I made a spreadsheet comparing different open source VPN providers.

Providers

• IVPN
• Mozilla VPN
• Mullvad VPN
• NymVPN
• Proton VPN

Notes

• Please do not start a flame war about Proton.
• Please do not start a flame war about cryptocurrencies. Monero is the only cryptocurrency listed because of its privacy.
• The very left column is the category for each row, the middle section is the various VPN providers, and the right section is which VPNs are the best in each category.
• IVPN has two differing plans, which is why "Standard" and "Pro" are sometimes differentiated.
• For accounts, "Generated" means a random identifier is created for you to act as your account, "Required" means you must sign up yourself. Proton VPN allows guest use under specific conditions (e.g. installed from the Google Play Store), but otherwise requires an account.
• Switzerland is seen as more private than Sweden. Gibraltar is seen as privacy neutral.
• All prices are in United States Dollars. Tax is not included.
• Pricing is based on the price combination to achieve the exact time frame. For example, Proton VPN does not have a 3 year plan but you can achieve 3 years by combining a 2 year plan with a 1 year plan.
• The availability section is security based. Availability is framed around a GrapheneOS and secureblue setup.
• The Proton VPN Flatpak is unofficial, but based on the official code.
• Availability on secureblue is based on the ujust install-vpn command. Security features must be disabled on secureblue in order to use the GUI for IVPN and Mullvad VPN, but not for Proton VPN. Mozilla VPN and NymVPN are available as Flatpaks, which are safer than layering packages.
• I wanted to include more categories, such as which programming languages they are written in, connection speed, and security, but that became far too difficult and complex, so I decided to omit those categories.

Takeaways

• NymVPN is very very new, but it's off to a strong start. It wins in almost every category. I actually hadn't heard of it until I started this project.
• If you want a free VPN, Proton VPN is the only one here that meets that requirement.
• If you want to pay week-by-week, IVPN is the only one that allows that.
• If you're paying month-by-month on a budget, Mullvad VPN is the cheapest option.
• NymVPN is the cheapest plan for anything past 1 month.
• If you want to use Accrescent as your main app store, IVPN is the only VPN available there for now.
• If you want to pay for a bundle of apps, including a VPN, Proton sells more than just a VPN.
• Mozilla VPN is terrible. The only thing it has going for it is a verified Flatpak, but NymVPN also has that so it doesn't even matter.

OC by @Charger8232@lemmy.ml

A group of civil society organisations in Myanmar plans to take legal action against Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor, accusing it of passing customer data to the country’s military government for use in repression.

The activists sent Telenor a notice of intent to sue on Monday, according to a statement from the Netherlands-based nonprofit Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), which is backing the case. The case states that the data shared by the telecoms giant was used by the military following its 2021 coup to trace and target civilians.

This app has been under development for a few months now and is ready for use.

Should be available on Google play first. IOS in the works and released soon.

If your a developer who can contribute and make it even better that is welcomed it's still very early.

The EU built a system called CounterR that essentially performs pre-crime thought surveillance. The TLDR is that an AI company, with direct input from half a dozen European police forces, built a tool that scrapes social media, forums, and other sources to assign citizens a score based on what they think as opposed to what they've actually done. The EC also has not released details of the project..

The report itself acknowledges that this sort of automated system "can trigger new fundamental rights risks that affect rights different than the protection of personal data and privacy."

The European Commission's White Paper on Al observes that Al-related processing of personal data can trigger new fundamental rights risks that affect rights different than the protection of personal data and privacy, such as the right to freedom of expression, and political freedoms - in particular when Al is used by online intermediaries to prioritise information and for content moderation.

The police were active co-developers, sitting in meetings to define the criteria and feeding real, anonymized data from their investigations to train the LLM. So now you have a feedback loop where police define the threat, the LLM learns it, and the police validate the results, with zero external oversight.

And of course, it's all shrouded in secrecy. The whole thing is confidential, the source code is proprietary so even partners can't audit it, and the ethics board is made up of the same people building the thing. There's no clear requirement to track false positives, so you could be flagged as a potential radical and never know why.

Regarding transparency of funded research, it must be noted that generally research proposals foresee Confidentiality of some results is often necessary, especially in the realm of security.

The cherry on top? The core technology, developed with public funds, was recently acquired by a private company, Logically, who can now sell this dystopian scoring system to whoever they want.

The citizens of the EU literally paid to build our own panopticon. The whole project is about normalizing the idea that the state gets to algorithmically monitor and judge your political beliefs before you ever commit a crime.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37009566

European SMEs have united to direct a strong open letter to urge ministers of EU member states to oppose Chat Control and to defend privacy and a strong European tech industry.

Want encrypted WebRTC video calls with no downloads, no sign-ups, and no tracking?

This prototype uses PeerJS to establish a secure browser-to-browser connection. Everything is ephemeral and cleared when you refresh the page—true zero data privacy!

Check out the demo: https://p2p.positive-intentions.com/iframe.html?globals=&args=&id=demo-p2p-call--video-call&viewMode=story

NOTE: This is a close-source project and has NOT been audited or reviewed. For testing purposes only, not a replacement for your current messaging app.

Indonesia has reinstated TikTok’s local operating license after it shared data requested by the government that was linked to the nationwide protests between late August and September.

TikTok provided the requested data on “traffic escalation and TikTok Live monetization activities” during the period of Aug. 25 to Aug. 30, via an official letter dated Oct. 3, said Alexander Sabar, an official at Indonesia’s communications and digital ministry.

Government authorities temporarily stripped the social media platform of its status as a registered electronic systems operator late Friday, after it did not submit complete data as requested.