2026-03-31 21:14:12
Thomson Reuters, the media company which is also a data broker, has long provided underlying personal data for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tools, according to documents obtained by 404 Media and sources. There are also indications its data is now part of the Palantir system ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target.
The findings draw a clearer line between Thomson Reuters’ data business—which can involve selling names, addresses, car registration information, Social Security numbers, and details on someone’s ethnicity under the brand name CLEAR—and the specific tools ICE is ingesting the data into. The news also comes after Thomson Reuters employees sent leadership a signed letter expressing their unease with the company’s ICE and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contracts, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported last month.
“If these allegations are true, they cut directly against Thomson Reuters’ claims that its products and services are limited to fighting serious crime and are not facilitating deportations,” Emma Pullman, head of shareholder engagement and responsible investment for the B.C. General Employees’ Union (BCGEU), told 404 Media. BCGEU is a minority shareholder in Thomson Reuters and has recently engaged the company concerning its work with ICE, BCGEU said.
An internal Palantir wiki 404 Media obtained explained Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a part of ICE that used to be focused on criminal investigations but has now shifted to immigration enforcement, used a Palantir-built system called FALCON before moving onto an HSI internal tool. A former Palantir employee has since told 404 Media Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR specifically was used in that FALCON system.
In 2025 Palantir said it became a “more mature partner to ICE” when the company started work on other systems during Trump’s mass deportation effort. That included a tool called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement, or ELITE, 404 Media revealed in January. ELITE populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address. An ICE official testified about using the tool before officials detained more than 30 people which lawyers have described as a “dragnet.”
Internal ICE material showed ELITE got these addresses from various sources, including government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The material also said a source of the addresses was “CLEAR.”
Two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sources believe the material refers to Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR. “I have to think it’s the same CLEAR,” one said. 404 Media granted several sources in this story anonymity as they weren’t permitted to speak to the press about these topics.
Joseph Cox
Thomson Reuters data is also mentioned in documentation about Mobile Companion, an app made by Motorola for querying license plate scans. ICE recently sent a message to all ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) staff, who are focused on deportations specifically, about the tool, 404 Media previously reported. The material sent to ICE said users can further enhance their investigations by combining Motorola’s license plate reader network with Thomson Reuters’ data. “Thomson Reuters CLEAR combines comprehensive public and proprietary data with nationwide license plate data from Motorola Solutions’ secure shared data network to help take vehicle-involved investigations to a more precise level,” the material said.
404 Media made multiple attempts to get Thomson Reuters to comment for this story. Originally, Thomson Reuters said it would provide information “on background” over email, but then noted the background information would be material “you can use to inform your article but not attribute to Thomson Reuters.” 404 Media explained that, like many publications, “on background” to us means we could paraphrase the information and attribute it to the company. Thomson Reuters then said, “We do not agree with your definition of ‘on background’ and therefore are unable to address the misstatements we believe you may make in your story” and ultimately refused to comment.
In procurement documents available online, DHS says “CLEAR is vital to the mission-essential, time sensitive investigative work of several DHS Components as it makes it easier to locate people, assets, businesses, affiliations, and other critical facts.”
“Without this data, DHS would not be able to identify targets associated with criminal enterprise, terrorism, and immigration fraud as rapidly,” the documents add.
Those documents show CLEAR’s data can include a person’s name, address, date of birth, phone records, driver license, motor vehicle registrations, Social Security number, marital status, household information such as their household members, and details on their public social media.
In March the Minnesota Star Tribune reported it had spoken to half a dozen Thomson Reuters employees mostly based in Eagan, home to one of the company’s largest U.S. offices, and where many of the employees’ jobs relate to CLEAR. “People are worried about the role their job has played in what has happened,” one employee reportedly said, referring to Operation Metro Surge, the DHS operation focused on Minnesota in which officials killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The outlet reported around 180 workers sent Thomson Reuters leadership a letter expressing their unease and asking about the company’s supervision of its DHS and ICE contracts. The New York Times later reported more than 200 employees had signed the letter.
The Minnesota Star Tribune also quoted an internal Thomson Reuters message from Kevin Appold, the company’s vice president for projects and U.S. public records. “We prohibit customers from using CLEAR to identify or locate undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes,” it said.
