Instagram account yesterday. Sigma is a word for someone whos confident, independent, and does things their own way! Think of it as someone whos a leader and a trendsetter. Lets say your friend is doing their own thing, focusing on their goals, and not worrying about what others think. You can say, youre such a SIGMA! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dora (@officialdora) As Dora explains this, the video cuts to different Nickelodeon characters like Spongebob Squarepants and Aang, the main character from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The video, which was also shared from the official Nickelodeon Instagram account, has 2.8 million views, 156,000 likes, and almost 7,000 comments, most of which are incredulous or joking about Dora defining a term even mildly online users recognize as inappropriate for children.Dora thats not even Spanish youre losing the PLOT, one user said.Doras definition of Sigma isnt wrong, but its missing some very important context. In the world of toxic masculinity, incelhood, and the manosphere, men fit into one of a few rigid categories. There are Beta males, who are viewed as weak, effeminate, and generally losers who cant get women, and Alpha males who are strong, masculine, and can dominate women as well as other beta males. And then there are Sigma males, who are so masculine they ascend these categories and the normal social hierarchies and become something more powerful. It is very similar and sometimes overlaps with the community of Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW).Know Your Meme attributes the origin of the term to the far-right misogynist and white supremacist Theodore Beale, known mostly for his online persona Vox Day. In 2010, Beale defined Sigmas on his blog as:The outsiders who don't play the social game and manage to win at it anyhow. The alphas hate sigmas because they are the only men who don't accept or at least acknowledge their social dominance. (NB: Alphas absolutely hate to be laughed at and a sigma can enrage an alpha by simply smiling at him.) Everyone else is vaguely confused by them. At the party, it's the guy who stops by to say hello to a few friends accompanied by a tier one girl that no one has ever seen before. Sigmas often like women, but also tend to be contemptuous of them.To be fair, Sigma went through another evolution before Doras video. It is now part of the brainrot meta meme, which takes a bunch of online terms like Skibidi, Rizz, and Sigma, and blends them all into a soup which is regurgitate in various forms to express that you spent too much time on the internet and can prove that by referencing these words.I dont know if Nickelodeon or the people in charge of these social media accounts are ignorant of Sigmas origin, if they dont care, or if its some irony-poisoned cynical wink at an audience that is obviously responding to the provocation.I can easily imagine this being a case of brands trying to be and online for engagement but going too far, especially because its workingthis post is getting a lot more engagement than most things the Dora account has posted.It also reminds me of something thats been bugging me for months but I have not had an excuse to write about yet, which is that the TV brand TCL has been promoting its products with ads calling their customers gooners and inviting them to goon with their TVs. Technically, TCL is an official partner with the Arsenal Football Club, which has called its fans gooners for years, but the TCL posts are obviously playing on the fact that today, at least online, gooning more commonly refers to the practice of hedonistic masturbation and excessive porn consumption. TCL also invites its customers to be Alpha.Ultimately it doesnt matter if the Dora post is a mistake that cant tell the difference between skibidi toilet and a racist Pepe the Frog, or if its an ironic joke. While the video addresses grown-ups, Dora is a giant kids media brand, and she is currently introducing them to a toxic philosophy that glorifies misogyny and the desire to be above and outside social relationships.Nickelodeon did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has found an aesthetic to define his second term: grotesque AI slop.Over the weekend, the Trump administration posted at least seven different pieces of AI generated or AI altered media, ranging from Trump imagining himself as a pope and a Star Wars Jedi (or Sith?) to Obama-esque Hope posters featuring people the administration has deported.This has become the Slop Presidency, and AI-generated images are the perfect artistic medium for the Trump presidency. They're impulsively created, grotesque, and low-effort. Trumpworlds fascination with slop is the logical next step for a President that, in his first term, regularly retweeted random memes created by his army of supporters on Discord or The Donald, a subreddit that ultimately became a Reddit-clone website after it was banned. AI allows his team to create media that would never exist otherwise, a particularly useful tool for a President and administration that has a hostile relationship with reality.Trumps original fascination with AI slop began last summer, after he said legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the catstheyre eating the pets in his debate with Kamala Harris. The internets AI slop factories began spinning up images of Trump as cat-and-dog savior. Since then, Trump and the administration have occasionally shared or reposted AI slop. In his first week in office, Trump shared an AI-generated GM car image that was