UK police charge two teens in connection with Lapsus$ hacking group case

After arresting seven alleged members of the hacking group Lapsus$ last week, London police have charged two of them with multiple computer crimes. The teenagers, aged 16 and 17, remain in police custody in connection with the investigation. &quot…

Citizen may test an on-demand private security service in Chicago

Citizen will reportedly test an on-demand private security service in Chicago as part of a partnership with Securitas. The crime alert app and security company may offer a check-in service (in which agents could follow up with the victim of a crime to make sure they’re OK) and scheduled private security, according to Motherboard.

The app previously tested a rapid-response security service (not unlike a private police force) in Los Angeles with Citizen-branded cars. Security agents responded to calls from Citizen employees. Motherboard‘s sources suggested the response time was fairly slow, which may have led to the company taking a different approach in Chicago.

Citizen provides push alerts to users based on incident reports it puts together from police scanners. It also runs a $20 per month subscription service that connects users with agents who can direct emergency services to their location and notify contacts if it’s not safe for them to call 911 directly.

The move suggests Citizen is still interested in offering private security despite its questionable history and stating it wouldn’t run its own on-demand force (though it didn’t rule out partnerships). Apple and Google removed a previous version of the app, which was called Vigilante, from their stores for encouraging vigilantism. 

Last year, it was reported that Citizen’s CEO offered users a $30,000 bounty for tracking down an alleged arson suspect, but the app identified the wrong person as the culprit. Police apprehended the man but quickly released him for a lack of evidence. They later arrested another suspect in connection with the wildfires.

Prominent editor of Russian Wikipedia pages detained in Belarus

Authorities in Belarus have arrested and detained Mark Bernstein, one of the top editors of Russian Wikipedia, according to local publication Zerkalo. Bernstein was reportedly accused of violating the “fake news” law Russia passed in early March by editing the Wikipedia article about the invasion of Ukraine. Under the new law, anybody found guilty of what the country deems as false information about the Ukraine invasion — remember, the Kremlin calls it a “special military operation” — could be imprisoned for up to 15 years.

It was the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption of Belarus (GUBOPiK) that had arrested Bernstein, The Verge reports. The publication says his social media accounts, Wikipedia handle and workplace were shared on GUBOPiK’s public Telegram channel before he was taken in. A video of his arrest was also posted on the channel, along with a photo that accuses him of “distributing fake anti-Russian information.” Belarus played a key role in the invasion of Ukraine by hosting Russian troops, which deployed from the country when the attacks began. 

As The Verge notes, it’s unclear what exactly Bernstein is being charged with and which of his edits broke Russia’s fake news law. Bernstein has over 200,000 Wikipedia edits under what’s believed to be his account, which has now been blocked indefinitely. 

Russia has been scrambling to suppress sources of information that goes against its official narrative regarding the war in Ukraine, and its new law had forced local independent media outlets to shut down. Dmitri A. Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, told The New York Times that “[e]verything that’s not propaganda is being eliminated.”