The federal government claims that the day after it was sued for allegedly abusing detainees at an ICE detention center, a “system crash” deleted nearly two weeks of surveillance footage from inside the facility.  

People detained at ICE’s Broadview Detention Center in suburban Chicago sued the government on October 30; according to their lawyers and the government, nearly two weeks of footage that could show how they were treated was lost in a “system crash” that happened on October 31.

“The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed,” Alec Solotorovsky, one of the lawyers representing people detained at the facility, said in a hearing about the footage on Thursday that 404 Media attended via phone. “That period we think is going to be critical […] because that’s the period right before the lawsuit was filed.”

Earlier this week, we reported on the fact that the footage, from October 20 to October 30, had been “irretrievably destroyed.” At a hearing Thursday, we learned more about what was lost and the apparent circumstances of the deletion. According to lawyers representing people detained at the facility, it is unclear whether the government is even trying to recover the footage; government lawyers, meanwhile, said “we don’t have the resources” to continue preserving surveillance footage from the facility and suggested that immigrants detained at the facility (or their lawyers) could provide “endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.” 

It should be noted that ICE and Border Patrol agents continued to be paid during the government shutdown, that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” provided $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement and border protection, which included tens of billions of dollars in funding for detention centers. 

People detained at the facility are suing the government over alleged horrific treatment and living conditions at the detention center, which has become a site of mass protest against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. 

Solotorovsky said that the footage the government has offered is from between September 28 and October 19, and from between October 31 and November 7. Government lawyers have said they are prepared to provide footage from five cameras from those time periods; Solotorovsky said the plaintiffs’ attorneys believe there are 63 surveillance cameras total at the facility. He added that over the last few weeks the plaintiffs’ legal team has been trying to work with the government to figure out if the footage can be recovered but that it is unclear who is doing this work on the government’s side. He said they were referred to a company called Five by Five Management, “that appears to be based out of a house,” has supposedly been retained by the government. 

“We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist,” Solotorovsky said. He added that the government specialist they spoke to “didn’t really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasn’t able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data.” He said that the government eventually put him in touch with “a person who ostensibly was involved in those events [attempting to recover the data], and it was kind of a no-name LLC called Five by Five Management that appears to be based out of a house in Carol Stream. We were told they were on site and involved with the system when the October 20 to 30 data was lost, but nobody has told us that Five By Five Management or anyone else has been trying to recover the data, and also very importantly things like system logs, administrator logs, event logs, data in the system that may show changes to settings or configurations or deletion events or people accessing the system at important times.”

Five by Five Management could not be reached for comment.

Solotorovsky said those logs are going to be critical for “determining whether the loss was intentional. We’re deeply concerned that nobody is trying to recover the data, and nobody is trying to preserve the data that we’re going to need for this case going forward.”

Jana Brady, an assistant US attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security in the case, did not have much information about what had happened to the footage, and said she was trying to get in touch with contractors the government had hired. She also said the government should not be forced to retain surveillance footage from every camera at the facility and that the “we [the federal government] don’t have the resources to save all of the video footage.”

“We need to keep in mind proportionality. It took a huge effort to download and save and produce the video footage that we are producing and to say that we have to produce and preserve video footage indefinitely for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, indefinitely, which is what they’re asking, we don’t have the resources to do that,” Brady said. “we don't have the resources to save all of the video footage 24/7 for 65 cameras for basically the end of time.”

She added that the government would be amenable to saving all footage if the plaintiffs “have endless hard drives that we could save things to, because again we don’t have the resources to do what the court is ordering us to do. But if they have endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.”

Magistrate Judge Laura McNally said they aren’t being “preserved from now until the end of time, they’re being preserved for now,” and said “I’m guessing the federal government has more resources than the plaintiffs here and, I’ll just leave it at that.” 

When McNally asked if the footage was gone and not recoverable, Brady said “that’s what I’ve been told.”  

“I’ve asked for the name and phone number for the person that is most knowledgeable from the vendor [attempting to recover] the footage, and if I need to depose them to confirm this, I can do this,” she said. “But I have been told that it’s not recoverable, that the system crashed.”

Plaintiffs in the case say they are being held in “inhumane” conditions. The complaint describes a facility where detainees are “confined at Broadview inside overcrowded holding cells containing dozens of people at a time. People are forced to attempt to sleep for days or sometimes weeks on plastic chairs or on the filthy concrete floor. They are denied sufficient food and water […] the temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable […] the physical conditions are filthy, with poor sanitation, clogged toilets, and blood, human fluids, and insects in the sinks and the floor […] federal officers who patrol Broadview under Defendants’ authority are abusive and cruel. Putative class members are routinely degraded, mistreated, and humiliated by these officers.” 

