America's next president "announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator," reports Ars Technica: In a post on X, Isaacman said he was "honored" to receive Trump's nomination. "Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history," Isaacman wrote. "On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun...."

"Jared Isaacman will be an outstanding NASA Administrator and leader of the NASA family," said Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator during Trump's first term in the White House. "Jared's vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era of exploration and discovery. I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him." Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator during the Obama administration, wrote on X that Isaacman's nomination was "terrific news," adding that "he has the opportunity to build on NASA's amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future."

Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of Shift4, a mobile payment processing platform, and co-founded Draken International, which owns a fleet of retired fighter jets to pose as adversaries for military air combat training... Isaacman, an evangelist for the commercial space industry, has criticized some of NASA's decisions on the Artemis program. In several posts on X, he questioned the agency's decision to fund two redundant lunar landers, while not planning for any backup to the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which costs $2.2 billion per copy, not including expenses for ground infrastructure or the Orion spacecraft itself. One of those casualties might be the SLS rocket. The program is managed by NASA, with suppliers spread across the United States and prime contractors working under cost-plus arrangements with the space agency, meaning the government is on the hook to pay for any delays or cost overruns.
If confirmed he'll be the 4th NASA administrator who's actually flown in space, according to the article.

And according to Wikipedia, Isaacman was the commander of Inspiration4, a private spaceflight using SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience that launched in 2021. The crew returned to Earth on September 18, 2021, after orbiting at 585 km (364 mi) in altitude. The mission was part of a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, to which Isaacman pledged to donate $100 million.
Thanks to Slashdot reader FallOutBoyTonto for sharing the news.

A ransomware attack on the multinational Stoli Group in August helped push two of the vodka-maker's U.S. subsidiaries into bankruptcy, according to the company's CEO. From a report: In a Texas bankruptcy court filing on November 29, CEO Chris Caldwell attributed a range of external factors to the financial woes of Stoli Group USA and Kentucky Owl (KO) -- which are facing $84 million in debt. But one of the most prominent was a ransomware attack this year that damaged the parent company's IT system.

"In August 2024, the Stoli Group's IT infrastructure suffered severe disruption in the wake of a data breach and ransomware attack," Caldwell said in the filing. "The attack caused substantial operational issues throughout all companies within the Stoli Group, including Stoli USA and KO, due to the Stoli Group's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system being disabled and most of the Stoli Group's internal processes (including accounting functions) being forced into a manual entry mode." Caldwell said the systems will be restored âoeno earlier than in the first quarter of 2025.â

An anonymous reader shared this report from NBC News: Amid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers...

In the call Tuesday, two officials — a senior FBI official who asked not to be named and Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — both recommended using encrypted messaging apps to Americans who want to minimize the chances of China's intercepting their communications. "Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: Encryption is your friend, whether it's on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication. Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible," Greene said. The FBI official said, "People looking to further protect their mobile device communications would benefit from considering using a cellphone that automatically receives timely operating system updates, responsibly managed encryption and phishing resistant" multi-factor authentication for email, social media and collaboration tool accounts...

The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have a complicated relationship with encryption technology, historically advocating against full end-to-end encryption that does not allow law enforcement access to digital material even with warrants. But the FBI has also supported forms of encryption that do allow some law enforcement access in certain circumstances.
Officials said the breach seems to include some live calls of specfic targets and also call records (showing numbers called and when). "The hackers focused on records around the Washington, D.C., area, and the FBI does not plan to alert people whose phone metadata was accessed."

"The scope of the telecom compromise is so significant, Greene said, that it was 'impossible" for the agencies "to predict a time frame on when we'll have full eviction.'"

The Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, appears to be signaling its intention to tackle daylight saving time. Musk has indicated support for ending semiannual clock changes in recent days on his social media platform X, sharing a poll showing majority opposition to the practice.

DOGE co-head Ramaswamy also backed the stance, calling time changes "inefficient and easy to change."

The initiative follows a failed 2022 legislative attempt, the Sunshine Protection Act, which passed the Senate but stalled in the House. The Department of Transportation, which oversees time changes, cannot alter the system without congressional action.