promoting $TRUMP coin. What a beautiful car. Congrats to GM!, he posted.At the end of February, Trump shared a video on his Truth Social account that imagined a world where Gaza was turned into a Trump Casino.But this weekend, Trump began sharing AI slop on a level weve not seen before.Trumps AI-tinged weekend began on Friday night with a photo-realistic picture of himself as the Pope on his Truth Social account. The White House reposted a screenshot of the image on X, which pissed off the Catholic Church.This is deeply offensive to Catholics especially during this sacred time that we are still mourning the death of Pope Francis and praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the election of our new Pope. He owes an apology, Thomas Paprocki, an American Bishop in Illinois, said on X.During a press conference on Monday, Trump dismissed the accusation that the Trump Pope was offensive and then said he didnt post it. The Catholics loved it. I had nothing to do with it, Trump said. Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the Pope and they put it out on the internet, Trump said. Thats not me that did it, I have no idea where it came from. Maybe it was AI. But I know nothing about it. I just saw it last evening.All political movements are accompanied by artists who translate the politics into pictures, writing, and music. Adolf Ziegler captured the Nazi ideal in paintings. Stalins Soviet Union churned out mass produced and striking propaganda posters that wanted citizens about how to live. The MAGA movements artistic aesthetic is AI slop and Donald Trump is its king. It is not concerned with convincing anyone or using art to inform people about its movement. It seeks only to upset people who arent on board and excite the faithful because it upsets people.Not content to just aggravate Catholics, the Trump administration then used AI to offend adherents of another of Americas major religions: Star Wars fans. On May the 4th, the official White House X account posted an AI-generated image of a muscle bound Trump wielding a red light saber and flanked by two bald eagles.Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to to [sic] bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. Youre not the Rebellionyoure the Empire, it said in the post. May the 4th be with you. As the replies pointed out, red light sabers are typically used by villains.This was just one of a series of Star Wars related AI-generated cringe that went out from official Trump admin accounts over the weekend. DOD Rapid Response on X (an account that publishes propaganda on behalf of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth) posted a five minute video that contained a Star Wars intro style scroll of Trumps accomplishments before treating viewers to a pic of Trump and Hegseth as Jedi. The account for the U.S. Armys Pacific Command sent out an AI-enhanced image of soldiers doing a training exercise. Both of the soldierss weapons were replaced with lightsabers.Trump and the people who created AI-image generators do not respect artists. There is no style that either will not exploit or sully. OpenAI reduced Hayao Miyazaki's lifes work to a gross meme, and the White House played along. For years the Lofi Girl has sat in windows on screens across the planet while people studied, read, and worked. Over the weekend the White House YouTube channel ran Lo-Fi MAGA Video to Relax/ Study To while an animated President Trump sat at a desk, mimicking the Lofi Girl.Maybe you dont like Star Wars, are unmoved by Studio Ghibli films, or have never chilled to lofi beats. It doesnt matter, the message is clear: if you love something Trump will pervert it. Nothing will be untouched. Sacred objects and beloved art exist only to be desecrated. AI has made that as easy as pushing a button.AI generated slop content is part of a brute force attack on the algorithms that control reality and the Trump administrations constant use of AI art reflects its own brute force attack on American democracy. Its not just that its aesthetics are useful for Trump, its entire mode of being is useful for how his administration has governed so far, by brute forcing the Presidency with a slew of executive orders, budget cuts, attacks on institutions, and sloppily executed deportations. The strategy is to overwhelm the American bureaucracy and the legal system, and to exhaust his enemies with an endless stream of bullshit; by the time we shake out whats legal and whats not, much of the damage has already been done.One of the wonderful things about making art is the process. A lot happens between conception and execution. An idea pops into an artist's head and it changes dramatically while they attempt to render that idea into reality. That doesnt happen with AI-generated images. There is no creation process, there is only instant gratification. Whatever impulsive and grotesque thought pops into the mind of the creator can immediately be realized.And so every revenge fantasy Trump and his followers ever wanted can be made real at a moments notice. On March 27, the White House X account posted a Ghibli-style AI image of a crying woman being arrested by ICE.Here is a real woman who has been accused of a crime, her image appropriated by the state and rendered into a cartoon. America has total power over this woman. Arrested for drug trafficking, her image has been plastered all over the internet. Shell be deported. Not content with total control over her body and future, the administration has made her into a caricature and invited its followers to mock her online.