You might foolishly think the purpose of Microsoft Windows was to run your programs so you can do stuff.

But Microsoft understands that what you really want is an agentic AI-first computer platform. Who wants to get work done when they could be arguing with Copilot?

How do you manage all these incredibly secure and reliable AI agents? Microsoft brings you: the Agent 365 platform! [YouTube]

Even better, you’ll be getting the same great capabilities in Windows 11. Microsoft has put a full Copilot agent into preview builds. The agent platform runs in the background, all the time, with full access to all your personal files. [Microsoft]

There’s just one teensy problem — Microsoft’s built a welcome mat for malicious software:

Agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation.

Fortunately, Microsoft has duly warned you it’s your problem to keep the agent system switched off, and to check the agents to make sure they don’t do bad things. And can’t be prompt-injected.

You can do all that, right? That’s what you bought a computer to do, right? Watch battling malware agents play Robot Wars?

But Microsoft is here to keep the quality coming! Here’s a remarkable job ad for a senior product designer at Microsoft: [LinkedIn, archive]

You’ll be a part of an army of passionate, world-class AI experimenters.

Vibe Windows is going just great.

• Video — Podcast

OnlyFans will start running background checks on people signing up as content creators, the platform’s CEO recently announced. 

As reported by adult industry news outlet XBIZ, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced the partnership in a LinkedIn post. Blair doesn’t say in the post when the checks will be implemented, whether all types of criminal convictions will bar creators from signing up, if existing creators will be checked as well, or what countries’ criminal records will be checked. 

OnlyFans did not respond to 404 Media's request for comment.

“I am very proud to add our partnership with Checkr Trust to our onboarding process in the US,” Blair wrote. “Checkr, Inc. helps OnlyFans to prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans. It’s collaborations like this that make the real difference behind the scenes and keep OnlyFans a space where creators and fans feel secure and empowered.”  

Many OnlyFans creators turned to the platform, and to online sex work more generally, when they’re not able to obtain employment at traditional workplaces. Some sex workers doing in-person work turned to online sex work as a way to make ends meet—especially after the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in 2018 made it much more difficult to screen clients for escorting. And in-person sex work is still criminalized in the U.S. and many other countries. 

“Criminal background checks will not stop potential predators from using the platform (OF), it will only harm individuals who are already at higher risk. Sex work has always had a low barrier to entry, making it the most accessible career for people from all walks of life,” performer GoAskAlex, who’s on OnlyFans and other platforms, told me in an email. “Removing creators with criminal/arrest records will only push more vulnerable people (overwhelmingly, women) to street based/survival sex work. Adding more barriers to what is arguably the safest form of sex work (online sex work) will push sex industry workers to less and less safe options.” 

Jessica Starling, who also creates adult content on OnlyFans, told me in a call that their first thought was that if someone using OnlyFans has a prostitution charge, they might not be able to use the platform. “If they're trying to transition to online work, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” they said. “And the second thing I thought was that it's just invasive and overreaching... And then I looked up the company, and I'm like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really bad.’”

Checkr is reportedly used by Uber, Instacart, Shipt, Postmates, and Lyft, and lists many more companies like Dominos and Doordash on its site as clients. The company has been sued hundreds of times for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act or other consumer credit complaints. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that companies providing information to consumer reporting agencies are legally obligated to investigate disputed information. And a lot of people dispute the information Checkr and Inflection provide on them, claiming mixed-up names, acquittals, and decades-old misdemeanors or traffic tickets prevented them from accessing platforms that use background checking services.  

Checkr regularly acquires other background checking and age verification companies, and acquired a background check company called Inflection in 2022. At the time, I found more than a dozen lawsuits against Inflection alone in a three year span, many of them from people who found out about the allegedly inaccurate reports Inflection kept about them after being banned from Airbnb after the company claimed they failed checks. 

How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for Everyone

Innocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy.

404 MediaEmanuel Maiberg

“Sex workers face discrimination when leaving the sex trade, especially those who have been face-out and are identifiable in the online world. Facial recognition technology has advanced to a point where just about anyone can ascertain your identity from a single picture,” Alex said. “Leaving the online sex trade is not as easy as it once was, and anything you've done online will follow you for a lifetime. Creators who are forced to leave the platform will find that safe and stable alternatives are far and few between.”

