Dropsafe
“UK Expands Online Safety Act, Forcing Preemptive Censorship” | I’ve not heard Wikipedia complaining about this, but they will be impacted
Messageboard 4chan refuses to pay fine over ‘free speech’
UK Expands Online Safety Act, Forcing Preemptive Censorship
UK MPs demand Home Secretary call on Apple to make iPhone more resistant to data exfiltration, backdoors, hacking, and third-party repair…
X/Twitter is now a mess but damn I still love Community Notes, especially when it corrects the Prime Minister
Imagine that the UK Gov’t has the power to limit corporate due diligence checks to “do [you] have a Digital ID card?” ; DOING SO WILL VASTLY ENCOURAGE MOBILE PHONE THEFT
Proponents of Digital ID clearly do not want people to understand that the whole point of authentication for certain transactions IS MEANT TO BE A COMPLETE PAIN IN THE ARSE; that’s literally how we as customers *BENEFIT*
EU watchdog attacks Britain over iPhone ‘backdoor’ demand
Essential thread from Kay Jebelli re: Google/Meta dropping Political Advertising in the EU, aghast civil society groups demanding they “continue, and be regulated”
UK Greens citing Churchill Government re: last time the UK abolished ID Cards
In case you missed it: “US court permanently bans Pegasus spyware maker from hacking WhatsApp”
Do not introduce Digital ID cards | Petitions
White House Invades Bluesky to Troll, Predictably Gets Mass Blocked
When Face Recognition Doesn’t Know Your Face Is a Face | WIRED
The ongoing repercussions of the Online Safety Act | BroadbandDeals.co.uk
Educational project for your kids: Mummify a Chicken!
4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence | Hacker News
Crossed wires derailed a UK child abuse case for months | The Register | Two botched police CSAM raids on innocent persons because literally crossed wires
The Ofcom Tea Party: 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence, British regulator claims “sovereign immunity” to defend itself — and sovereign powers to regulate foreign companies…
Microsoft’s OneDrive Begins Testing Face-Recognizing AI for Photos (for Some Preview Users) | Slashdot | …and: “You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year”
US State Department trawls social media for critics of Charlie Kirk, revokes visas…
“Unacceptable slur in record” — Bluesky, intent upon banning Homophobic Slurs, bans Frequently Asked Questions
Online Safety Act consultation : Threat to protest and political content | Open Rights Group
Quote: ‘Ofcom: “you have no rights under US law. UK law is all that matters. However, we will run and hide behind the protections of US law if you challenge us.”‘
The Surreal Practicality of Protesting As an Inflatable Frog | 404media
ANONYMITY IS HARD: if you are reading this post, it is an invitation for you to consider how anonymity can fail (leading to re-identification) in a heavily networked system
Why Signal’s post-quantum makeover is an amazing engineering achievement | Ars Technica
“We do not guarantee that GOV.UK One Login will always be available, or that access to it will be error free. We will provide a way for you to report problems with GOV.UK One Login”
“The EU is now testing a digital age verification system that ties internet access to your government ID”
Grab lots of popcorn: What’s just happened in Ofcom-vs-4Chan will be fun to watch…
If an Ofcom fine is issued but there is no-one in the jurisdiction to impose it upon, is it really a fine or just an empty message?
Nano Banana “AI Generated Image” digital watermark easily visible (removable?) with basic image manipulation
EU ministers united: Minors must be protected better online | …setting the stage for the next round of Chat Control discussions, with added Age Verification
Florida student asks ChatGPT how to kill his friend, ends up in jail: deputies | WFLA
The EU Is Forcing Backdoor Access to Your Phone | [He] Followed the Money
Stuff that you don’t see on Reddit in the UK because you aren’t age verified, Part 2
Not your average cybersecurity book
The bad news is: the fact that the vote was cancelled signals that they want to have yet another go. We still have to fight Chat Control.
1996: “Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace” | David R. Johnson & David G. Post | …we’ve seen this comity problem coming for ~30+ years
Ofcom, the Government, the Online Safety Act and the Leather Shoes
Two teenagers arrested over cyber-attack on nursery chain | BBC News
One-man spam campaign ravages EU ‘chat control’ bill | POLITICO
Citizen Protest Halts Chat Control; Breyer Celebrates Major Victory for Digital Privacy | Patrick Breyer
Data protection under fire: Messenger services react to EU chat control | heise online
Proof-of-age ID leaked in Discord data breach | The Guardian
Chat Control is “like a malware on your device” – Signal slams the EU proposal to scan your private chats | TechRadar
[Home Secretary] Mahmood answers that just because you have a freedom “doesn’t mean you have to use it at every moment of every day”
The UK Is Still Trying to Backdoor Encryption for Apple Users | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Terry Pratchett explains large chunks of civil society in a nutshell
Discord Age Verification Data Hack: ‘The unauthorized party also accessed a “small number” of images of government IDs from “users who had appealed an age determination.”’
