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      Ice obtains access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack phones and encrypted apps

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      US immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the $2m contract was put on hold pending a compliance review to make sure it adhered to an executive order that restricts the US government’s use of spyware, Wired reported at the time.That pause has now been lifted, according to public procurement documents, which list US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as the contracting agency.It means that one of the most powerful stealth cyberweapons ever created – which was produced outside the US – is now in the hands of an agency that has repeatedly been accused by civil and human rights groups of violating people’s due process rights.The story was first reported by the journalist Jack Poulson on his All-Source Intelligence Substack newsletter.Neither Paragon nor Ice immediately responded to a request for comment.When it is successfully deployed against a target, the hacking software – called Graphite – can hack into any phone. By essentially taking control of the mobile phone, the user – in this case, Ice – can not only track an individual’s whereabouts, read their messages, look at their photographs, but it can also open and read information held on encrypted applications, like WhatsApp or Signal. Spyware like Graphite can also be used as a listening device, through the manipulation of the phone’s recorder.An executive order signed by the Biden administration sought to establish some guardrails around the US government’s use of spyware. It said that the US “shall not make operational use of commercial spyware that poses significant counterintelligence or security risks to the United States government or significant risks of improper use by a foreign government or foreign person”. The Biden administration also took the extraordinary step of placing one of Paragon’s rival spyware makers, NSO Group, on a commerce department blacklist, saying the company had knowingly supplied foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists and journalists.Paragon has sought to differentiate itself from NSO Group. It has said that, unlike NSO – which previously sold its spyware to Saudi Arabia and other regimes – that it only does business with democracies. It has also said it has a no tolerance policy and will cut off government clients who use the spyware to target members of civil society, such as journalists. Paragon refuses to disclose who its clients are and has said it does not have insight into how its clients use the technology against targets.Spyware makers like Paragon and NSO have said their products are intended to be used to prevent crime and terrorist attacks. But both companies’ software has been used in the past to target innocent people, including individuals who have been perceived to be government enemies.John Scott-Railton, a senior research at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who is one of the world’s leading experts on cases in which spyware like Graphite has been abused by governments, said in a statement that such tools “were designed for dictatorships, not democracies built on liberty and protection of individual rights”.“Invasive, secret hacking power is corrupting. That’s why there’s a growing pile of spyware scandals in democracies, including with Paragon’s Graphite,” he said, referring to a controversy in Italy that erupted late last year.Paragon broke off its ties to Italy after it was revealed that 90 people, including journalists and members of civil society, in two dozen countries, had been targeted with the spyware. The individuals who were targeted by the Italian government included human rights activists who have been critical of Italy’s dealings with Libya. Several journalists were also targeted, though it is still unclear who ordered those hacking attacks.The US government has in the past resisted using spyware technology made outside the US because of concerns that any company that sells technology to multiple government agencies around the world represents a potential security risk.“As long as the same mercenary spyware tech is going to multiple governments, there is a baked-in counterintelligence risk. Since all of them now know what secret surveillance tech the US is using, and would have special insights on how to detect it and track what the US is doing with it,” Scott-Railton said. “Short of Paragon cancelling all foreign contracts, I’m not sure how this goes away.”Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which is dedicated to free speech advocacy, said news of the Ice contract compounded civil liberty concerns surrounding the “rapid and dramatic expansion of Ice’s budget and authority”. She also called on Congress to step in and limit the circumstances in which spyware could be deployed.“Spyware like Paragon’s Graphite poses a profound threat to free speech and privacy,” Farid Johnson said. “It has already been used against journalists, human rights advocates, and political dissidents around the world. The quiet lifting of the stop work order also raises the troubling prospect that parts of the executive branch are acting without adherence to the government’s own vetting requirements.” More

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      US conducts ‘lethal strike’ against drug boat from Venezuela, Rubio says