Last month, Pornhub announced that it would start performing background checks on existing content partners—which primarily include studios—next year. "To further protect our creators and users, all new applicants must now complete a criminal background check during onboarding," the platform announced in a newsletter to partners, as reported by AVN. 

Alex said she believes background checks in the porn industry could be beneficial, under very specific circumstances. “I do not think that someone with egregious history of sexual violence should be allowed to work in the sex trade in any capacity—similarly, a person convicted of hurting children should be not able to work with children—so if the criminal record checks were searching specifically for sex based offences I could see the benefit, but that doesn't appear to be the case (to my knowledge). What's to stop OnlyFans from deactivating someone's account due to a shoplifting offense?” she said. “I'd like to know more about what they're searching for with these background checks.”

Even with third-party companies like Checkr doing the work, as is the case with third-party age verification that’s swept the U.S. and targeted the porn industry, increased data means increased risk of it being leaked or hacked. Last year, a background check company called National Public Data claimed it was breached by hackers who got the confidential data of 2.9 billion people. The unencrypted data was then sold on the dark web.

Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South

As of today, three more states join the list of 17 that can’t access Pornhub because of age verification laws.

404 MediaSamantha Cole

“It’s dangerous for anyone, but it's especially dangerous for us [adult creators] because we're more vulnerable anyway. Especially when you're online, you're hypervisible,” Starling said. “It doesn't protect anyone except OnlyFans themselves, the company.” 

OnlyFans became the household name in independent porn because of the work of its adult content creators. Starling mentioned that because the platform has dominated the market, it’s difficult to just go to another platform if creators don’t want to be subjected to background checks. “We're put in a position where we have very limited power," they said. "So when a platform decides to do something like this, we’re kind of screwed, right?” 

Earlier this year, OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd reportedly entered talks to sell the company to an investor group at a valuation of around $8 billion.

Luxembourg has officially entered the era of 3D-printed living. Standing at just about 11.5 feet wide and 58 feet long, the Tiny House LUX squeezes innovation, sustainability, and style into a remarkably compact 506-square-foot footprint. Developed by Coral Construction Technologies – a division of ICE Industrial Services – and designed by ODA Architects, this petite dwelling isn’t just a one-off experiment. It’s a bold prototype for a new kind of housing solution in one of Europe’s most expensive and space-limited markets.

Luxembourg’s housing crisis is no secret. The nation needs about 7,000 new homes each year but delivers barely half that number – and only a fraction qualify as affordable. Meanwhile, countless leftover slivers of land sit empty because they’re too narrow or irregular  for traditional construction. Tiny House LUX asks a simple question: what if these forgotten gaps became homes instead of wasted potential?

Architect Bujar Hasani of ODA Architects, together with the Municipality of Niederanven, set out to prove it’s possible. Their vision was to design a durable, permanent home – not a temporary pod or prefabricated box – that meets Luxembourg’s high building standards while using modern digital fabrication to keep costs, materials, and timelines in check.

To bring that vision to life, ODA teamed up with Coral Construction Technologies, a company specializing in on-site 3D concrete printing, along with collaborators Georgios Staikos. Using a mobile robotic printer, the team translated Hasani’s architectural model into precise toolpaths, layer by layer, directly on site. Unlike many 3D-printed homes that depend on imported dry mixes, Tiny House LUX uses standard local concrete from nearby batching plants – a first for Luxembourg and a sustainability win that reduces transport emissions.

The printing process itself took about a week, with the entire build – from foundation to finishing – completed in just four weeks. Even more impressive: several architectural details, like the shower niche and wall-mounted toilet cavity, were printed directly into the walls. No extra cutting or patching required – just pure efficiency and precision.

In another national first, the home sits not on a concrete slab but on a wooden platform supported by screw foundations. This clever engineering move reduces the environmental footprint, simplifies installation, and allows the structure to be dismantled or relocated later on – a nod to circular design thinking.

Inside, the house feels anything but cramped. A long, continuous sightline from front to back makes the space appear larger than its 506 square feet. Smartly placed built-ins line the walls, keeping the center open and airy. The palette mixes 3D-printed concrete with warm wood finishes and minimalist furnishings – including design-forward pieces like the Cocon armchair and UM barstool by Master & Master, and the Bandaska vase by DECHEM studio.

Beyond the wow factor of its printing process, Tiny House LUX is built to perform. The walls use mineral-based insulation and reinforcement, avoiding synthetic materials. Solar panels on the roof power both the home and a thin film floor-heating system, while large south-facing windows maximize natural light and heat gain.

Diagonal lines embedded in the concrete walls become channels for light, creating dynamic focal points. Hidden lighting around the ceiling brings additional light to the compact space making it feel brighter and larger than it actually is.