Public sentiment appears to favor reform, with a 2022 YouGov poll showing two-thirds of Americans support ending time changes. Studies have linked the switches to increased rates of heart attacks and traffic accidents, while JPMorgan Chase research found the return to standard time reduces consumer spending by up to 4.9%. Several countries including Mexico, Russia, and Turkey have already discontinued daylight saving time, which originated during World War I as an energy conservation measure.

China-linked spies are still lurking inside U.S. telecommunications networks roughly six months after American officials started investigating the intrusions, senior officials told reporters Tuesday. From a report: This is the first time U.S. officials have confirmed reports that Salt Typhoon hackers still have access to critical infrastructure -- and they're proving difficult to kick out. Officials added that they don't yet know the full scope of the intrusions, despite starting the investigation in late spring.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI released guidance Tuesday for the communications sector to harden their networks against Chinese state-sponsored hackers. The guide includes basic steps like maintaining logs of activity on the network, keeping an inventory of all devices in the telecom's environment and changing any default equipment passwords. The hack has given Salt Typhoon unprecedented access to records from U.S. telecommunications networks about who Americans are communicating with, a senior FBI official told reporters during a briefing.

More Americans are looking to switch jobs than at any point in the past decade. In a cooling job market, that's a lot easier said than done. From a report: White-collar hiring continues to slow, but workers' restlessness to find new work is intensifying, new Gallup data show. More than half of 20,000 U.S. workers surveyed in November said they were watching for or actively seeking a new job. That's the largest share since 2015, eclipsing the so-called Great Resignation of 2021 and 2022, when millions of people quit jobs for better ones.

The result? Job satisfaction has fallen to its lowest level in recent years as employees feel more stuck -- and frustrated -- where they are, according to Gallup, whose quarterly surveys are widely viewed as a bellwether of workplace sentiment. Smaller raises and fewer promotions are spurring some of the discontent, workers say. So are cost-cutting moves and stepped-up requirements to be working in offices more often.

China has overtaken the United States as the dominant force in critical technology research, according to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The study found China now leads in 57 of 64 critical technologies, up from just three technologies in 2003-2007, while U.S. leadership dropped from 60 to seven technologies over the same period.

China has made significant gains in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, and semiconductor chip manufacturing. The U.S. maintains its edge in quantum computing, vaccines, and natural language processing. The report identified 24 technologies at "high risk" of Chinese monopoly, including radar, advanced aircraft engines, and drone technology - nearly double from last year's assessment. India has also emerged as a rising power, ranking among the top five countries in 45 technologies and displacing the U.S. for second place in biological manufacturing and distributed ledgers.

America's FBI "has been investigating a longtime Exxon Mobil consultant," reports Reuters, "over the contractor's alleged role in a hack-and-leak operation that targeted hundreds of the oil company's biggest critics, according to three people familiar with the matter." The operation involved mercenary hackers who successfully breached the email accounts of environmental activists and others, the sources told Reuters. The scheme allegedly began in late 2015, when U.S. authorities contend that the names of the hacking targets were compiled by the DCI Group, a public affairs and lobbying company working for Exxon at the time, one of the sources said. DCI provided the names to an Israeli private detective, who then outsourced the hacking, according to the source.

In an effort to push a narrative that Exxon was the target of a political vendetta aimed at destroying its business, some of the stolen material was subsequently leaked to the media by DCI, Reuters determined. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that DCI shared the information with Exxon before leaking it, the source said. Some environmental activists interviewed by Reuters say the hacking operation disrupted preparations for lawsuits by cities and state attorneys general against Exxon and other energy companies... The stolen material continues to be used today to counter litigation claiming the oil giant misled the public and its investors about the risks of climate change...

