Privacy

The recent federal raid on the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson isn’t merely an attack by the Trump administration on the free press. It’s also a warning to anyone with a smartphone.

Included in the search and seizure warrant for the raid on Natanson’s home is a section titled “Biometric Unlock,” which explicitly authorized law enforcement personnel to obtain Natanson’s phone and both hold the device in front of her face and to forcibly use her fingers to unlock it. In other words, a judge gave the FBI permission to attempt to bypass biometrics: the convenient shortcuts that let you unlock your phone by scanning your fingerprint or face.-

It is not clear if Natanson used biometric authentication on her devices, or if the law enforcement personnel attempted to use her face or fingers to unlock her devices. Natanson and the Washington Post did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

Bitwarden Premium and Families plans now have new capabilities to account for a modern cyber landscape needing to anticipate threats before they happen and allowing users to proactively safeguard their digital assets.

Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system's performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls "...

Set up a framework to fully man-in-the-middle my own browsers' networking and see what they're up to beyond just looking at their DNS queries and encrypted tcp packets. We force the browser to trust our mitmproxy cacert so we can peek inside cleartext traffic and made it conveniently reproducible and extensible.

It has containers for official Firefox, its Debian version, and some other FF derivatives that market a focus on privacy or security. Might add a few more of those or do the chromium family later - if you read the thing and want more then please let us know what you want to see under the lens in a future update!

Tests were run against a basic protocol for each of them and results are aggregated at the end of the post.

Posting with ambition that this can trigger some follow-ups sharing derived or similar things. Maybe someone could make a viral blog post by doing some deeper tests and making their results digestible ;)

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Cross-post. Original Thread @ https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/53845514

FBI Director Kash Patel said Monday that he had opened an investigation into the Signal group text chats that Minnesota residents are using to share information about federal immigration agents’ movements, launching a new front in the Trump administration’s conflict there with potential free speech implications.

Patel said in an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that he wanted to know whether any Minnesota residents had put federal agents “in harm’s way” with activities such as sharing agents’ license plate numbers and locations.

An international group of plaintiffs is suing Meta, alleging that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption isn't actually private. Lawyers are asking the court to certify a class-action.

In the past year, ICE and CBP have descended into utter lawlessness, repeatedly refusing to exercise or submit to the democratic accountability required by the Constitution and our system of laws. These violations must stop now.

Privacy for me has been incredibly rewarding, but when talking to people who haven't been introduced to privacy, there are occasionally some moments that make it exhausting. One conversation in particular is one that I've had to go through dozens of times, and it always goes along these lines:

• Alice: Why is your phone in airplane mode? / What's your phone number?
• Bob: I don't have a carrier.
• Alice: But you have a phone.
• Bob: Yes.
• Alice: How do you not have a carrier?
• Bob: Phones can come without a carrier.
• Alice: What do you use it for?
• Bob: Everything you use yours for.
• Alice: How do you talk to people?
• Bob: Messaging apps over Wi-Fi.
• Alice: What if you don't have Wi-Fi?
• Bob: Public Wi-Fi is everywhere. If I don't have Wi-Fi, I likely don't need to get in touch.
• Alice: What about emergencies?
• Bob: I can still contact emergency services.

Each time it happens, it has a unique flavor. One person accused me of lying and then fraud. I know people are just curious and don't mean to be rude, but it makes me die a little inside every time someone asks. I've begun trying to sidestep the conversation entirely:

• Alice: Why is your phone in airplane mode?
• Bob: To save battery.

or:

• Alice: What's your phone number?
• Bob: You can contact me with an app called Signal.

People seem to think that a phone automatically comes with a carrier and that it'll stop working if you don't have one. In reality, I'm saving hundreds of dollars per year while avoiding spam, fraud, breaches, surveillance, and being chronically online. People have a hard time coping with those who do things a little differently.

OC writeup by @Charger8232@lemmy.ml

LocalSend lets you securely share files and messages with nearby devices over your local network—no internet or third-party servers required. It’s open-source, cross-platform (desktop & mobile), fast, and works fully offline.

The company’s default agreement with police departments grants the company license to share people’s license plate data