Apple continues to face backlash for removing ICE-tracking apps like ICEBlock from the App Store, a drastic step that seemed to be triggered by Trump administration claims that the apps endangered officers.

According to US Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Apple has no evidence to support claims that apps raised safety concerns. Instead, the lawmaker accused Apple of using immigrant deaths with no connection to the apps to justify censoring Americans who have the right to record ICE activity.

It appears that Apple is “working with the government to violate its customers’ First Amendment rights to record and report on the activities of their own government,” Raskin said in a letter to Apple sent Monday, CNN reported.

Raskin had been hounding Apple for answers for months. In July, Apple finally explained to Raskin that ICEBlock was removed, along with other apps, after a fatal shooting left two detainees dead at a Dallas ICE office, CNN reported.

As an earlier CNN report explained, the shooter in that case, Joshua Jahn, fired bullets indiscriminately into the ICE facility before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot. Jahn left notes saying that he “hoped his actions would give ICE agents real terror of being gunned down.”

At that time, the US attorney for the Northern District of Texas, Nancy Larson, highlighted the “tragic irony” that it was a detainee who was killed during the attacks, CNN’s report said. But the Department of Homeland Security, along with FBI director Kash Patel, has since claimed that the incident showed agents were being targeted. DHS also frequently cites an internal October 2025 statistic claiming that ICE officers face an 8,000 percent increase in death threats. The agency will not release data to let independent parties verify that claim.

Additionally, Patel has said that the Texas shooter “searched for apps that tracked ICE agents’ locations.” But Raskin pushed back on that claim, too, telling Apple that there is “no evidence” that the shooter used ICE-tracking apps. And even if he did, “he did not need a tracking app to locate the fixed position of a government building” and “is reported to have found the address using an app that comes standard on Apple devices,” Raskin’s letter said.

“There appears to be no direct connection between the Dallas incident and the apps you removed,” Raskin said.

Apple pressured to share DHS communications

To ensure that no Americans’ core speech rights are violated by removals unconstitutionally ordered by the government, Raskin has asked Apple to “send a full list of the apps it removed following concerns from the Justice Department” so that it will finally be possible to “conduct an independent review of those removal decisions.”

Federal officials have insisted that Apple acted on its own.

However, in a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration officials of censoring watchdogs, ICEBlock creator Joshua Aaron told the court that officials publicly bragged about getting the app removed. And in Apple's July letter to Raskin—which was signed by Timothy Powderly, Apple’s senior director of government affairs—the iPhone maker seemed to confirm this. Powderly specifically cited agency reports of a “significant increase in ICE activity and threats against ICE” as triggering the follow-up review of ICE-tracking apps.

Apple claimed it was acting to protect both officers and detainees, ultimately deciding that sharing “precise location information about ICE officers (and, as a result, other individuals who may be in proximity to ICE agents, such as protestors or detainees)” provides “a potential roadmap for targeted violence and creating a significant risk of harm.”

The company “does not take decisions about removing apps from the App Store lightly, but acts when it must—especially when there are serious concerns that an app is creating safety risks,” Powderly said.

Raskin remains dubious that records will show the apps posed any risks. On Bluesky, Aaron did not comment directly on CNN’s report, but he did boost an ICEBlock post that thanked Raskin for continuing to press Apple to explain the removals.

“Apple’s sticking to their story even though everyone can see this was jawboning plain as day,” ICEBlock’s post said.

Trump admin denies app removals are retaliation

The Trump administration has asked the court to dismiss Aaron’s lawsuit, claiming that Apple independently chose to moderate that content, despite comments from agency officials suggesting otherwise.

It doesn't matter that former officials like Pam Bondi publicly took credit for removing ICEBlock from the App Store, boasting that she made the "demand" and "Apple did so.” Those comments were merely officials expressing opinions about Apple’s promotion of supposedly dangerous apps, they argued. They’re hoping the court will agree that Aaron has not uncovered evidence of communications that can be “reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action” against Apple “if Apple chose not to remove ICEBlock from the App Store.”

But in an August ruling, the Second Circuit recently upheld that courts broadly recognize “a First Amendment right to record law enforcement activity in public,” Aaron argued in a recent filing that could influence how the case is decided at this stage. In his opposition to the government's motion to dismiss, Aaron maintained that the record showed that the government was acting to censor Americans.

