6/29/26 - You have an expectation of privacy in location data that reveals your movements in the physical world, and even short-term surveillance of these movements is a search subject to the Fourth Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in Chatrie v. United States. (Source: EFF)
3/17/26 - Instagram will stop encrypting private messages between users from May, after enduring years of criticism from law enforcement and child safety groups over the feature. Meta quietly announced this month on its help page for Instagram and in an updated 2022 news post that end-to-end encryption would no longer be available on direct messages between users on Instagram from 8 May 2026. (Source: Guardian)
YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER (ISP) - "LOBBIED" THE FCC FOR "PERMISSION" TO SPY ON YOU !!!
Your Internet service provider’s (ISP) ability to not only spy on you, but to PROFIT on that spying, has been upheld by the FCC. Ajit Pai, President Trump’s pick for the new FCC Chairman has made it clear that he is going to overturn wide-reaching data security and privacy order that the FCC had originally agreed upon back in October of 2016 under Tom Wheeler. The privacy order, which would have come into effect by December 4, 2017, would have forced large ISPs, such as AT&T, to get user consent before selling personal information such as web browsing history, to third party advertisers. The data security order, which would have come into effect by March 2nd, 2017, would have forced phone companies and ISPs to take steps to protect any sensitive user information such as social security number or health information.
The nature of the ISPs position, sitting as the man in the middle for all of your internet traffic, means that they know everything about you. The incoming changes under the new FCC will completely remove those privacy protections away from consumers wherever they use the Internet, and allow ISPs to profit on your web browsing history and personal information.
Specifically, the privacy order prevented ISPs from sharing personal information (web browsing data and other private information) without expressly getting user consent.
Your ISP doesn’t want you to have privacy; they profit off of selling your personal information. The ISPs have been lobbying to remove these rules for one simple reason: so that they can profit from selling your web browsing history !!
TonyTek27
6/18/26 - With no serious debate, including on proposed amendments, Canada is blazing full speed ahead with Bill C-22, which would threaten encryption and increase surveillance. Also known as the Lawful Access Bill, Bill C-22 is currently moving forward quickly to a vote despite the many, many criticisms civil liberty groups and the tech industry have hurled at it. (Source: EFF)
6/12/26 - Through a series of extensions and expansions since its creation in 2008, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has allowed US intelligence agencies to collect communications from foreigners abroad without a warrant, routinely sweeping up Americans’ emails, messages, and calls in the process. (Source: Proton)
5/21/26 - A VPN service used by ransomware operators, fraudsters and data thieves to mask their activity has been taken offline in a coordinated operation led by France and the Netherlands. According to Europol, the law enforcement action ran from May 19 to 20 and resulted in 33 servers being dismantled, three domains being seized and the service's administrator being interviewed during a house search in Ukraine. (Source: InfoSec Mag)
10/15/2019 - The NYPD regularly collects DNA samples from large swaths of the public in order to find a match with DNA recovered at crime scenes. This practice, known as a DNA dragnet, essentially amounts to a new iteration of “stop-and-frisk.” Just as the unconstitutional “stop-and-frisk” program disproportionately targeted New Yorkers of color for warrantless searches, so too are DNA dragnets used to surveil marginalized New Yorkers.
5/12/26 - This week, Apple released iOS 26.5, an update that supports end-to-end encryption for Rich Communication Services (RCS), meaning conversations between Android and iPhone will soon be encrypted in the default chat apps. This has been a long time coming, and is a welcome delivery on a promise both Google and Apple made. (Source: EFF)
1/12/26 - ICE recently purchased two programs called Tangles and Webloc, which are used to track the cell phone activity of entire neighborhoods and monitor people over social media and through internet data, according to reporting by 404 Media. 404 Media journalist Joseph Cox joined MPR News host Nina Moini with insight on those tools and how they’re used to track people. (Source: MPR News)
7/21/24 - Countries around the world have formed alliances to track what their citizens do online. The Five Eyes Alliance, the most popular of all, collaborates to share this information between member nations. While they claim to be working for the greater good, the concerns for citizens' privacy are significant - (Source: NordVPN)
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