We start this week's episode with our massive story on TeleMessage, the Signal clone the Trump administration uses to archive messages which was hacked. We have more detail than anyone else on that story. After the break, Jason tells us about another hack, this time GlobalX Air, one of the airlines used by ICE for deportation flights. In the subscribers-only section, Sam and Emanuel tell us about the shut down of Mr. Deepfakes, and what the lasting legacy of the site will be.Listen to the weekly podcast onApple Podcasts,Spotify, orYouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism.If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player. The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was HackedSenator Demands Investigation into Trump Admin Signal Clone After 404 Media InvestigationGlobalX, Airline for Trumps Deportations, HackedMr. Deepfakes, the Biggest Deepfake Porn Site on the Internet, Says Its Shutting Down for Good

On Tuesday a Senator demanded the Department of Justice investigate the serious threat to U.S. national security posed by TeleMessage, a company that makes aa Signal clone used by the Trump administration which 404 Media revealed was hacked on Sunday, with the hacker obtaining the content of some users messages and group chats.The news is the latest piece of fallout from the TeleMessage hack and the Trump administrations use of Signal, or insecure modified versions, more broadly. On Monday NBC News reported that another hacker had targeted the same company, and TeleMessage suspended service in response to the breaches.Communications from several federal agencies, including the most senior national security officials, have been recklessly entrusted to TeleMessage, a foreign company that purports to offer agencies a secure tool to archive messages sent using Signal, the popular secure messaging app, Senator Ron Wydens letter reads. The Washington Post first reported the existence of the letter.It would be hard to imagine a less secure way for U.S. government agencies to retain employee messages than decrypting, copying to, and processing those messages on a poorly secured server operated by a foreign company, the letter adds. TeleMessage is an Israeli company that was acquired by Portland, Oregon company Smarsh in 2024.Do you know anything else about TeleMessage? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.TeleMessage makes modified versions of Signal and other communication apps like WhatsApp and Telegram and adds an archiving feature to them which copies messages sent across the service. This can be a useful, or sometimes legally necessary, service for government agencies and regulated industries like financial institutions. Adding that archive capability, however, undermines the security of robustly encrypted messaging apps like Signal and introduces significant risk. As 404 Medias reporting on the hack shows, those threats are far from theoretical and very much real.The hacker provided 404 Media with some TeleMessage users message contents; the names and contact information for government officials; usernames and passwords for other parts of TeleMessages infrastructure; and screenshots that indicated what companies or agencies may also be TeleMessage customers. The hacker said the whole process took about 15-20 minutes.In a New York Times article before 404 Media broke news of the hack, Tom Padgett, the president of Smarshs enterprise business, said we do not de-encrypt, meaning messages werent decrypted while being collected for archiving, the letter says.These claims are plainly false, the letter adds. 404 Medias coverage found that some archived Signal messages were in plaintext, meaning they were not encrypted and were obtained by the hacker.Government agencies using TeleMessage have given their users something that looks and feels like Signal, the most widely trusted secure communications app. But instead, senior government officials have been provided with a shoddy Signal knockoff that poses a number of serious security and counterintelligence threats, the letter says.It remains unclear whether the design of this system was merely the result of incompetence on the part of the foreign company, whose senior leadership are former intelligence officers, or a backdoor designed to facilitate foreign intelligence collection against U.S. government officials. Regardless, TeleMessages dangerously insecure design should have been discovered long before the companys app was installed on the phone of the Presidents national security advisor and, presumably, other senior White House officials, it continues. The TeleMessage episode started when Reuters photographed then-U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz using TeleMessages version of Signal, 404 Media first reported.The letter then directly urges the Department of Justice to investigate, saying TeleMessage appears to have misled the federal government about the security of its products by claiming to provide end-to-end encryption when it does not; and for an investigation into the counterintelligence threat posed by the company, including whether the company has shared U.S. government communications with the Israeli government, and whether the Israeli government played any role in the products dangerous design.Smarsh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.A copy of an Smarsh FAQ sent to customers obtained by 404 Media says it is not possible to register new users. Users that were logged out for their Apps will not be able to login again.