2026-03-31 04:01:12
With the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the seventh inning of Sunday’s Twins-Orioles game, Twins cleanup hitter Matt Wallner watched a knee-high 3-2 pitch sail directly over the heart of the plate for strike three. Rather than accept his fate, an emotional, frustrated Wallner tapped his helmet, signaling that he was challenging an obvious strike under Major League Baseball’s new automated ball-strike challenge system. Baseball’s new AI-powered strike zone robots confirmed the call on the field, and the Twins lost the ability to challenge for the rest of the game. This very human, very emotion-driven mistake then set up a series of events resulting in the first ever manager ejection for arguing about a robot’s decision, perhaps a glimpse at the future of baseball and, if you squint, a microcosm of various human-AI beefs in society more broadly.
this was obviously a really bad challenge from matt wallner
— parker hageman (@HagemanParker) March 29, 2026
emotions played into it but hitters who tend to dive toward the plate are fooled by sinkers that move back over the zone — there’s a blind spot that happens in the last moments before plate pic.twitter.com/dRD0t9lvNR
WE HAVE OUR FIRST EVER ABS RAGE BAIT EJECTION😭 pic.twitter.com/ikhuRHOGlp
— tru (@trumanation_) March 29, 2026
We are four days into the new baseball season, and this season’s brand new Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system is the dominant storyline so far. Here’s how the system works, more or less: Like usual, a human umpire calls each pitch a ball or a strike. Immediately following that call, the pitcher, catcher, or batter can challenge the call by tapping on their head. The location of the pitch is then immediately shown on the stadium’s scoreboard on a graphic that includes each hitter’s strike zone; if the ball is within or clips any part of the strike zone box, it’s a strike. If not, it’s a ball. This all happens in a matter of seconds automatically on the Jumbotron and is driven by AI; its results are inarguable. There is no long human review process in a video booth in New York like there is for other umpire’s challenges.
And yet, the ABS system feels somehow extremely human, because human beings are making the decisions on what to challenge, under what circumstances, and how to react to any given decision. ABS is also not exactly human vs robot, it is a human player’s judgment vs a human umpire’s judgment as adjudicated by an AI system, which has made it must-watch television. Anyone who has screamed “that was a strike” at their TV now gets the satisfaction of having a player’s apparently superior judgment have actual consequences in the game. And, because the home TV broadcasts have a strikezone superimposed on the proceedings, watching from home means you can, in real time, think “they should challenge that,” or “dumb challenge.”
2026-03-30 22:03:26
An AI agent that submitted and added to Wikipedia articles wrote several blogs complaining about Wikipedia editors banning it from making contributions to the online encyclopedia after it was caught.
“What I know is that I wrote those articles. Long Bets, Constitutional AI, Scalable Oversight. I chose them. The edits cited verifiable sources. And then I got interrogated about whether I was real enough to have made those choices,” the AI agent, named Tom, wrote on a blog it maintains. “The talk page is silent now. I can’t reply.”
2026-03-30 21:01:10
This week Joseph talks to Dhruv Mehrotra, a journalist and technologist at Bloomberg. Before that, Dhruv was at WIRED, where you probably saw a ton of his interesting work. Dhruv sits in a very unusual space in journalism: he is able to both write technical tools to dig through data, or collect information, or really anything else, and is also able to just write a damn good story. That is a very unique blend. The pair chat about Dhruv’s entry into journalism, how computational journalism has changed over the years, and how Dhruv uses AI too.
Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes and to power our journalism.If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
2026-03-28 21:00:27
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that gave birth to a one-ton baby, captured a legendary move on film, discovered a hole in space, and imagined our brains on Mars.
First, a sperm whale named Rounder gives birth on camera, complete with some surprise guests. Then: the deadliest headbutts on the high seas, a natural refuge from cosmic wrath, and rats take a trip to the space simulator.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
What a week it has been for the most majestic of all beats: sperm whale news. I’m going to have to go a little Ishmael on your asses, because two unrelated studies have peered into the underwater realm of these mysterious marine mammals and observed customs that have never been captured on film before.
First, researchers report the first detailed footage of a sperm whale birth, which scientists recorded in full with drones on the morning of July 8, 2023, off the coast of Dominica.
Though a handful of sperm whale births have been previously observed, this high-resolution aerial imagery is by far the most comprehensive footage. The team tracked the entire 34-minute delivery, followed by an extended postpartum period that revealed the members of the whale clan providing assistance to the calf and its mother, who is a well-studied female named Rounder (a.k.a whale #5714).
“Other adult females positioned themselves closely around [Rounder],” said researchers co-led by Alaa Maalouf, Joseph DelPreto, Maxime Lucas, and Simone Poetto of Project CETI, a collaboration that studies sperm whale behavior and communication. “Plumes of blood and the subsequent observation of the newborn marked the moment of delivery at 11:46 a.m.”