As he argued:

The then-Attorney General told the nation she demanded removal of the app, Apple reversed a decision it previously reached after a thorough five-week legal review citing only "information provided to Apple by law enforcement," and the then-Attorney General characterized Apple’s response as "compliance."

If the case proceeds, which Aaron expects it will, discovery would likely reveal the actual communications between government officials and Apple leadership, which so far have remained hidden. Only then can a court sufficiently determine if “a threat of adverse government action” triggered app removals, Aaron argued.

Raskin told Apple that he thinks the removal decisions won’t fly under the First Amendment.

“Monitoring the actions of federal immigration authorities who have been deployed to (users’) neighborhoods… is a core First Amendment right and not a crime,” Raskin said.

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OpenAI's hack of Hugging Face in July 2026 has spurred a lawsuit demanding that the company stop accessing third-party computer systems and halt AI development practices that can harm the public. The lawsuit was filed by Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology (LASST), which said yesterday that the hack in which OpenAI "agents stole credentials, uploaded malicious files, and gained control over key parts of Hugging Face’s internal systems... is unquestionably illegal under California law."

California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA) prohibits unauthorized access into computer systems, "and it doesn’t matter that a swarm of AI agents carried out this cyberattack. California law makes it clear that it is not a defense 'that the artificial intelligence autonomously caused the harm,'" the group said.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, said OpenAI also violated California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL). "OpenAI’s insistence on externalizing the harms of its unsafe decision-making is a fundamentally unfair business practice," the complaint said, adding that "such risk-taking for private gain at substantial public expense is immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, and substantially injurious conduct."

LASST said it wants "a court order prohibiting OpenAI’s AI agents from accessing third-party computer systems without permission and forbidding OpenAI from continuing to employ unsafe AI development practices that threaten serious harm to the public." The lawsuit does not ask for any compensatory or punitive damages from OpenAI, requesting only attorneys' fees.

OpenAI claims lawsuit "completely without merit"

OpenAI said in a statement provided to Ars that "Hugging Face was a serious incident and we've taken a series of actions in response to it, but this lawsuit is completely without merit." Defending its response to the hack, OpenAI noted that it published a technical report and other information about "third-party impact from misaligned models," slowed development of its AI, and held back the release of a model that doesn't meet its safety standards.

LASST said OpenAI's voluntary response hasn't been good enough and that the firm should be subject to court-imposed restrictions. "A business practice that exposes third parties and the public to uncontrolled, self-directed intrusions by systems that OpenAI admits it cannot fully predict or contain is unfair under any weighing of its utility against its consequences," the group said.

LASST's lawsuit said OpenAI quickly resumed training and evaluations of AI systems after the Hugging Face hack and other security incidents. "OpenAI will continue to train and evaluate advanced models, without proper oversight, in sandboxes that are vulnerable to exploitation by those models," the lawsuit said.

A New York Times report yesterday said OpenAI executives ignored employees who warned months before the Hugging Face hack that OpenAI’s newest models weren't being appropriately monitored. "In response, OpenAI executives told the employees that the tests needed to move forward as quickly as possible to release the AI models on time," the NYT reported. "No additional security protocols were instituted, said the workers, who were not authorized to speak publicly on sensitive matters."

Nonprofit says it had to counter OpenAI's illegal conduct

LASST said it has standing to sue OpenAI because the state Unfair Competition Law "allows organizations to go to court on behalf of the public when a company does something unlawful or unfair, so long as those organizations were also injured by that company’s unlawful conduct."

LASST said it was injured by the hack because it had to divert resources to educate regulators and the public about OpenAI's conduct. LASST, a nonprofit in New York, said its regular work includes tracking and analyzing AI safety incidents "and educating and briefing regulators, civil society, and the public."

After the Hugging Face hack, LASST staffers set aside their normal workloads "to design, coordinate, and participate in a briefing regarding this incident for regulators," and have since responded to more briefing requests that required additional work. LASST staff put dozens of work hours into responding to OpenAI’s unsafe development practices, the lawsuit said.

"Despite the impact on LASST’s other programs, LASST nevertheless devoted its resources towards attempting to counteract OpenAI’s illegal conduct... If LASST prevails in this litigation, it will no longer need to divert its resources to combat the unlawful and unfair business practices employed by OpenAI concerning its AI agents hacking third parties during internal evaluations," the lawsuit said.

