People are disabling the "recording light" on Meta's Ray-Ban smartglasses — "by my count, thousands of people," says tech journalist Joanna Stern in a new video report:
STERN: "They're hiring people on Facebook Marketplace to drill out the light for as much as $100. According to our reporting, folks are offering this service in at least 30 states — despite Meta's attempts to stop it... In most states, we found multiple listings. In the New York and New Jersey area alone there were 23 listings."
Stern watched a man in New Jersey disable and then conceal the light with a drill and dental probe in a New Jersey garage (a skill he learned watching YouTube and TikTok videos). He said the same day he'd already been contacted by eight more interested customers, and Stern also found at least 10 other people willing to do the same thing, just in New Jersey. "But what we found is they're all over the country."
Meta sold 7 million smartglasses in 2025, but a Meta spokesperson insisted to the videomaker that a "majority" of their smartglasses owners aren't blocking the recording light. And furthermore, they added "We aggressively target anyone advertising tampering tools, have removed thousands of violating ads and Marketplace listings for these services, and pursue legal action when appropriate." (The reporter acknowledges "many" of the Marketplace ads disappeared after they brought them to Meta's attention — and Meta also said they were working with other retailers and sellers to take down listings for smartglasses-tampering parts.)
The reporter also heard from one journalist who said they'd used it so they could record the activities of federal immigration agents without being targeted. "Others told me they just don't want people asking questions when they're recording." (There's video of one young man saying "It's already difficult enough to film in public. I don't want to have a blinking light on my face.")
Tampering with smartglasses isn't illegal — though it is against Meta's Terms of Service, and could void your warranty. But a lawyer in the report says recording others without consent may be illegal, depending on a wide range of "jurisdictional nuances" like whether you live in an all-party consent state or a one-party consent state. "This seems to be our new reality," the report concludes: "more cameras, more microphones everywhere, and less certainty about who and what is recording." (Tech blogger John Gruber offered this assessment. "Using a Meta platform to find people to hack a Meta device so you can surreptitiously record strangers. So perfectly Meta.")
Stern's report points out that "People are trying to fight back. Apps have popped up that use Bluetooth to scan for nearby camera glasses." (In the video one app-maker wonders why Meta isn't offering the same service themselves. "There are technical solutions to these problems.")
Ironically, when I watched the report on YouTube, it was preceded by... an ad for Meta's Ray-Ban AI smartglasses.
The University of California at Berkeley discovered the percentage of failing grades in multiple CS classes this spring "is significantly higher than past semesters," reports the campus's student newspaper.
"Instructors point to students' increased reliance on AI, lack of mathematical preparedness and understaffing as potential contributing factors."
According to [coursework platform] Berkeleytime, 35.3% of CS 10 students and 10.6% of CS 61A students received F's in spring 2026. In spring 2025 and spring 2024, the percentage of F's did not exceed 10% for either class. The electrical engineering and computer sciences department's grading guidelines state that 7% of students in lower division courses, including CS 10 and CS 61A, should receive D's and F's...
[UC Berkeley teaching professor Dan Garcia, who taught both classes] believes the "primary driver" of these abnormally high failing rates is due to a "vast increase in academic dishonesty" due to students' usage of large language models, such as Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini. "Some of the numbers that you saw from the number of students who receive failing grades were because we caught them (cheating) and prosecuted them and are sending their cases to the Center for Student Conduct," Garcia said. "But in other cases, it's students who are leaning a little too hard on LLMs to do their work for them, and then at exam time just really aren't ready." According to Garcia, nearly 30 students in CS 10 were "caught cheating on take-home exams" in spring 2026...
In addition to overreliance on AI, Garcia also pointed out that many students are underprepared mathematically, a concern echoed by campus associate teaching professor Gireeja Ranade. Ranade noticed a similar lack of prerequisite mathematical skills in her spring 2026 EECS 127 class, "Optimization Models in Engineering," which she described as "differently challenging" to teach this semester. The class saw a 16.8% F rate, far higher than the 5% of D's and F's that the EECS department describes as "typical" for an upper division course...
Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.
In what feels like it could be the first little rolling pebble of a rockslide that’s about to slam a torrent of boulders down around Silicon Valley HR departments’ heads, a software engineer has successfully received a religious exemption against being forced to work with AI. This is per Business Insider, which reports that engineer Erin Maus successfully lobbied her tech company employers on the idea that, as a Unitarian Universalist, using AI was opposed to her ethical and environmental beliefs, and is now back to happily writing her code by hand. And while the actions of one company in regards to one employee obviously doesn’t set any kind of legal precedent, it does feel like a bellwether for industries that are getting pretty militant about their employees filtering everything they do through the nascent technology.
Many techie Catholics, for instance, have looked to words from Pope Leo XIV, who recently wrote a hefty encyclical raising questions about the role of artificial intelligence in the modern world. The Pontiff didn’t go full Butlerian Jihad or anything—instead cautioning Catholics to simply be thoughtful in their use of the tech—but Chicago Pope weighing in on the matter at all has raised a lot of questions about whether Catholics can use those kinds of public statements as justifications for a religious exemption from AI use under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Not that official statements from a higher authority are necessarily required; Maus got her exemption based on her own beliefs, despite the fact that the Unitarian Universalist Association has yet to publicize a stance on the matter.)
As noted in Business Insider, the modern Supreme Court has been pretty friendly to extensions of religious accommodations in recent years, whether on behalf of employers (as when it ruled that Hobby Lobby didn’t have to pay for health plans covering contraception for employees in 2014) or employees (as when a United States Postal Service worker argued in 2023 that he should be religiously exempted from working Sunday shifts). It’ll be interesting to see whether—to editorialize briefly—it’ll be quite so quick to approve of exemptions for things that don’t totally suck; in any case, this will absolutely not be the last instance of employees hoping to get a little deus in between them and the machina.
This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to give potentially more than a thousand local law enforcement agencies a facial recognition app that would query a database of hundreds of millions of images to verify someone’s immigration status, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media.
The app would be a dramatic escalation in the technology being used to carry out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are already using Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition app that taps into a wide array of DHS and other government databases, on U.S. streets, stopping people and scanning their faces. With that app, ICE officers point their phone camera at a person, the app scans their face, and the app returns a wealth of biographical information and whether they have been issued an order of removal. The app has made mistakes and been used against American citizens.
With this second app, much of that capability would now be in the hands of local police who essentially have become extensions of ICE.
“This embarrassingly cursory document utterly fails to acknowledge the harms that will flow from putting a flawed face recognition app in the hands of many thousands of local police,” Nate Wessler, deputy director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media. “Sending local cops out to indiscriminately scan our faces, with a system that is known to generate false matches, that saves our data for 15 years, and that ensnares police into making immigration decisions that they are untrained for and that will undermine community safety efforts, is a recipe for disaster and for terrorizing members of communities across the country. DHS’s privacy regulators fell down on the job. Now it’s up to lawmakers to ensure this dangerous technology stays off our streets.”
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Do you know anything else about this app? Are you a current or former ICE or CBP employee? 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.
“These ICE non-federal officers will use the TFM [Task Force Module] app during an encounter to verify the target of an operation’s identity, and if warranted, investigate and determine the target’s immigration status (i.e., whether the individual is subject to removal) through facial recognition,” the document reads.
The name of the app is the “ICE Task Force Module App (TFM App),” according to the document. When an officer scans someone’s face, the app will run their face against a database of more than 250 million DHS and State Department records, and then provide instructions to the officer. Either “not detain or arrest under ICE jurisdiction,” or the app will provide a reference code the officer can use to get additional information from ICE.
A screenshot of the document. Image: 404 Media.
404 Media previously reported the existence of Mobile Identify, which appears to be the same app under a different name, in November. It was removed a short while later from the Google Play Store and has not returned. The new document also mentions making the app available through the Apple App Store.
It is not clear when, or if, ICE or other DHS components will roll out the app to local police. DHS did not respond to a request for comment, and the document lists the launch date as September 24, 2025. But the new document describes in detail the plan behind giving this facial recognition app to local police.