The investigation into the hack-and-leak operation comes amid growing concern among law enforcement agencies worldwide about how such cyberespionage schemes threaten to taint judicial proceedings. The FBI has been investigating the broader use of mercenary hackers to tamper with lawsuits since early 2018, Reuters has previously reported. The Israeli private detective hired by DCI, Amit Forlit, was arrested this year at London's Heathrow Airport and is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of hacking and wire fraud... Federal prosecutors have secured a related conviction: that of Forlit's former business associate, private investigator Aviram Azari. Azari pleaded guilty in 2022 to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit hacking and aggravated identity theft, which included targeting the environmental activists.

Friday the Software Freedom Conservancy announced the production release of the new OpenWrt One network router — designed specifically for running the Linux-based router OS OpenWrt (a member project of the SFC). "This is the first wireless Internet router designed and built with your software freedom and right to repair in mind.

"The OpenWrt One will never be locked down and is forever unbrickable." This device services your needs as its owner and user. Everyone deserves control of their computing. The OpenWrt One takes a great first step toward bringing software rights to your home: you can control your own network with the software of your choice, and ensure your right to change, modify, and repair it as you like.

The OpenWrt One demonstrates what's possible when hardware designers and manufacturers prioritize your software right to repair; OpenWrt One exuberantly follows these requirements of the copyleft licenses of Linux and other GPL'd programs. This device provides the fully copyleft-compliant source code release from the start. Device owners have all the rights as intended on Day 1; device owners are encouraged to take full advantage of these rights to improve and repair the software on their OpenWrt One. Priced at US$89 for a complete OpenWrt One with case (or US$68.42 for a caseless One's logic board), it's ready for a wide variety of use cases...

This new product has completed full FCC compliance tests; it's confirmed that OpenWrt met all of the FCC compliance requirements. Industry "conventional wisdom" often argues that FCC requirements somehow conflict with the software right to repair. SFC has long argued that's pure FUD. We at SFC and OpenWrt have now proved copyleft compliance, the software right to repair, and FCC requirements are all attainable in one product!

You can order an OpenWrt One now! Since today is the traditional day in the USA when folks buy gifts for love ones, we urge you to invest in a wireless router that can last! We do expect that for orders placed today, sellers will deliver by December 22 in most countries... Regardless of where you buy from, for every purchase of a new OpenWrt One, a US$10 donation will go to the OpenWrt earmarked fund at Software Freedom Conservancy. Your purchase not only improves your software right to repair, but also helps OpenWrt and SFC continue to improve the important software and software freedom on which we all rely!
LWN.net points out that OpenWrt has also "served as the base on which a lot of network-oriented development (including the bufferbloat-reduction work) has been done." The OpenWrt One was designed to be a functional network router that would serve as a useful tool for the development of OpenWrt itself. To that end, the hope was to create a device that was entirely supported by upstream free software, and which was as unbrickable as it could be... The OpenWrt One comes with a two-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 256MB of NAND flash memory. There is also a separate, read-only 16MB NOR flash array in the device. Normally, the OpenWrt One will boot and run from the NAND flash, but there is a small switch in the back that will cause it to boot from the NOR instead. This is a bricking-resistance feature; should a software load break the device, it can be recovered by booting from NOR and flashing a new image into the NAND array. ..

After booting into the new image, the One behaved like any other OpenWrt router... What could be more interesting is seeing this router get into the hands of developers and enthusiasts who will use it to make OpenWrt (and other small-system distributions) better.
Long-time Slashdot reader dumfrac writes: The intent to build the device was announced on the OpenWRT forums earlier this year. It is based on MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) SoC and MediaTek MT7976C dual-band WiFi 6 chipset and the board is made by Banana Pi. A poll to select the logo was run in April on the OpenWRT forums, and now the hardware is available for purchase. .

The Washington Post reports on tens of thousands of Americans "forced to pay for medication" to prevent the HIV infections, "despite federal requirements guaranteeing free access to treatment...according to multiple studies and interviews with medical professionals, activists and patients." Insurance companies are skirting rules compelling them to pay for pre-exposure prophylaxis treatment, known as PrEP, researchers and HIV advocacy organizations say — leaving patients to shell out hundreds of dollars each year for medication co-pays, doctor visits and screenings required to stay on drugs that reduce the risk of contracting HIV through sex by 99 percent.