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      The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.“Everything is hinging on where this strike took place,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow on Venezuela and Colombia from the Atlantic Council’s Latin America Centre.“If this strike took place in Venezuelan waters, I think that will trigger a massive escalation from the Venezuelan side. However, from what I’ve heard … this took place in international waters, and that suggests that ultimately this is about drug interdiction.”Ramsey added: “This is a target-rich environment, after all. There are plenty of go-fast boats transporting cocaine through the southern Caribbean, and I think ultimately Washington is more interested in signalling than in actually engaging in any kind of military action inside Venezuela territory.”Even so, the development will add to fears over a possible military clash between Venezuelan and US troops after the US sent war ships and marines into the Caribbean last month as part of what Trump allies touted as an attempt to force Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.Officially, Trump’s naval buildup is part of US efforts to combat Latin American drug traffickers, including a Venezuelan group called the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) which Trump officials accuse Maduro of leading.Last month the US announced a $50m reward for Maduro’s capture – twice the bounty once offered for Osama bin Laden. In July, Trump signed a secret directive greenlighting military force against Latin American cartels considered terrorist organizations, including the Venezuelan group.Republican party hawks and Trump allies have celebrated those moves as proof the White House is determined to end Maduro’s 12-year rule. “Your days are seriously numbered,” Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, declared recently, encouraging Maduro to flee to Moscow.Maduro’s allies have also claimed that a regime-change operation is afoot, with Maduro himself this week warning that White House hardliners were seeking to lead Trump into “a terrible war” that would harm the entire region.“Mr President Donald Trump, you need to take care because Marco Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood – with South American, Caribbean blood [and] Venezuelan blood. They want to lead you into a bloodbath … with a massacre against the people of Venezuela,” Maduro said.But many experts are skeptical the US is planning a military intervention. “The idea of there being an invasion, I don’t believe to be true,” James Story, the US’s top diplomat for Venezuela from 2018 to 2023, said last week. He said Trump generally opposed “meddling militarily in the affairs of other countries”.Ramsey agreed. ”This is not a deployment focused on regime change. This may be an attempt to signal to disaffected elements of the military in Venezuela that now is the time to rise up against Maduro. But we’ve seen that approach be tried and ​fail repeatedly over ​the last 25 years.”Ramsey said the tough talk belied the fact that Trump had actually relaxed its stance towards Venezuela. Sanctions had been softened in recent weeks. The Trump administration was “actively coordinating with ​the Maduro regime on deportation flights”, about two of which are landing at Venezuela’s main international airport each week.​Ramsey believed that the military mobilization was partly an attempt “to throw some red meat to a part of Trump’s base that has been dissatisfied with the reality of sanctions relief” and what it perceived as his soft policy towards Maduro. More

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      Hundreds of staff at California national parks to unionize amid Trump turmoil

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      Hundreds of staff at two of California’s most popular national parks have voted to unionize, a move that comes during a troubled summer for the National Park Service, which has seen the Trump administration enact unprecedented staff and budget cuts.In an election held between July and August, more than 97% of workers at Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon national parks voted in support of organizing a union, according to a statement from the National Federation of Federal Employees. The Federal Labor Relations Authority certified the results last week.“I am honored to welcome the Interpretive Park Rangers, scientists, biologists, photographers, geographers, and so many other federal employees in essential roles at both Yosemite and Sequoia & Kings Canyon to our union,” said Randy Erwin, the NFFE national president.“By unionizing, hundreds of previously unrepresented employees have obtained a critical voice in their workplace and now have the power to make significant changes to benefit themselves and their colleagues.”The vote means 600 workers at the parks, including park rangers, researchers, educators, fee collectors and first responders, among others, will be represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE).Labor organizers have been trying to form a union at the parks for years but did not have the necessary support until this year when the Trump administration’s mass firings left the parks service in turmoil, the Los Angeles Times reported.“It comes as no surprise workers in the National Park Service are overwhelmingly in favor of unionizing, as federal employees across the country have been faced with reductions in force, threats to workplace protections, and slashed agency budgets under this administration,” Erwin said.Since Trump took office this year the National Park Service, which manages 85m acres (34m hectares) of America’s public lands, has lost a quarter of its permanent staff, seasonal hiring is down and the administration is seeking to slash more than $1bn from the NPS budget.The US interior secretary, Doug Burgum, has said the cuts were “clearing out the barn”. Despite the upheaval, the federal government has ordered parks to stay open to the public. That has left staffers scrambling to manage the parks amid the peak summer season, and, as the Guardian reported last month, archeologists are managing ticket booths while park superintendents have cleaned bathrooms.At Yosemite, scientists were also cleaning public bathrooms because there were no other workers to do it. Amid the turmoil this year, NPS employees told the Guardian earlier this summer they had received unsigned emails from the office of personnel management urging them to resign and find a job in the private sector.“Every day you come to work and you have no idea what is going to happen next. It’s like we are all being subjected to psychological warfare,” a staffer said this spring.Earlier this year at Yosemite, laid-off employees hung a US flag upside down, a symbol of distress, at the park’s El Capitan to bring attention the cuts.Erwin with the NFFE said the union would take “every step possible” to increase staffing and resources, and defend employees. More

