If you had “leaking classified US military documents for the lulz” on your 2023 Bingo card, congratulations. The fast-paced drama surrounding the online disclosure of top-secret material ripped through this week’s news. We’ll dive into the details below, but there’s one key takeaway: This bizarre kind of leak may be only the beginning.

Anyone worried about chaos agents of a different variety now have a new way to protect their online identities. LinkedIn this week began to roll out new tools that allow you to verify your identity and your job. And for iOS users who want a built-in way to protect their security, we detailed how to use Apple’s all-in-one password manager.

While your personal security might be moving in the right direction, ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) aren’t so lucky. This week we explored the world of “jailbreaking” generative AI tools, which allows users to trick the powerful chatbots into doing things that their creators have tried to stop. It’s still early days in the world of LLM hacking, but it’s a safe bet that we’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the months to come. 

Finally, yesterday afternoon, Montana lawmakers voted to ban downloads of TikTok in the state. Governor Greg Gianforte is expected to sign the unprecedented legislation into law, despite the likelihood of swift legal and technical challenges.

But that’s not all. Each week, we round up the stories we didn’t report in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Yesterday, Jack Teixeira, an airman with the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was formally charged with retaining and transmitting national defense information and intentionally withholding classified documents. The New York Times was the first to identify Teixeira, and FBI agents arrested him at his family’s home soon after the publication named him as the alleged source of the leak.

The 21-year-old allegedly disclosed the top-secret intelligence in an attempt to show off to members of Thug Shaker Central, an invite-only chat room hosted on Discord. The chat consisted of two dozen adolescent boys and young men who, according to The Washington Post, largely did not understand the significance of the leak. 

The bizarre circumstances of the leak have, according to NBC News, frustrated and embarrassed US intelligence officials who are now looking to potentially broaden the surveillance of online chat rooms after failing to spot the classified Pentagon documents that had been circulating online for weeks. 

The documents consisted of sensitive information regarding Russian military tactics during the conflict in Ukraine as well as intelligence reports on friendly nations such as Israel and South Korea, among other topics. 

Monitoring chatter in public chat rooms is commonplace for law enforcement. But if US intelligence agencies plan on surveilling private conversations without probable cause, they will run into serious legal and civil liberties hurdles, experts say. “We do not have nor do we want a system where the United States government monitors private internet chats,” Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel of the National Security Agency, told NBC News.