Under the Affordable Care Act, commercial insurers must cover certain preventive health services. This is supposed to include at least one form of oral PrEP and related health services, such as regular testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, for people at increased risk of contracting HIV, according to 2021 guidance from the Biden administration. Responding to complaints that patients were still being charged, the Biden administration in October released new guidance instructing private insurers to cover all forms of PrEP without prior authorization, including new long-acting injections.

Nearly a third of a national sample of 325 health coverage plans on government insurance marketplaces did not include PrEP on their lists of covered preventive services, according to the AIDS Institute, a New York-based nonprofit. Between 20 and 30 percent of PrEP users with commercial insurance still had to pay for it despite the coverage mandate, with an average cost of $227 for 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Government regulators have been slow to crack down on insurer violations, activists say, creating a barrier to getting more at-risk Americans on the medication. The CDC estimates that only a third of the more than 1 million people who could benefit from PrEP have received a prescription, according to its most recent data.
The issue appears to be lax enforcement against insurers who break rules, a policy advocate told the newspaper. America's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which enforces regulations for preventive care, "said it takes enforcement seriously and recently found two insurance plans in violation of coverage requirements following consumer complaints."

And the Post spoke to an official at America's Labor Department, who said they were investigating a complaint against a large insurance company, but "said the agency does not have enough staff to conduct proactive investigations and lacks the authority to sue and penalize insurers that break the rules."

The New York Post writes that "After the COVID-19 pandemic upended mom-and-pops around the city and resulted in thousands shuttering for good, it is important — now more than ever — to shop local."

America's Small Business Administration issued their own statement urging shoppers to "champion small businesses nationwide and #ShopSmall on Saturday, linking to a site mapping small businesses in your area. (And there's also a directory listing online small businesses.) Small Business Saturday was founded by American Express in 2010 and officially cosponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration since 2011. It is an important part of small businesses' busiest shopping season.

- In 2023, the reported projected spending in the U.S. from those who shopped at small businesses on Small Business Saturday was around $17 billion

- Since 2010, the total reported U.S. spending at small businesses during the annual Small Business Saturday is an estimated $201 billion
"Let's keep the Shop Small tradition going," urges the American Express web site — encouraging shoppers to also use the #ShopSmall hashtag on social media.

Intel must maintain majority control of its foundries as a condition of receiving $7.86 billion in U.S. CHIPS Act funding, according to terms disclosed in a regulatory filing [PDF]. The semiconductor giant will need to keep at least 50.1% ownership if the foundry unit is spun off privately, while no single shareholder can hold more than 35% of shares if it goes public unless Intel remains the largest stakeholder. The restrictions, which also require Intel to remain a customer, come as the company struggles financially and recently restructured its foundry business as an independent unit.

The FTC has opened a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft, including of its software licensing and cloud computing business. Bloomberg first reported the news. Reuters reports: The probe was approved by FTC Chair Lina Khan ahead of her likely departure in January. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and the expectation he will appoint a fellow Republican with a softer approach toward business, leaves the outcome of the investigation up in the air.

The FTC is examining allegations that the software giant is potentially abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to other competitive platforms, sources confirmed earlier this month. The FTC is also looking at practices related to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence products, the source said on Wednesday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Two men have been arrested for allegedly stealing data from and extorting dozens of companies that used the cloud data storage company Snowflake, but a third suspect -- a prolific hacker known as Kiberphant0m -- remains at large and continues to publicly extort victims. However, this person's identity may not remain a secret for long: A careful review of Kiberphant0m's daily chats across multiple cybercrime personas suggests they are a U.S. Army soldier who is or was recently stationed in South Korea.

Kiberphant0m's identities on cybercrime forums and on Telegram and Discord chat channels have been selling data stolen from customers of the cloud data storage company Snowflake. At the end of 2023, malicious hackers discovered that many companies had uploaded huge volumes of sensitive customer data to Snowflake accounts that were protected with nothing more than a username and password (no multi-factor authentication required). After scouring darknet markets for stolen Snowflake account credentials, the hackers began raiding the data storage repositories for some of the world's largest corporations. Among those was AT&T, which disclosed in July that cybercriminals had stolen personal information, phone and text message records for roughly 110 million people. Wired.com reported in July that AT&T paid a hacker $370,000 to delete stolen phone records.