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      Pentagon sending up to 600 military lawyers to serve as immigration judges

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      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the federal justice department to serve as temporary immigration judges, according to a memo reviewed by the Associated Press.The military will begin sending groups of 150 attorneys – both military and civilians – to the justice department “as soon as practicable” and the military services should have the first round of people identified by next week, according to the memo, dated 27 August.The effort comes as Donald Trump’s presidential administration cracks down on immigration across the country, ramping up arrests and deportations. Immigration courts are also already dealing with a huge backlog of roughly 3.5m cases that has ballooned in recent years.However, numerous immigration judges have been fired or left voluntarily after taking deferred resignations offered by the administration, according to their union. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) said in July that at least 17 immigration judges had been fired “without cause” in courts across the country.That has left about 600 immigration judges, union figures show, meaning the Pentagon move will double their ranks.The move is being done at the request of the justice department, and the memo noted that the details will initially last no more than 179 days but can be renewable.When asked about the move, a justice department spokesperson referred questions about the plan to the defense department. Pentagon officials directed questions to the White House.A White House official said on Tuesday that the administration was looking at a variety of options to help resolve the significant backlog of immigration cases, including hiring additional immigration judges. The official said the matter should be “a priority that everyone – including those waiting for adjudication – can rally around”. More

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      Why Trump’s undermining of US statistics is so dangerous | Daniel Malinsky