“The collection of face images allows ICE non-federal law enforcement officers to verify identity and immigration status (whether the individual is removable),” the document adds. ICE acknowledges in the document that the app may be used on U.S. citizens. “It is conceivable that a photo taken by an ICE non-federal law enforcement officers using the TFM mobile application could be that of someone other than a removable individual, including U.S. citizens,” it reads.
A screenshot of the document. Image: 404 Media.
“ICE non-federal law enforcement officers do not know an individual's citizenship when first encountered and will use the TFM mobile application to determine or verify the individual's identity and confirm that they are a match to CBP TVS,” it reads. TVS is the Traveler Verification Service, the CBP system usually used to verify people entering the country at ports of entry, but which ICE has now turned inwards onto American streets.
The app is designed for members of the 287(g) program, an ICE initiative that grants local and state police certain immigration enforcement powers. It “essentially turns police officers into ICE agents,” according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. More agencies have joined the program recently, including Texas’s Highway Patrol. At the time of writing, 1,220 agencies in 32 states and 2 U.S. territories participate in the program, according to ICE’s website.
These are the agencies that would potentially be given access to the app, as the document points specifically to 287(g) as the legal basis of the app.
“This document confirms our worst fears about the spread of ICE's abusive surveillance technology. Face surveillance was already a dangerous infringement of civil liberties in the hands of ICE agents,” Cooper Quintin, security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the EFF, told 404 Media. “Putting it in the hands of ICE's local partners will subject even more Americans to omnipresent surveillance and unjust detainment.”
After 404 Media revealed the existence of both Mobile Fortify and Mobile Identify, a group of six democratic lawmakers proposed legislation that would rein in the apps, and entirely kill the local enforcement version.
404 Media obtained the document through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with CBP. 404 Media previously obtained a similar document from CBP for Mobile Fortify. That document said ICE believes people cannot refuse to be scanned by its app.
At a recent border security conference, Matthew Elliston, assistant director of Law Enforcement Systems & Analysis at ICE, said Mobile Fortify has been used more than 200,000 times, multiple attendees of the conference told 404 Media.
Based on comments from that conference and an DHS source, 404 Media reported that ICE plans to develop its own smartglasses to “supplement” its facial recognition app.
Update: this piece has been updated with comment from the EFF.
Anthony Head has died. Best known as Giles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s stuffy but lovable Watcher, on seven seasons of the beloved horror series, Head had a long, fruitful career on stage, screen, and radio, appearing in productions of Rocky Horror and episodes of the streaming hit Ted Lasso. He died of complications due to pneumonia, his daughters, Emily and Daisy, said in a statement to The Press Association. He was 72.
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce the death of our extraordinary father,” his daughters said. “It has been, and forever will be, an honour and a privilege to be his daughters, and to have witnessed firsthand the impact both he and his work have had on so many.”
“We know how dearly he will be missed by friends, colleagues, and fans of the shows he was in—he loved his job very much, and he always considered himself incredibly lucky, to have been able to work alongside such exceptionally talented people, in such wonderful productions, across a career that spanned several decades.”
Head knew he wanted to be an actor from age 6, when he performed in a neighborhood production of The Emperor’s New Clothes, organized by his actress mother’s friends. The son of documentary filmmaker Seafield Laurence Stewart Murray Head and British film and television actress Helen Shingler, Head was born on February 20, 1954, in Camden Town, London. After attending the London Academy of Arts, he landed a role in Godspell in 1978 before making his TV debut in two episodes of the British TV drama, Enemy At The Law.
Over the next decade, Head became a TV regular, thanks to a star turn as one half of the Gold Blend Couple in a series of Nescafé commercials that ran between 1987 and 1993. The advertisements were sent stateside in 1990, where the will-they-won’t-they romance of the commercial couple continued to enthrall American viewers while selling them on Taster’s Choice. The ads were such a hit that Nestle and the advertising firm behind the spots, McCann-Erickson, commissioned a 300-page romance novel about the couple called Love Over Gold.
