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"The European Commission has asked X to hand over internal documents about its algorithms, as it steps up its investigation into whether Elon Musk's social media platform has breached EU rules on content moderation. The EU's executive branch told the company it wanted to see internal documentation about its "recommender system", which makes content suggestions to users, and any recent changes made to it, by 15 February. X has been under investigation since December 2023 under the EU's content law - known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) - over how it tackles the spread of illegal content and information manipulation. The company has been accused of manipulating the platform's systems to give far-right posts and politicians greater visibility over other political groups."

"Instagram has been used to promote sexual violence and exploitation by people advertising themselves as "pimps", a Guardian investigation has found. For the past year, the Guardian has been tracking Instagram accounts hosting content that advocates such activity as well as those that encourage violence against the women under the control of a pimp - someone who makes money from selling others for sex. The accounts identified often use hashtags as well as code phrases commonly associated with sex work to make it easier for buyers to locate them."

"Amazon's algorithms encourage customers pay more than they need to for popular products and appear to give more prominence to items that benefit the retail giant, according to an investigation by ProPublica. The investigation looked at 250 frequently purchased products over several weeks to see which ones were chosen to appear in the highly-prized "buy box" that pops up first as a suggested purchase. "

"German government officials have said they are investigating an unprecedented proliferation of fake news items amid reports of Russian efforts to influence the country's election later this year."

"It's highly unlikely investigative or intelligence agencies have much of an interest in protecting the privacy of non-targeted citizens, even in non-terrorist-related surveillance -- not if it means using alternate (read: "less effective") investigative methods or techniques. It has been demonstrated time and time again that law enforcement is more interested in the most direct route to what it seeks, no matter how much collateral damage is generated. "

"Four U.S. senators today urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate claims that the very popular video app TikTok, which is owned by a company tied to China's military and government, violated a consent decree to protect children's privacy."

"Sports Illustrated deleted web articles after a report claimed they were generated by artificial intelligence and published under fake author names. Tech publisher Futurism reported the issue after finding author headshots on an AI-generated image website. The Sports Illustrated Union said staff were "horrified" and demanded "basic journalistic standards". The publisher's owner disputed the report's accuracy, but it said it had launched an internal investigation. Arena Group, which owns the Sports Illustrated magazine and website, licensed the content from a third-party company, Advon Commerce, a company spokesperson said in a statement. Sports Illustrated has since removed the content after the allegations were raised, the statement added. Arena Group is now pursuing an internal investigation and has ended its partnership with Advon Commerce. "

"TikTok quantified the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos. Kentucky authorities note that while it might seem a lot, TikTok videos can be just a few seconds long. "Thus, in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform," the state investigators concluded."

"Police believe live facial recognition cameras may become "commonplace" in England and Wales, according to internal documents, with the number of faces scanned having doubled to nearly 5m in the last year. A joint investigation by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates highlights the speed at which the technology is becoming a staple of British policing. Major funding is being allocated and hardware bought, while the British state is also looking to enable police forces to more easily access the full spread of its image stores, including passport and immigration databases, for retrospective facial recognition searches."

"The Singapore Police Force (SPF) can obtain TraceTogether data for criminal investigations"

"Vivian Balakrishnan on why he had earlier said that TraceTogether app data would only be used for COVID-19 contact tracing. The Home Affairs Ministry has since said the data could be used for criminal investigations."

"Past scandals, bad photos, critical comments: the internet has a long memory. As the EU considers the 'right to be forgotten', we investigate the growing business of online reputation management - and learn how you can airbrush your own past"

As our connectivity increases, we're seeing a growing number of cases of law enforcement using social media and other digital tools to help solve crimes. A study from Accenture, a global management and consulting agency, showed that 72 percent of respondent citizens believe that social media can help in crime investigations and in the prosecution of offenders.

"The criminals who took over the library system want $35,000 in Bitcoin to give it back.The criminals who took over the library system want $35,000 in Bitcoin to give it back. The FBI is investigating. The library does not store sensitive patron data, so the hack does not expose patrons to data-breach risks."

"The US military's nuclear arsenal is controlled by computers built in the 1970s that still use 8in floppy disks. A report into the state of the US government, released by congressional investigators, has revealed that the country is spending around $60bn (£40.8bn) to maintain museum-ready computers, which many do not even know how to operate any more, as their creators retire."

"The bank had no firewall and used second-hand routers that cost $10 to connect to global financial networks. Better security and hardware would have hampered the attackers, Reuters said, quoting an official investigator."

"An investigation into the death of a 19-year-old French woman who reportedly live-streamed herself taking her own life has opened in France. The woman, who had been using the smartphone app Periscope, reportedly jumped under a train at a station about 25 miles (40 km) south of Paris on Tuesday."

"There aren't many exit nodes out there. Many people fear that running an exit node will put them in police crosshairs if it gets used in the commission of a crime. For the record, Boing Boing runs a very high-capacity exit node, and though we've received multiple contacts from US law enforcement, we've just explained that this is a Tor node that runs with logging switched off, and thus we have no information that'll be relevant to any investigations, and the officers involved have thanked us and gone away without further trouble. "

"75% 75% surveyed by Ipsos/Reuters said, "they would not let investigators tap into their Internet activity to help the U.S. combat domestic terrorism"(up from 67% in 20"