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      In 1937, Joseph Stalin commissioned a sweeping census of the Soviet Union. The data reflected some uncomfortable facts – in particular, the dampening of population growth in areas devastated by the 1933 famine – and so Stalin’s government suppressed the release of the survey results. Several high-level government statistical workers responsible for the census were subsequently imprisoned and apparently executed. Though the Soviet authorities would proudly trumpet national statistics that glorified the USSR’s achievements, any numbers that did not fit the preferred narrative were buried.A few weeks ago, following the release of “disappointing” jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Donald Trump fired the commissioner of labor statistics, Dr Erika McEntarfer, and claimed the numbers were “rigged”. He also announced his intention to commission an unprecedented off-schedule census of the US population (these happen every 10 years and the next one should be in 2030) with an emphasis that this census “will not count illegal immigrants”. The real goal is presumably to deliver a set of population estimates that could be used to reapportion congressional seats and districts ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections and ensure conditions favorable to Republican control of Congress – though it is not clear there is sufficient time or support from Congress to make this happen. The administration is also reportedly “updating” the National Climate Assessments and various important sources of data on topics related to climate and public health have disappeared. In addition to all this, Trump’s justice department launched an investigation into the crime statistics of the DC Metropolitan police, alleging that the widely reported decline in 2024 DC violent crime rates – the lowest total number of recorded violent crimes city-wide in 30 years – are a distortion, fueled by falsified or manipulated statistics. One might say that the charge of “fake data” is just a close cousin of the “fake news” and all of this is par for the course for an administration that insists an alternate reality is the truth. But this pattern may also beget a specifically troubling (and quintessentially Soviet) state of affairs: the public belief that all “political” data are fake, that one generally cannot trust statistics. We must resist this paradigm shift, because it mainly serves to entrench authoritarianism.It was eventually a common sentiment in the Soviet Union that one could never trust “the official numbers” because they were largely manipulated to serve political interests. (At least, this is the sentiment reported by my parents, who grew up in the Soviet Baltic states during the 1960s and 1970s – I was an infant when we left in the late 80s so I cannot report much first-hand.) One upshot of this kind of collective belief, if it were to take hold, is that it can make one’s informational world quite small: if you can only trust what you can verify directly, namely what you experience yourself or hear from trusted friends and family, it is difficult to broaden your view to include experiences of people in circumstances very different from yours. This kind of parochial world with few shared reference points is bad for democracy and building solidarity across groups. It also makes it easier for an oppressive state to plant false and divisive “facts” to serve its goals; we’ll have a fake crime wave here and a booming economy there, and though maybe most people disbelieve this they do not quite believe the opposite either. No one can credibly claim or contest any socially relevant trends because all numbers are fake, so the activities of claiming and contesting things become pointless – just do what you can get away with.A political culture with no trust in data or statistics is also one that will rely more heavily on opaque decisions made by elites behind closed doors. In his influential historical study of the rise of quantitative bureaucracy, the historian Thomas Porter points out that basing policy decisions on calculated numerical costs and benefits reduces the role of “local” discretion and can have a homogenizing effect, which can strengthen centralized state control. The flip side of this coin is that it also divests people in power from part of their authority by enabling a degree of public transparency and scrutability: if a huge government project must be justified by reference to some cost-benefit calculations, these calculations can be cross-checked and challenged by various parties. If a government agency requires documentation of progress on initiatives, proof that public funds are being spent appropriately, and evidence on who benefits and by how much, there is substantially less room for plain corruption and mismanagement provided that independent parties have access to the relevant information. Without credible data that reflects the facts on the ground, how can the public push back against an invented “crisis” narrative, concocted to justify the invocation of emergency powers?Anyone who spends any time working with data is acutely aware that there are lots of choices to be made in the collection or processing of data – there are numerous “decision points” about what to include, how to precisely define or measure things, and so on. Indeed, insofar as data is used to tell stories about complex things such as the state of the economy or the health of a population, different data collection or analysis choices can to some extent lend support to different narratives, including predetermined narratives if an unscrupulous analyst is set on it. But it does not follow from this that “anything goes” or that statistics are meaningless. There are better and worse ways to collect and analyze data, both reasonable and preposterous ways to answer empirical questions such as “are crime rates in DC going up or going down?” Most importantly, when government statistics are managed by qualified and non-partisan officials and the relevant numbers can be challenged, debated and contested, then we have a democratic basis for guiding our institutions to better policy decisions. Data of public importance must be publicly accessible, not hidden from view.Trump’s assault on the integrity of data is not the worst of his ongoing abuses – the public should be more immediately outraged by the masked agents disappearing people on the streets and the national guard occupying city centers – but this pattern of actions vis-a-vis official statistics should be extremely alarming. It is a slow boil: if we reach the point where nobody trusts numbers because it’s all “fake data”, it will be too late to resist and too difficult to undo the damage. The opposition must block appointments of unqualified and clearly biased nominees to lead the BLS and other agencies responsible for data stewardship. We must resist undue interference in data gathering, whether that is at the level of the US census or at the level of city government. On the contrary, we should be investing in initiatives that strengthen public trust in and understanding of the social, economic and environmental data that can be used to guide decisions that affect our communities’ wellbeing.

