AI, surveillance and the control problem: Best infosec long reads 8/15/26

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8/15/26: This week's long reads explore how technology is eroding familiar boundaries of trust and control—from foreign adversaries buying sensitive American data and criminals exploiting AI hallucinations, to privately run surveillance networks that sidestep privacy protections, neurotechnology capable of decoding our thoughts, and a coming internet where AI systems increasingly communicate with one another while humans fade from the loop.

The ‘Jury Duty’ Scam That Cost This Family $25,000

The Wall Street Journal's Joe Barrett tells the story of a family conned out of $25,000 by criminals impersonating law enforcement, showing how personal information, psychological manipulation, and cryptocurrency payments can make familiar scams extraordinarily convincing.

It began at 10:43 a.m. on a Tuesday last month, with a call from an unknown number. Fudge, who was at her office, had just gotten a refurbished Samsung in the mail and was still setting it up; when it rang, she assumed it might be a contact the phone didn’t recognize yet. She picked up.

The caller said he was from nearby New Port Richey in Pasco County, verified her identity, then asked her to hold for a sheriff’s deputy.

What followed was troubling and oddly specific. The “deputy” said Fudge had missed jury duty in a federal case despite signing a document promising to appear. An angry judge had issued a warrant for her arrest.

The caller knew Fudge’s parents had retired from the nearby Hillsborough County sheriff’s department, and he offered her a deal: pay bail, then come to the station to confirm her signature didn’t match the document’s, and get a refund on the spot. One catch: A gag order in the case meant if she told anyone, both she and whomever she informed could face charges.

“I’m a rule-follower,” said Fudge, who majored in mechanical engineering and minored in math. She and her husband have a 7-year-old daughter. “I couldn’t go to jail for 30 days.”

She told her boss she needed to step out. She sat in her small SUV, while the “deputy” on the phone had her read legal documents aloud and demanded $15,000 in bail. Fudge said she only had access to $4,000; he told her to get it.

When Fudge searched online for the nearest bank branch, the scammer asked what she was doing. That is when she realized he could see her location, her texts and her searches. Experts say the refurbished phone was likely loaded with spyware, and that she could have combated this by restoring factory settings before setting it up.

At the convenience store drop-off site, she voiced her growing suspicions to the caller. Now, a calmer person took over and assured her she would get her money back. “Everything looked legit,” Fudge recalled. They sounded official, too. She could even hear apparent police radio traffic in the background of the call.

But after she deposited the cash, the new “deputy” changed course. He said the judge had reviewed her finances and wouldn’t approve the lower bail. She now owed the full $15,000. 

Fudge scrambled for money from a different account, not wanting to touch what her husband had recently received from his mother’s estate. When work texted about a meeting she was missing, the scammers let her reply with one word: “EMERGENCY.”

By 2 p.m., she had made three deposits totaling $17,000, overpaying by $2,000 in her panic. The perpetrators told her to drive to the sheriff’s office to settle the signature issue, then ordered her to pull over before she arrived: Bail had to be deposited all at once, not in increments.

“I laid into them a little bit. I was really upset,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I feel like this is a scam.’ ”

A new voice took over, identified as a marshal. He was the harshest yet, ordering her not to move while they sent someone to arrest her.

“I was crying,” she said. She knew by then it was deceit, but still feared being picked up by the scammers or, she wondered, by rogue law enforcement. They offered her one more way out: pay another $15,000.