Struggling to heat your home? Try 500 Raspberry Pi units | The Register
Do not introduce Digital ID cards | Petitions | 2.75 MILLION SIGNATURES …
“Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for [UK users, who…] will be given a period of time to disable the feature themselves to keep using their iCloud account”
UK government tries again to access encrypted Apple customer data: Report | TechCrunch
The Law of the Server is the Law of the Site: a Trans-Atlantic Free Speech Defense Doctrine | Preston Byrne | …broadening the US/Europe free-speech impedance mismatch…
UK makes new attempt to access Apple cloud data | FT
UK Digital ID Cards: is the Government going to compensate UK business for losses due to forcing them to accept additional business risk?
Cyber Waffle: “They Changed The Online Safety Act” ; this guy has done several decent videos, I wish he wasn’t doing the hoodie cyber anon-schtick, but the content is mostly sane…
Nixon: You may not have read about the time he told a dinner party at the White House, “I could leave this room, and in 25 minutes, 70 million people would be dead”
Arrestable thoughts : r/london
Online Safety Act: A well-intentioned disaster? | Professional Security Magazine
…of course when Imgur self-censors itself out of the UK, it takes with it all of the websites that use it as a kind of CDN for OC
Imgur blocks access to UK users after [ICO] proposed regulatory fine | BBC News
An Indian court [ruled] that [X], as a foreign company, does not have a constitutional right to free speech under Indian law
Vitalik Buterin Warns EU Surveillance Plan Threatens Digital Privacy
Amnesty International: Digital ID will ‘put rights of people in UK at risk’ | The National
Tony Blair: “British people will all have their own unique digital identifier, and will make most transactions through their phone, as citizens with government and as customers with firms”
The Liberal Democrats finally come out hard against something: Digital ID Cards. Let’s hope that they generalise this to all ID Cards…
Tip for Civil Society: Never Negotiate. Always make them do the bad thing. Don’t help them do it, but make their choice either: do something really bad, or nothing at all
“You’re taking me to Harrogate in the middle of the night for a tweet. Is this what you signed up to the police to do?”
Thought for the evening: if someone is banned from Google and/or Apple by breaking their EULA or similar, they will be unable to work in the United Kingdom, @Kier_Starmer?
Question: how will this supposed UK Digital ID work for people who use rooted phones and open source operating systems with alternative app stores, as demanded in the EU Digital Services Act?
“Public backs ‘super ID card’ which could be used to report potholes, Tony Blair’s think tank says” | The Independent | WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD??!?
“What’s the UK issue with ID cards?” | …the answer is as follows: Many Britons are terrible people, and we know it…
Farage “firmly opposed to @Keir_Starmer’s digital ID cards” | …I hate it when I agree with him:
UK agency makes arrest in airport cybercrime probe | The Register | IT WAS A 40-SOMETHING YEAR OLD GUY IN A BASEMENT IN WEST SUSSEX
Bluesky users discover that even “federated” & “distributed” platforms exhibit “lock-in” due to “network effects”; and “cognitive dissonance” ensues…
How Signal’s Meredith Whittaker Remembers SignalGate: ‘No Fucking Way’ | WIRED
Video: Thomas Pearson: the online safety actors coming for streamers
Open Rights Group: “The Online Safety Act is coming for Streamers”
The Guardian uses — and then hides/recants — photos of schoolgirl in article targeting fearful parents; perhaps we need a better conversation?
Keir Starmer set to unveil digital ID scheme | Here we go again, the government believing that KYC needs to be pushed into every (any?) aspect of life
White House outlines TikTok deal that would give US control of algorithm | Translation: American TikTok will no longer have the working algorithms, and…
Stuff that you don’t see on Reddit in the UK because you aren’t age verified
With the Jimmy Kimmel saga, the media is learning what happens when you give a mouse a cookie | CNN Business
MI6 launch contact website on @torproject dark web / onion services; thank you @FCDOGovUK for validating use of Tor & VPNs in these troubling times
Next time someone suggests that online platforms should be licensed remember that…
Has Britain Gone Too Far With Its Digital Controls? | The New York Times
Massive Attack Turns Concert Into Facial Recognition Surveillance Experiment | “…Imagine you’re vibing to Teardrop when your face appears on the LED screen behind the band…”
MI5 concedes it ‘unlawfully’ obtained data from former BBC journalist | …a mere 16+ years to obtain this concession
Geedge & MESA Leak: Analyzing the Great Firewall’s Largest Document Leak
Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape | BogdanTheGeek’s Blog
I strongly suspect that Bluesky “content moderation” and “safety” is following the same trajectory that Facebook did, and that “distribution” excuses it…
2015: “AI Images Look Ridiculously Fake” | 2025: “AI Images Look Ridiculously Real” | The solution to risk is education
Does anyone else suspect that people who want the UK to withdraw from the ECHR are people who want to reintroduce capital punishment?
“Why does remy have such strongly held opinions on internet censorship?”
Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers | …this is a wonderful and absolutely necessary tool for AI policy experts
If everyone (including kids) can see someone be literally assassinated on a podium as “news”, but require age verification for addiction recovery forums, maybe the online safety act tries to solve the wrong problem?
Hey, global citizens, aren’t you glad that you have end-to-end encrypted messenger systems that meaningfully protect your chat content without being scanned or filtered by the government?