The result is a small yet sophisticated dwelling that generates its own energy, conserves resources, and fits seamlessly into an existing neighborhood – all while showing how advanced technology can serve real social and environmental goals.

While Tiny House LUX currently serves as a municipal test pilot, its implications stretch far beyond Niederanven. Imagine a city that can quickly and affordably infill its forgotten plots of land with energy-smart, beautifully designed homes – all using local materials, digital design, and robotic precision.

The Tiny House Luxe being printed:

To learn more about the Tiny House LUX designed by ODA Architects with Coral Construction Technologies doing the 3D printing, please visit odaarchitects.lu.

Final photography by BoyPlaysNice.
Process photography courtesy of Coral Architects and ODA Architects.

An erotic roleplay chatbot and AI image creation platform called Secret Desires left millions of user-uploaded photos exposed and available to the public. The databases included nearly two million photos and videos, including many photos of completely random people with very little digital footprint. 

The exposed data shows how many people use AI roleplay apps that allow face-swapping features: to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of everyone, from the most famous entertainers in the world to women who are not public figures in any way. In addition to the real photo inputs, the exposed data includes AI-generated outputs, which are mostly sexual and often incredibly graphic. Unlike “nudify” apps that generate nude images of real people, these images are putting people into AI-generated videos of hardcore sexual scenarios.  

The legendary hacker conference Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) says that it has been “banned” from St. John’s University, the venue where it has held the last several HOPE conferences, because someone told the university the conference had an “anti-police agenda.”

HOPE was held at St. John’s University in 2022, 2024, and 2025, and was going to be held there in 2026, as well. The conference has been running at various venues over the last 31 years, and has become well-known as one of the better hacking and security research conferences in the world. Tuesday, the conference told members of its mailing list that it had “received some disturbing news,” and that “we have been told that ‘materials and messaging’ at our most recent conference ‘were not in alignment with the mission, values, and reputation of St. John’s University’ and that we would no longer be able to host our events there.” 

The conference said that after this year’s conference, they had received “universal praise” from St. John’s staff, and said they were “caught by surprise” by the announcement. 

“What we're told - and what we find rather hard to believe - is that all of this came about because a single person thought we were promoting an anti-police agenda,” the email said. “They had spotted pamphlets on a table which an attendee had apparently brought to HOPE that espoused that view. Instead of bringing this to our attention, they went to the president's office at St. John's after the conference had ended. That office held an investigation which we had no knowledge of and reached its decision earlier this month. The lack of due process on its own is extremely disturbing.”

“The intent of the person behind this appears clear: shut down events like ours and make no attempt to actually communicate or resolve the issue,” the email continued. “If it wasn't this pamphlet, it would have been something else. In this day and age where academic institutions live in fear of offending the same authorities we've been challenging for decades, this isn't entirely surprising. It is, however, greatly disappointing.”

St. John’s University did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hacking and security conferences in general have a long history of being surveilled by or losing their venues. For example, attendees of the DEF CON hacking conference have reported being surveilled and having their rooms searched; last year, some casinos in Las Vegas made it clear that DEF CON attendees were not welcome. And academic institutions have been vigorously attacked by the Trump administration over the last few months over the courses they teach, the research they fund, and the events they hold, though we currently do not know the specifics of why St. John’s made this decision. 

It is not clear what pamphlets HOPE is referencing, and the conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the conference noted that St. Johns could have made up any pretext for banning them. It is worth mentioning that Joshua Aaron, the creator of the ICEBlock ICE tracking app, presented at HOPE this year. ICEBlock has since been deleted by the Apple App Store and the Google Play store after being pressured by the Trump administration. 

“Our content has always been somewhat edgy and we take pride in challenging policies we see as unfair, exposing security weaknesses, standing up for individual privacy rights, and defending freedom of speech,” HOPE wrote in the email. The conference said that it has not yet decided what it will do next year, but that it may look for another venue, or that it might “take a year off and try to build something bigger.” 

“There will be many people who will say this is what we get for being too outspoken and for giving a platform to controversial people and ideas. But it's this spirit that defines who we are; it's driven all 16 of our past conferences. There are also those who thought it was foolish to ever expect a religious institution to understand and work with us,” the conference added. “We are not changing who we are and what we stand for any more than we'd expect others to. We have high standards for our speakers, presenters, and staff. We value inclusivity and we have never tolerated hate, abuse, or harassment towards anyone. This should not be news, as HOPE has been around for a while and is well known for its uniqueness, spirit, and positivity.”