On October 30, Canadian authorities arrested Alexander Moucka, a.k.a. Connor Riley Moucka of Kitchener, Ontario, on a provisional arrest warrant from the United States, which has since indicted him on 20 criminal counts connected to the Snowflake breaches. Another suspect in the Snowflake hacks, John Erin Binns, is an American who is currently incarcerated in Turkey. Investigators say Moucka, who went by the handles Judische and Waifu, had tasked Kiberphant0m with selling data stolen from Snowflake customers who refused to pay a ransom to have their information deleted. Immediately after news broke of Moucka's arrest, Kiberphant0m was clearly furious, and posted on the hacker community BreachForums what they claimed were the AT&T call logs for President-elect Donald J. Trump and for Vice President Kamala Harris. [...] Also on Nov. 5, Kiberphant0m offered call logs stolen from Verizon's push-to-talk (PTT) customers -- mainly U.S. government agencies and emergency first responders. Kiberphant0m denies being in the U.S. Army and said all these clues were "a lengthy ruse designed to create a fictitious persona," reports Krebs.

"I literally can't get caught," Kiberphant0m said, declining an invitation to explain why. "I don't even live in the USA Mr. Krebs." A mind map illustrates some of the connections between and among Kiberphant0m's apparent alter egos.

The Biden administration is reducing Intel's CHIPS Act award by over $600 million, citing a $3 billion military contract the chipmaker was also awarded. Engadget reports: Initially set to receive $8.5 billion from the domestic silicon production bill, the company will get up to $7.85 billion instead. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Intel has extended some plant openings beyond 2030 government deadlines. Intel posted its biggest-ever quarterly loss last month after announcing 15,000 layoffs in August. The chip-maker's struggles have reportedly led some government officials to worry about its ability to deliver as a central component of the Biden White House's CHIPS Act.

Intel will receive at least $1 billion in CHIPS Act funding before the end of the year. The company plans to invest $90 billion in the US by the decade's end, a reduction from its initial goal of $100 billion in the next five years. The Commerce Department said the chip maker is still on schedule to invest the full $100 billion on projects in four states: Arizona ($3.94 billion), Oregon ($1.86 billion), Ohio ($1.5 billion) and New Mexico ($500 million).

The U.S. is preparing to impose new sanctions targeting 200 Chinese chipmakers and potentially restricting the export of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The move is intended to further hinder China's semiconductor and AI advancements. Tom's Hardware reports: The update sheds light on the Biden administration's recent efforts to impose stricter regulations on chip manufacturers in China. The latest swarm of sanctions reportedly targets roughly 200 Chinese firms. US companies are prohibited from exporting select technologies or products to the targeted firms. The report suggests that the US Department of Commerce aims to push these new regulations before the Thanksgiving break - or November 28. Neither the Department of Commerce nor the Chamber of Commerce responded to Reuters' request for comments.

Moreover, another wave of sanctions is set to follow in December - targeting the export of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) - primarily to choke China's advance in the AI domain. The impacts of these restrictions are materializing given that Huawei's Kirin SoCs and Ascend AI accelerators will reportedly remain stuck at 7nm technology until 2026 as SMIC fails to procure cutting-edge Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) machines from ASML.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court signaled it may take up a case that could determine whether Internet service providers must terminate users who are accused of copyright infringement. In an order (PDF) issued today, the court invited the Department of Justice's solicitor general to file a brief "expressing the views of the United States."

In Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications, the major record labels argue that cable provider Cox should be held liable for failing to terminate users who were repeatedly flagged for infringement based on their IP addresses being connected to torrent downloads. There was a mixed ruling at the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit as the appeals court affirmed a jury's finding that Cox was guilty of willful contributory infringement but reversed a verdict on vicarious infringement "because Cox did not profit from its subscribers' acts of infringement." That ruling vacated a $1 billion damages award and ordered a new damages trial. Cox and Sony are both seeking a Supreme Court review. Cox wants to overturn the finding of willful contributory infringement, while Sony wants to reinstate the $1 billion verdict.