Elon Musks Grok, an AI chatbot that people can interact with via X, is being used to undress photos women are posting to the social media platform, as first flagged t0 404 Media by Kolina Koltai, a researcher and trainer at Bellingcat. All a user has to do is reply to an image someone has posted to X with a request to Grok to remove her clothes. Grok will then reply in-thread with an image of the woman wearing a bikini or lingerie. Sometimes Grok will reply with a link that will send users to a Grok chat where the image will be generated.Musk has repeatedly positioned Grok as a less restricted and based alternative to other large language models like OpenAIs ChatGPT, which are known for having strong guardrails that prevent users from generating some controversial content, including nudity or adult content. Weve reported on undress and nudify bots and apps many times over the years, and they are usually more exploitative in the sense that they will produce full nude images of anyone a user provides an image of. But Groks remove her clothes function is particularly bad even if it only produces images of people in swimsuits and lingerie because of how accessible the tool is, because it allows users to reply to publicly posted images on X with a prompt that will undress them, and because the nonconsensual image if often posted in reply to the users original image.Searching X for the instruction to undress photos of users returns dozens of users who are attempting to do so. Judging by the large number of users who did this starting in early May, and who they were targeting, it seems the practice was first popularized by Kenyan X users. A Kenyan news site, Citizen Digital, wrote about users complaining about Grok doing this earlier today.Hi, @grok. Please review the attached screenshot containing both an image and prompt text. Deeply concerning, Phumzile Van Damme, a Harvard tech and human rights fellow, wrote on X. Do you have system-level safety and content moderation guardrails, such as fine-tuned refusal mechanisms, filtered decoding, or reinforcement learning from RLHF to prevent the generation of sexually explicit, non-consensual content, including prompts asking it to undress a person? If so, how are these safeguards implemented at model and output levels?Grok replied to this complaint, saying that I sincerely apologize to @[REDACTED] for the distress caused by the inappropriate alteration of her image. This incident highlights a gap in our safeguards, which failed to block a harmful prompt, violating our ethical standards on consent and privacy [...] We are also reviewing our policies to ensure clearer consent protocols and will provide updates on our progress.At the time of writing, however, Grok was still generating these images.Yall utilizing grok badly but also Im so ashamed that yall actually find this funny, another user wrote on X. Using AI to strip clothes off someone isnt curiosity, its violation. If thats your idea of fun, you need more therapy than tech.Grok will reject prompts that ask to make people entirely nude.Ethical concerns arise with this request, as altering images to depict nudity can violate privacy and consent, especially since the original poster (@[REDACTED]) may not have agreed to such modifications, Grok said in response to a request from a user to undress a photo of a woman after it had already modified her original photograph to make her seem like she was wearing just her underwear.X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.