Privacy
TikTok Says Privacy Makes Users Less Safe
TikTok built a surveillance-ready messaging system and called it a safety feature.
UK Consults on Social Media Age Verification While Directing Parents to Report “Hate Speech” to Big Tech
The consultation closes in May, but Parliament already handed ministers the power to act in February.
Security Researchers Warn Age Verification Laws Are Building a Global Surveillance System
The people who spent their careers building the security systems governments want to exploit for age verification have finally had enough.
Judge Blocks Virginia’s One-Hour Social Media Limit for Minors as Unconstitutional
Virginia set the government as the default gatekeeper of how long children can read, watch, and talk online, and a federal judge found that unconstitutional before the law ever took effect.
MembersThe Government Wants to Scan Your Face. It’s Not Waiting for Permission.
The US DHS is building a surveillance system vast enough to identify anyone on any street and is doing so without a legal framework to govern when, why, or whether it should.
California Law Forces Age-Tracking Into Every Operating System by 2027
In a different timeline, wiring an age-surveillance layer into the boot sequence of every computing device in California is an idea that would have died in committee.
UK Government Secretly Tracked 25 Million People as Potential EV Owners
Two years of surveillance, £600,000 spent, and the program ended not because anyone asked if it was wrong, but because the data was garbage.
Mexico Mandates Biometric SIM Registration for All Phone Numbers
Mexico is six months away from building a surveillance system that knows the face behind every phone call in the country.
FTC Says Companies Can Collect Kids’ Personal Data, As Long As It’s Called “Age Verification”
The agency charged with enforcing the law that restricts children’s data collection just carved out an exception large enough to swallow the law itself.
Republican Lawmakers Demand Answers on UK’s iCloud Encryption Backdoor Order
Britain’s demand that Apple build a backdoor for everyone on earth, then quietly reframe it as a domestic matter after Washington pushed back, is the kind of legal gymnastics that makes intelligence lawyers nervous on both sides of the Atlantic.
MembersThe Revolt Brewing Over Discord’s Digital ID Future
Every concession Discord offered this week is a reason to stay distracted while the architecture of permanent surveillance gets bolted into place.
Privacy Groups Revolt Against Google’s Demand to Register Every Android Developer
Google is turning sideloading from a right into a permission slip, and the open-source community has until September to convince it otherwise.