The Supreme Court asking for US input on Sony v. Cox could be a precursor to the high court taking up the case. For example, the court last year asked the solicitor general to weigh in on Texas and Florida laws that restricted how social media companies can moderate their platforms. The court subsequently took up the case and vacated lower-court rulings, making it clear that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment.

Lawyers for the United States on Monday said that Google had created a monopoly with its services to place ads online, closing out an antitrust trial over the company's dominance in advertising technology that could add to the Silicon Valley giant's mounting woes. From a report: The legal case concerns a system of software that is used by advertisers to place ads on websites around the internet. Aaron Teitelbaum, a lawyer for the Justice Department, told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the company had linked its products together in a way that made it hard for publishers and advertisers to use alternatives.

"Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist," he said. "These are the markets that make the free and open internet possible." Google's lead lawyer, Karen Dunn, countered that the government had failed to offer the evidence to prove its case and was on shaky legal ground. "Google's conduct is a story of innovation in response to competition," she said. The arguments conclude U.S. et al. v. Google, an antitrust suit that the Justice Department and eight states filed against Google last year. (More states have joined the suit since then.) The agency and states accused the internet giant of abusing control of its ad technology and violating antitrust law, in part through the acquisition of the advertising software company Doubleclick in 2008. Next, Judge Brinkema will decide the merits of the case in the coming months.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to a sweeping new study. The findings have wide-reaching implications for the nation's health and medical costs as it faces a growing burden of weight-related diseases.

The study reveals the striking rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990 -- when just over half of adults were overweight or obese -- and shows how more people are becoming overweight or obese at younger ages than in the past. Both conditions can raise the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, and shorten life expectancy.

The study's authors documented increases in the rates of overweight and obesity across ages. They were particularly alarmed by the steep rise among children, more than one in three of whom are now overweight or obese. Without aggressive intervention, they forecast, the number of overweight and obese people will continue to go up -- reaching nearly 260 million people in 2050. Further reading: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss.

America's Justice Department "has ordered all consensual searches by drug enforcement agents conducted at the nation's airports stopped," reports Georgia's local TV station Atlanta News First — after their series of investigations "uncovered how the agents often search innocent passengers at airport gates, looking for cash." On Thursday, the department made public a November 12, 2024, directive from the deputy attorney general to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that it suspend "all consensual encounters at mass transportation facilities unless they are either connected to an ongoing, predicated investigation involving one or more identified targets or criminal networks or approved by the DEA Administrator based on exigent circumstances." The management advisory memorandum was issued by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

The memo specifically mentioned the case of an airline passenger interviewed by Atlanta News First Chief Investigator Brendan Keefe, author of the Atlanta News First investigation, In Plane Sight. The award-winning series uncovered how drug agents have been seizing anything over $5,000 if airline passengers can't prove — on the spot — that their own money didn't come from drug trafficking. The government seizes the cash when no drugs are found, without arresting the traveler or charging them with a crime, and the DEA gets to keep the money it seizes.

After witnessing the Atlanta News First series, the passenger in question — who was departing from Cincinnati and heading to New York, where he lives — refused consent to have his bags searched at the gate... "The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) further learned that the DEA Task Force Group selected this traveler for the encounter based on information provided by a DEA confidential source, who was an employee of a commercial airline, about travelers who had purchased tickets within 48 hours of the travel," the memo said. "The OIG learned that the DEA had been paying this employee a percentage of forfeited cash seized by the DEA office from passengers at the local airport when the seizure resulted from information the employee had provided to the DEA. The employee had received tens of thousands of dollars from the DEA over the past several years."
The news station's investigation "also revealed passengers selected for what the government calls 'random, consensual encounters' are actually profiled by the drug agents who search Black men far more often than any other group of passengers," according to the article.

"The reports analyzed data showing that, for drug agents to find just one passenger with money, they have to publicly search 10 departing passengers."