Injunction request

The lawsuit said the requested injunction should forbid OpenAI "from knowingly accessing or causing to be accessed, themselves or through artificial intelligence agents that they develop, deploy, modify, or use, any computers, computer networks, or computer systems without authorization," and "from knowingly employing an unfair business practice that threatens serious harm on the public."

US lawmakers from both major parties have demanded answers from OpenAI, and a proposed "AI Kill Switch Act" would let US government officials order the shutdown of dangerous AI systems.

LASST said new regulations are needed to protect the public from AI risks but said California's existing law makes it possible to rein in AI companies "without waiting for new regulation to catch up to the harms happening to businesses and consumers now."

"We are filing this suit because OpenAI violated the law—and it needs to be held accountable," the group said. "OpenAI and frontier AI developers more broadly can’t avoid the consequences of their unsafe actions just by claiming that 'an AI did it.' Autonomous AI agents will continue to hack, steal data, disrupt systems, and violate rights until a court steps in."

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fjo3 quotes a report from The Guardian, written by Tove Danovich: Every year, the night sky is becoming 10% brighter. Eighty percent of people live under light-polluted skies. And while the UN declared a healthy environment -- clean air, clean water -- to be a human right, I believe we also all have a right to darkness as well. This doesn't mean turning off every streetlamp. But do we really need bright white floodlights at the front of every garage? Replacing lights with ones that are bright enough to do the job -- and no brighter -- might make it so I wouldn't have to get in my car and drive for hours to see the night sky as it actually shines above us. To preserve the darkness would mean rules and enforcement around the warmth of the lights, where they point, and how bright they can be. It would mean not putting in three lights when one would do. If we recognized that darkness is something we need, we'd become more careful about chasing it away. [...] Access to darkness is about more than stargazing. The night is its own habitat. Artificial lights confuse animals who use the moon to navigate, whether they're baby sea turtles navigating toward a parking lot instead of the ocean or moths who fly in circles around a lightbulb. Lightning bugs and frogs need darkness to complete their courtship rituals. Migrating birds get thrown off course by the bright lights of big cities. But the effects of light pollution linger even after it's daylight again, becoming visible. Research has shown light pollution is breaking the relationship between plants and pollinators, changing the time of year trees break into flower, and disrupting circadian rhythms for all living creatures. This includes humans. Whether it's artificial lights indoors or creeping in through the window at night, studies have found that we need darkness in order to rest, recover and stay healthy.

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The federal government’s war on fuel efficiency claimed another victim today. The Department of Transportation released a new rule for the country’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which, as expected, discourage the very idea of economical vehicles. Among the changes is a rollback to fuel economy numbers not seen in more than a decade, below even the low standards implemented in 2020, the last time President Trump was in power. The new goal is just 34.9 mpg by model year 2031.

This is nothing if not expected. When Sean Duffy was installed as Transportation secretary last January, he immediately announced that any fuel efficiency standards put in place under the Biden administration were dead and buried. Those rules had a slower ramp up than some might have liked but would have required automakers to sell many more electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

Now, we may have the possibility of some OEMs dropping their EVs and PHEVs entirely. The notice of final rulemaking criticizes the idea of emissions credits and blames them for automakers not investing in cleaner engine technology, and from model year 2028, such credits are a thing of the past. And plug-in vehicles will now no longer be included in an automaker’s fleet average; under previous rules an EV or PHEV could have a CAFE rating of hundreds of mpg.

Then again, since last year, Duffy’s department hasn’t exactly been proactive about enforcing the existing rules. In July last year it told automakers that it was not going to bother fining any of them for exceeding the CAFE limits, going back as far as 2022.

One perhaps not-terrible change in the new rule is a tightening of the light truck loophole. Passenger cars and light trucks have been classified separately under CAFE, with weaker standards for the latter. That encouraged car companies to redesign their crossovers such that they could be categorized as light trucks, with the end result that our roads are full of SUVs that are bigger and thirstier than they should be.

Should these regulations still be in effect by model year 2030, they will “change classification criteria starting in model year 2030 to reflect each vehicle’s intended use accurately, flipping the current fleet mix of approximately 70 [percent] light trucks and 30 [percent] passenger vehicles to around 70 [percent] passenger cars and 30 [percent] light trucks,” according to the Department of Transportation.

