On Sunday, 21-year-old Chungin 'Roy' Lee announced he's raised $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures for his startup, Cluely, that offers an AI tool to 'cheat on everything.' That tool, originally called Interview Coder, is now part of their San Francisco-based startup Cluely. It offers its users the chance to 'cheat' on things like exams, sales calls, and job interviews thanks to a hidden in-browser window that can't be viewed by the interviewer or test giver. Cluely also published a slickly produced, but polarizing, launch video of Lee using a hidden AI assistant to (unsuccessfully) lie to a woman about his age, and even his knowledge of art, on a date at a fancy restaurant: The startup's other co-founder is another 21-year-old former Columbia student, Neel Shanmugam, who is Cluely's COO. Shanmugam was also embroiled in disciplinary proceedings at Columbia over the AI tool. Both co-founders have dropped out of Columbia, the university's student newspaper reported last week. Columbia declined to comment, citing student privacy laws....

Representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis, and Gary Palmer (all Republicans) sent a letter Thursday to the genetic testing company's interim CEO Joe Selsavage asking a number of questions about how 23andMe will handle customer data if the company is sold. The letter also says that some customers have reported problems deleting their data from the 23andMe website, and it notes that direct-to-consumer companies like 23andMe are generally not covered by the protections of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). 'Given the lack of HIPAA protections, the patchwork of state laws covering genetic privacy, and the uncertainty surrounding what happens to customer information should a sale of a company or customer data and information transpire, we are concerned that this trove of sensitive information is at risk of being comprised,' the representatives write. 23andMe, which settled a data breach lawsuit for $30 million last year, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in March, with co-founder and CEO Anne Wojciki saying she was resigning to become a private bidder for the company....

Operatives from Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are building a master database at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that could track and surveil undocumented immigrants, two sources with direct knowledge tell WIRED. DOGE is knitting together immigration databases from across DHS and uploading data from outside agencies including the Social Security Administration, as well as voting records, sources say. This, experts tell WIRED, could create a system that could later be searched to identify and surveil immigrants. The scale at which DOGE is seeking to interconnect data, including sensitive biometric data, has never been done before, raising alarms with experts who fear it may lead to disastrous privacy violations for citizens, certified foreign workers, and undocumented immigrants. A United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) data lake, or centralized repository, existed at DHS prior to DOGE that included data related to immigration cases, like requests for benefits, supporting evidence in immigration cases, and whether an application has been received and is pending, approved, or denied. Since at least mid-March, however, DOGE has been uploading mass amounts of data to this preexisting USCIS data lake, including data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), SSA, and voting data from Pennsylvania and Florida, two DHS sources with direct knowledge tell WIRED....

On Monday, the tech giant pushed updates to Google Play services, a core part of Android that provides functionalities for apps and the operating system itself. Listed under 'Security & Privacy' is a new security feature that, 'will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days.' Last year, Apple rolled out the same feature for iOS. The thinking behind adding an automatic reboot after a certain period of inactivity is to make life more difficult for someone who is trying to unlock or extract data from a phone; for example, law enforcement using a forensic analysis device like those made by Cellebrite or Magnet Forensics. Before a phone is switched on and unlocked, certain data stored within is fully encrypted and harder to access without the user's passcode. This is known as the 'Before First Unlock' state. Once unlocked, on the other hand, some data gets decrypted and can potentially be accessed by bruteforcing the passcode or taking advantage of security flaws, which is generally how law enforcement forensic devices work. This state is known as 'After First Unlock.'...