Privacy

Five hours after Charlie Kirk was shot this week, an Atlanta man got a phone call from an Illinois police officer asking about a photo he shared with a couple of close friends on a private Discord chat. The Atlanta man, who asked not to be identified, says the post was merely a confirmation that he had purchased the same T-shirt that the accused killer wore (from an Illinois-based online shop).

Social media companies are generally forbidden by law from divulging users’ private communications to the government without a traditional legal process (e.g., court order). But there’s an exception: in perceived emergencies, social media platforms can proactively and “voluntarily” hand over private messages in response to what’s called an “emergency disclosure request” (EDR).

Discord, I am told, did not respond to any EDR here; but when I asked them directly if they’d provided law enforcement with information to traditional legal process, they declined to respond on-record.

The FBI, or the intelligence community, evidently is monitoring Discord private messaging, even from people who have broken no law.

Full blown Orwellian world. Run for local government and stop this shit.

The largest populated areas are left leaning. If they ae controlled by democratic socialist, we can restrict this shit. Just by pure numbers.

Automated artificial intelligence (AI)-powered surveillance tools are being deployed to track migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in the US, raising serious human rights concerns, according to a report by Amnesty International.

Amnesty’s analysis of documents obtained from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) highlights how two systems in particular – Babel X, provided by Babel Street, and Palantir’s Immigration OS – have automated monitoring and mass surveillance capabilities that are being used to underpin the government’s aggressive immigration enforcement operations.

The organisation claims the tools feed into the State Department’s AI-driven “Catch and Revoke” initiative, which combines social media monitoring, visa status tracking and automated threat assessments of foreign individuals on visas. The practice has already been criticised for violating the First Amendment rights of people living in the US.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/37530015

Private front-end for Reddit.

(Eastern District of Michigan - Detroit)

My husband, Conrad Rockenhaus, is wrongly incarcerated in a county jail. I’m posting this here because you are one of the few communities that will understand the full technical and political reality of how he ended up there.

My husband is a former Tor operator, and at one point, he ran some of the fastest relays and exit nodes in the world.

This nightmare began when he refused to help the FBI decrypt traffic from his exit nodes.

Months later, the government arrested him. Their official reason? A minor, non-violent CFAA charge from an old workplace dispute that had nothing to do with Tor.

In fact, the statute of limitations was just a couple of months from expiring. It was a clear pretext to target him.

That minor charge was all they needed to get him into the system. To deny him bail, a U.S. Probation Officer in Texas lied under oath, telling a judge that Conrad had installed a "Linux OS called Spice" to "knock out their monitoring software" and access the "dark web."

Read the transcript

Here is the technical reality of their lie: The software was a standard SPICE graphics driver needed for his Ph.D. program. As many of you know, this is a basic utility for displaying graphics from a virtual machine. It is not an OS, has no connection to the dark web, and was technically incapable of interfering with their monitoring software.

The claim is a technical absurdity, equivalent to saying a mouse pad can hack a server.

Based on that lie alone, he was held in pre-trial detention for three years.

Now, the retaliation has escalated in Michigan. After I filed a formal complaint against his US probation officers for harassment, they used fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again.

During this violent arrest by US Marshals (who smashed in our windows and nearly shot my dog) he sustained a severe head injury that caused him to have a grand mal seizure in court. The jail’s “medical attention” was to ask him what year it was (he said 2023) and then send him back to his cell. He is being denied real medical care.

See videos:

• Feds threatening to sick dogs on us
• Feds beating by husband in the head
• Feds smashing in our windows
• Feds threaten to shoot my dog
• More threats to shoot my dog

To make matters worse, U.S. District Judge Stephen J. Murphy, III has created a procedural trap that has stripped my husband of his right to a lawyer to fight for his life, health, or innocence. He is trapped in a constitutional and medical crisis.

I am not asking for money. I am asking for your help to amplify this story. You understand the technical truth and why this fight is so important.

We have all the evidence: the court transcript of the false testimony, the fraudulent warrants, the proof of medical neglect. It’s documented on my website:

https://rockenhaus.com/

TL;DR: My husband, a former Tor operator, refused to help the FBI decrypt Tor traffic. They retaliated by using an old, unrelated CFAA offense to arrest him and then lied about him using a "graphics driver to access the dark web” to keep him in pre-trial detention for 3 years. Now he's been jailed again in Michigan on fraudulent violations, is being denied care for a head injury, and has no lawyer.

I need help getting the word out🙏

Adrienne Rockenhaus

For updates:

• Official Press
• X/Twitter

More details on the linked Mastodon post

https://web.archive.org/web/20250915135020/https://www.404media.co/airlines-sell-5-billion-plane-ticket-records-to-the-government-for-warrantless-searching/

A court ordered Google to pay $425 million after finding the company misled 98 million users about data collection through its "Web & App Activity" setting[^1]. The case revealed Google continued gathering user data via Firebase, a monitoring database embedded in 97% of top Android apps and 54% of leading iOS apps, even after users disabled data collection[^1].

Google's internal communications showed the company was "intentionally vague" about its data collection practices because being transparent "could sound alarming to users," according to district judge Richard Seeborg[^1].

This ruling adds to Google's recent privacy settlements, including:

• $392 million paid to 40 states in 2023 for location tracking violations
• $40 million to Washington state for similar location tracking issues
• $1.38 billion to Texas in 2025 over location tracking and incognito mode claims[^1]

Google plans to appeal the $425 million verdict, with spokesperson Jose Castaneda stating "This decision misunderstands how our products work" and asserting that Google honors user privacy choices[^1].

[^1]: Malwarebytes - Google misled users about their privacy and now owes them $425m, says court

Two investigations warn about how data collected through menstrual tracking apps can be used by governments to monitor people’s reproductive lives, and by companies to make a profit

https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1ng1apv/clarifying_recent_misinformation/

I forked It from delightful-libre-hosters because it got discontinued

Germany, Luxembourg, and Slovakia OPPOSED

All three countries rejects breaking encryption and are opposed to Chat Control as currently proposed. This is a critical step, securing the blocking minority required to stop this illegal mass surveillance for now (sources for Germany, Luxembourg, and Slovakia). [...]

A California bill to check kids’ ages online is heading to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, after it secured rare support from major tech giants, including Google, Meta and Snap.

The proposal, which would require device makers and app stores to verify user ages, cleared the state Assembly 58-0 in the early hours of Saturday with backing from Republicans and Democrats.

Google and Meta, plus other tech firms like OpenAI and Pinterest, rallied around the online age verification plan this week despite recently sparring over similar measures in Utah and Texas. They argue the measure from Democratic state Assemblymember Buffy Wicks offers a more reasonable solution and hope it becomes a de facto national standard for other states weighing mandatory age-checks amid bipartisan concerns about kids’ safety online.

Archive : https://archive.is/MWWVH

A third of UK employers are using “bossware” technology to track workers’ activity with the most common methods including monitoring emails and web browsing.

Private companies are most likely to deploy in-work surveillance and one in seven employers are recording or reviewing screen activity, according to a UK-wide survey that estimates the extent of office snooping.