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joemenn.bsky.social
Washington Post reporter covering hacking, disinformation and what’s left of privacy. Author of books on the Cult of the Dead Cow, organized criminal hacking, and Napster. Pulitzer co-finalist 2024. Signal joemenn.01
696 posts 16,806 followers 678 following
Prolific Poster

Will share this here now: due to some budget struggles at ISD, my position there is getting phased out. I’ll be on the hunt for full time work again come July. Not sure what the future will hold for me in the short-term, but please keep me in mind if you see decent openings and/or freelance work.

Wild how the Fed chair saying that *entire regions of the United States* won’t be able to get a mortgage in the next decade barely registered as a news event

NEW: The child sex abuse material trade on X is spiraling out of control… and a key child safety partner just cut X off after they say to company stopped paying them www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

FINAL FINAL ULTIMATE ULTIMATUM 1.3 USE THIS ONE

Something something dual loyalty

just checking in on the financial revolution that was meant to sidestep banks, tech giants, and the state

Iran is urging citizens to delete #WhatsApp on the unsupported grounds that it is giving information to Israel. Maybe it just wants to stop encrypted messaging. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

BREAKING: Armed man arrested at Nashville's 'No Kings' protest had long fascination with Nazis, mass murder www.newschannel5.com/news/newscha...

You may wonder why Don Jr. and a few Republicans in Congress are calling Boelter a leftist when people close to him say he was a Trump and InfoWars fan. #Misinformation is most effective when it is early. It gets harder to convince someone to change their mind as time goes on.

The president's family business is starting a phone company. Sounds kinda like an MVNO, a la Ryan Reynolds' Mint Mobile, except it will supposedly come with a gold, made-in-USA phone. Eric Trump said they're “going to have one of the great tech platforms" in the world wapo.st/3HH1zl4

I count 49 news headlines on the NYT mobile app home page right now, not including opinion, sports or cooking. None of them are about the massive protests yesterday.

FBI Warns Second California Senator Still At Large theonion.com/fbi-war...

The first known detention by the US Marines in their recent Los Angeles deployment is of... a US Army veteran on his way to an office at the Department of Veteran Affairs building. www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

"In a previously unreported development, federal agents came to suspect that Bukele and members of his inner circle had diverted US aid funds to the gang." Read the whole investigation, republished from @propublica.org ⬇️

USAGM today urgently called back to work the staff of the Voice of America's Farsi language service. All had been on paid admin leave for the past three months with the rest of VOA's silenced journalists.

One of the better stories exposing Telegram's ties to Russian intelligence. Users should be very, very wary.

Not now, Friday the 13th.

[alanis morissette voice] it's like raaa-ee-aaaaaain / on your military parade

Chatbots convince users that that they are the chosen ones and can fly off buildings. YIKES. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/t... by @kashhill.bsky.social

www.latimes.com/california/s...

I mean, three branches of government is probably overkill, right?

Well-done by @billmarczak.org and @jsrailton.bsky.social at @citizenlab.ca! citizenlab.ca/2025/06/firs...

If you were an invading drug kingpin terrorist, would you pick crops all day?

Some complain that the U.S. is turning into a "third world country," by which they mean too many immigrants. You know what I saw only in those countries? Masked men with military weapons taking civilians off the street.

Disney, huh? I hear they have some good lawyers.

AI chatbots are amplifying falsehoods, as are influence peddlers and elected officials. When news is moving this quickly, mainstream media is much more reliable. www.wired.com/story/grok-c...

New: A week before the ICE raid on day workers outside a Home Depot ignited the L.A. protests, the White House posted video from a similar bust, calling it an "EPIC Takedown." Commenters called it "disturbing": this "isn't a reality show." But the messaging war had just begun 🧵 wapo.st/4l2fK2A

Bluesky is the worst form of social media except for all the others.

New version in something called “print” does not require registration and marketing stuff. #starlink #musk #doge #infosec

Top story at the Post. wapo.st/459sFuR Gift link.

I don’t understand why people are insisting on this so-called due process as if the Constitution was important when aliens are invading and stuff.

Within a few hours of Harvard's motion for a new temporary restraining order, judge grants the temporary restraining order. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

This story is wild: Rather than just comply with court orders; the Trump admin has ICE offices and detainees living in a shipping container in Djibouti unde threat of rocket attacks wapo.st/4kPIACX

this is just like the parable of the scorpion and the scorpion

I am sad for our country, but at least we are going out with some incredible content

grok is pee tape real

Phone forensics poster child #Cellebrite allowed misreporting that it cracked the San Bernardino terrorist iPhone for the FBI, when in fact it was Azimuth. But the Azimuth exploit developer then cofounded offensive researcher Corellium, just bought by Cellebrite, retconning it closer to true.

Do you know who knows Nazis are bad? Germans.

gosh dang it to heck! it’s the

"According to LinkedIn, the bulk of Fugate’s leadership experience comes from having served as secretary general of a Model United Nations club."

Well this will be something to see, should it happen.