      Daniel Malinsky is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University More

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      Trump news at a glance: Bessent says markets not worried by Fed interference as Lagarde warns of ‘danger’

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      US treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said the Federal Reserve is and should be independent but that it had “made a lot of mistakes”, as he defended Donald Trump’s right to fire the central bank governor Lisa Cook.The president has criticised the Fed and its chair, Jerome Powell, for months for not lowering interest rates. Independent central banks are widely seen as crucial to a stable global financial system. Bessent also rejected the idea that markets were disturbed by the Trump administration’s actions. “S&P’s at a new high and bond yields are fine, so we haven’t seen anything yet,” he said.Bessent’s comments come as Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said Trump undermining the independence of the world’s most powerful central bank could pose a “very serious danger” for the world economy.Trump’s war on Fed is ‘serious danger’ to world economy, says ECB headLagarde, who was France’s finance minister until 2011 before leaving to run the International Monetary Fund, said it would be “very difficult” for Trump to take control of Fed decision-making on interest rates, but such a scenario would be highly dangerous.“If US monetary policy were no longer independent and instead dependent on the dictates of this or that person, then I believe that the effect on the balance of the American economy could – as a result of the effects this would have around the world – be very worrying, because it is the largest economy in the world,” she said, according to remarks reported by Reuters.Read the full storyGuatemala says it is willing to receive hundreds of deported children from USGuatemala is ready and willing to receive about 150 unaccompanied children of all ages each week from the US, the country’s president has said, a day after a US federal judge halted the deportation of 10 Guatemalan children.Those children had already boarded a plane when a court responded to an emergency appeal on Sunday. They were later returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.On Monday, Guatemala’s president, Bernardo Arévalo, told journalists that his government had been coordinating with the US to receive the unaccompanied minors.Read the full storyFormer CDC leaders slam RFK Jr for endangering Americans’ healthNine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership of the US health and human services department is “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable”. They also warned that Kennedy’s leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings”.Read the full storyTrump says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of FreedomThe president said Monday he would award Rudy Giuliani the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, two days after his longtime political ally was seriously injured in a car crash.The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the 11 September 2001 attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.Read the full storyHundreds of ‘workers over billionaires’ Labor Day rallies take place across USHundreds of protests organised as part of the national “workers over billionaires” effort – a mass action calling for the protection of social safety – were held in cities large and small across the country, including New York, Houston, Washington DC and Los Angeles.As the Labor Day rallies took place, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson sharply denounced the Trump administration’s threat to deploy federal troops to the city as part of an immigration crackdown.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      For this Labor Day, the Trump administration has draped an enormous banner outside the US labor department with his portrait and the words “American Workers First”. But many labor advocates say Trump has consistently put corporate interests first in his second term as he has taken dozens of actions that hurt workers.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 31 August 2025. More

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      Trump says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom

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      Donald Trump said Monday he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, two days after his longtime political ally was seriously injured in a car crash.The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.Trump on his Truth Social platform called Giuliani the “greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot”.For much of the past two decades, Giuliani’s public life has been defined by a striking rise and fall. After leading New York through the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he mounted a brief campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and became one of the most recognizable political figures in the country. But as Trump’s personal lawyer, he became a central figure in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Courts repeatedly rejected the fraud claims he advanced, and two former Georgia election workers won a $148m defamation judgment against him.The election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, said Giuliani’s efforts to promote Trump’s lies about the election being stolen led to death threats that made them fear for their lives.Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington DC for repeatedly making false statements about the election, and he was criminally charged in Georgia and Arizona in connection with efforts to undo Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.Giuliani, 81, was hospitalized after the Saturday night collision in New Hampshire. State police said he was a passenger in a rented Ford Bronco driven by his spokesperson, Ted Goodman, when the vehicle was struck from behind by a Honda HR-V. Giuliani suffered a fractured thoracic vertebra along with multiple lacerations, contusions and injuries to his left arm and leg, according to his security chief, Michael Ragusa. On Monday, Ragusa said Giuliani remained in the hospital but was expected to be discharged “soon”.The Medal of Freedom, established in 1963, is awarded to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the US, world peace, or cultural or other significant public endeavors. More