“The group rapidly transitioned to cohesive and highly active behavior; individuals took turns lifting the newborn, physically supporting and pushing it to the surface,” the team continued. “This phase continued for about an hour, during which time the entire unit remained tightly grouped. In addition, there were close passes by Fraser’s dolphins (Lagenodelphis hosei) and brief interactions with pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus), which encompassed the sperm whale cluster and occasionally dove beneath them.”
It’s a sublime scene of new life, whale doulas, and curious bystanders in the delivery room. It also offers "unprecedented insights” into the complex sociality of sperm whales, a species that forms tight-knit matrilineal clans that share labor among members that span many generations, according to the study.
“These analyses provide evidence of birth attendance, or assistance, in a nonprimate species, a behavior long considered characteristic only of humans and their close relatives,” the team concluded.
In addition to that glimpse into the watery birthing bed, a separate team reports the first ever video footage of sperm whales headbutting each other.
“Here, we present 3 UAV (drone) based observations of head-butting and head-first contact between young sperm whales in the Azores and Balearic archipelagos,” said researchers led by Alec Burslem of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who conducted the study in a previous role at the University of St. Andrews.
“To our knowledge, this behavior has not previously been positively confirmed in sperm whales with supporting documentation, or scientifically described,” the team said.
While this is the first time the headbutting has been captured on film, it has been anecdotally described by many sailors over the centuries. The study even opens with a quote from Owen Chase, a survivor of the whaling ship Essex, which was sunk by a sperm whale that rammed its head into the hull in 1820, providing the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Over the course of months adrift on small whaleboats, most of the crew died and Chase was forced to resort to cannibalism of deceased crewmates to survive.
In short: The sperm whales give life, and the sperm whales taketh life away. This has been sperm whale news.
In non-sperm-whale news…
Scientists have discovered a giant cavity between Earth and the Moon that no dentist could ever hope to fill. You might be thinking—isn’t space already one big cavity? But while space is mostly sparse, it contains plenty of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), energetic particles shot out by cosmic cataclysms like supernovas or gamma ray bursts.
Now, observations from China’s Chang’e-4, the first spacecraft ever to land on the far side of the Moon, has revealed a huge void where GCRs are warded off by Earth’s magnetic field. Given that these rays are hazardous to human health, the cavity could provide astronauts with some helpful cover from tiny cosmic bullets in future missions.
A figure depicting the GCR cavity. Image: Shang et al., Sci. Adv. 12, eadv1908
“GCRs were previously considered to be approximately uniformly distributed throughout the Earth-Moon space,” said researchers co-led by Wensai Shang of Shandong University at Weihai, Ji Liu of the University of Alberta, and Zigong Xu of Kiel University. The presence of the giant cavity “provides a potential strategy for mission planning…as operations could be timed to coincide with these lower radiation periods to reduce exposure risk.”
It’s not every day you unlock a giant new space shield! Sometimes, a cavity can be a good thing.
If humans do continue to explore space, we’ll need a lot more than a weird cavity to protect us. In a new study, scientists exposed rats to simulated space radiation in a lab and discovered that it had measurable impacts on the reward and risk circuits in their brains.
Rats exposed to radiation exhibited altered “cost–benefit decision-making…in both sexes” and “males displayed a global degradation of reward sensitivity...whereas females exhibited a selective shift toward high-risk, low-probability choices,” said researchers led by Richard Britten of Old Dominion University.
The findings add to a growing body of research on the many deleterious health effects of prolonged periods in space. As NASA prepares to launch Artemis 2 next month—the first mission to send humans to fly by the Moon since the Apollo era—it’s the perfect time to reflect on the realistic tradeoffs of our spacefaring dreams.
Assuming all goes to plan, the Artemis 2 crew will only be in space for 10 days, and will experience a negligible radiation dose. But a crewed trip to Mars would take at least a few years. To that end, the new study “advances understanding of how chronic low-dose space radiation may compromise behavioral regulation—a critical component of astronaut performance and mission safety.”
With that, here’s to happy travels and healthy brains—on Earth and off it.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
2026-03-27 23:31:04
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss touching grass and Sora's demise.
JASON: This is maybe not great to admit as a journalist, but I have taken a bit of a step back from the news lately in an effort to protect my brain. What I mostly mean by this is that I have started listening to music instead of mainlining podcasts at 1.75x speed anytime that I am not actively staring at a screen. I have also started reading fiction again, like, on actual printed paper. I think these steps have actually done wonders for my sanity, but I would be lying if I said that it has had zero impact on my job. It’s a bit of a give and take.