While transforming into a commercial sensation, Head slipped into the garter belts of Dr. Frank N. Furter in a West End revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Chrysalis Records even put out a single of his version of “Sweet Transvestite” in 1991. He’d play the role several more times throughout his life.
As Head’s commercial star peaked, he landed the role of his lifetime, playing Buffy Summers’ mentor, father figure, and Watcher Rupert Giles on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The steady anchor of the series, who aided the Scooby Gang from one Big Bad to the next, Head’s Giles often served as the straight man to Sunnydale teens’ pop-culture-infected jokes. Over time, his emotional bond with Buffy became the show’s emotional core, comforting her as she slayed one schoolmate after another. He eventually left the show’s main cast in season six but would return as a guest star for the show’s final episodes. He would reprise the role for an Audible Buffyverse Story and an episode of Robot Chicken.
Though he would be known to Buffy fans as Giles for the rest of his life, he had a celebrated career after the show’s run. He appeared as the Prime Minister on the sketch show Little Britain, as Prince Arthur’s father, King Uther Pendragon, on Merlin, and stole the show as Nathan the Repo Man in Repo! The Genetic Opera, a role he received because of the musical Buffy episode, “Once More With Feeling.” More recently, he appeared as Lord Sheffield on Bridgerton and as the recurring character Rupert Manion on Ted Lasso.
Head’s partner, animal-welfare advocate Sarah Fisher, died in December 2025. He is survived by his brother, musician Murray Head, and his two daughters with Fisher.
Marjane Satrapi, the graphic novelist and director who achieved global renown with Persepolis and its film adaptation, has died. According to The New York Times, her death was announced by French President Emmanuel Macron, who did not share a cause of death but acknowledged Satrapi as “a freedom-loving artist whose work carried a universal message and earned her immense international acclaim.” Friends and family told Deadline that the author “died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life.” Satrapi was 56 years old.
Known for bridging cultural gaps with her work, Satrapi published the autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, originally published in four volumes in France between 2000 and 2003. She co-wrote the screenplay and co-directed the 2007 film adaptation of the novels with Vincent Paronnaud. Satrapi also wrote the graphic novel Chicken With Plums and directed its 2011 film adaptation. She directed the 2019 Marie Curie biopic Radioactive, which stars Rosamund Pike as the scientist, and the 2014 film The Voices, which stars Ryan Reynolds and Anna Kendrick.
Born in Iran in 1969, Satrapi was about 10 years old when the Shah was overthrown and left the country to study in Austria when she was 14. In 1994, Satrapi moved to Paris, where her work as an author really began. In a later essay titled “Why I Wrote Persepolis,” Satrapi explained that she felt in France like she was constantly defending Iran to people who got an incomplete picture of the country from the news. She was prompted by friends to put the stories she had long been telling on paper, and Persepolis was born.
“If I were to write a memoir with words, I’d have to figure out a way to express verbally an image I have in my mind. In my case, it’s easier to draw it,” Satrapi told Believer in a 2006 interview. “And words also are filters. They have to be translated. Even in the original language, there is interpretation and some ambiguity. If there’s a cultural difference between the writer and the reader, that might come out in words. But with pictures, there’s more efficiency.”
The film adaptation of Persepolis was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards, and earned nominations at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs as well. Persepolis tied for the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival as well. In his contemporary review for The A.V. Club, critic Noel Murray wrote that the “feature-film version that loses some of the digressive, impressionistic structure that made the books so charming, but adds a sense of comic whimsy that a single drawing couldn’t exactly replicate,” observing that the film mainly argues “that strife is relative, and all politics are personal.”
Satrapi worked fairly consistently throughout the rest of her life, publishing her now-final graphic novel Woman, Life, Freedom with historian Abbas Milani. When asked in 2020 whether she was concerned about her influence after her death, Satrapi told Le Monde, “Post-mortem? Are you kidding? I couldn’t care less! My death will be as absurd and insignificant as that of a microbe or an earthworm. It’s unbearable, but that’s the way it is. I just want to die satisfied.”
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