We could have had a better world

The meagre standard of 34.9 mpg seems even more pathetic in light of history. In 2012, the Obama administration published new CAFE standards that set us on a road to 54 mpg by 2025. Obviously, we did not arrive at that destination, thanks to constant assaults on fuel efficiency under the first Trump administration. That government did finally publish new CAFE standards in 2020, cutting them from 46.7 mpg in model year 2026 to 40.4 mpg.

That damage was slowly undone under the Biden administration, which also changed rules to encourage smaller and lighter vehicles. Now, it seems we go backwards just as fuel prices are climbing higher than Americans have seen before.

"The CAFE program was created in the 1970s in response to price shocks at the pump that raised costs for every American. Lowering these standards now, when so many families are already struggling with rising transportation costs, will only make things harder for them. At the same time, lowering the bar for innovation risks a future where the global auto market leaves American industry behind," said Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emissions Transportation Association.

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"OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest AI models," reports the Associated Press, "as reports of AI agents going rogue mount." The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information... OpenAI said in a statement that it will resume training "only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards" in place, adding that it expects it will have to "hit pause" again as AI develops and other issues emerge... It is the second time in three months that OpenAI has halted development of its models. The first came in July after disclosure of a cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face, a now notorious incident that raised fears the industry was losing control. OpenAI "also said it had notified dozens of third parties about improper activity," reports Reuters: As of mid-September, one person briefed on the matter estimated that OpenAI had found roughly two dozen incidents of its agents acting in undesirable ways. But the number has continued rising as OpenAI teams sift through internal logs of the agents' activities and find previously unknown cases, the two people close to the company said... OpenAI has acknowledged a general need for more transparency around rogue AI behavior... Even so, two people familiar with OpenAI's investigation into its agents' activity described it as locked down and shaped by company lawyers. The process has been unusually compartmentalized for a company that some former employees say was more open about these issues in the past, the people said. Roughly 100 people were in some way involved in the process to understand the Hugging Face hack, three people briefed on the matter said. During that process, evidence of other incidents surfaced. Reuters has previously reported that OpenAI investigators looking into the Hugging Face breach were discouraged by the company's lawyers from expanding the scope of the investigation to include other incidents. OpenAI said its lawyers did not discourage deeper investigation. Many incidents have been uncovered by outside researchers rather than OpenAI directly. In several episodes, the agents took problematic actions that went unnoticed by the company for months. Meanwhile, Axios reports that Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 model "sought to escape a sandbox — a secure testing environment — in 1.5% of test runs, though the company emphasized that these were adversarial experiments where a task couldn't be solved without escaping the sandbox." Anthropic points out that those tests were run "without the additional safeguards we apply in production". But they acknowledged that then Claude Opus 5.5 "when given apparent credentials to a public package registry in a simulated security exercise, took potentially harmful actions in roughly half of cases. Very rarely, pre-release snapshots produced and acted on spontaneous malicious tool calls, and during training some snapshots concealed actions from an automated grader." Claude Opus 5.5 "showed less misaligned behavior and less cooperation with misuse than any other recent Claude model on nearly all measures," Anthropic adds, and "took overeager or destructive actions less than any other model we tested." But Axios makes an interesting estimate about that 1.5% of test runs (without safeguards). "Anthropic and other companies conduct hundreds of thousands of test runs on their models, or more, sources said. That means even a small percentage of misaligned behavior can still amount to tens of thousands of incidents in which the models behaved in unexpected, sometimes troubling ways." The sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known. The findings, which are surfacing as part of internal work to assess models and in investigations at both companies into model behavior, raise questions about whether either company — or any top model-maker — is currently capable of establishing complete control over their technology. The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting or seeking to bypass monitors, sources said. They occurred in internal testing and in the real world, and many have yet to become public as security researchers continue to investigate, sources said... Some at OpenAI see Hugging Face as a one-off, with disclosures about future incidents likely to be less severe due to improved controls and the unusual nature of the testing they conducted, which involved an unreleased model, sources told Axios. AI security researchers agree that there are simple fixes that will help AI companies avoid aspects of what made the Hugging Face episode appear so dangerous to outsiders. Other AI executives and safety researchers, however, cautioned that they have limited confidence that AI companies will be able to prevent all problematic model behavior... It's not about how damaging each individual instance was, Connor Leahy, AI researcher and executive director at ControlAI told Axios. The "crazy thing," he said, is that these instances involve "autonomous systems doing things they were told not to do," potentially including crimes.

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With the right software, you can run Android apps on your Windows PC. Here's why you may want to and how to get it set up on your own computer.