exchanges may randomly use this to freeze and block funds from users, claiming these were "flagged" […]. You are left hostage to their arbitrary decision […]. If you choose to sidestep their invasive process, they might just hold onto your funds indefinitely.

The criminals are using stolen identities from companies that gathered them thanks to these very same regulations that were supposed to combat them.

KYC does not protect individuals; rather, it's a threat to our privacy, freedom, security and integrity.

• For individuals in areas with poor record-keeping, […] homeless or transient, obtaining these documents can be challenging, if not impossible.

It is no longer possible to book train tickets in Germany without providing your verified email or phone number. FYI, all phone numbers are linked to national ID cards in Germany.

https://www.thelocal.de/20230925/everything-that-changes-in-october-2023-in-germany

Cloudflare-free link for Tor/Tails users: https://web.archive.org/web/20230926042518/https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the-eus-fight-over-scanning-for-child-sex-content/

It would introduce a complex legal architecture reliant on AI tools for detecting images, videos and speech – so-called ‘client-side scanning’ – containing sexual abuse against minors and attempts to groom children.

If the regulation undermines encryption, it risks introducing new vulnerabilities, critics argue. “Who will benefit from the legislation?” Gerkens asked. “Not the children.”

Groups like Thorn use everything they can to put this legislation forward, not just because they feel that this is the way forward to combat child sexual abuse, but also because they have a commercial interest in doing so.

they are self-interested in promoting child exploitation as a problem that happens “online,” and then proposing quick (and profitable) technical solutions as a remedy to what is

As enacted, the OSB allows the government to force companies to build technology that can scan regardless of encryption–in other words, build a backdoor.

Paradoxically, U.K. lawmakers have created these new risks in the name of online safety.

The U.K. government has made some recent statements indicating that it actually realizes that getting around end-to-end encryption isn’t compatible with protecting user privacy. But

The problem is, in the U.K. as in the U.S., people do not agree about what type of content is harmful for kids. Putting that decision in the hands of government regulators will lead to politicized censorship decisions.

The OSB will also lead to harmful age-verification systems. This violates fundamental principles about anonymous and simple access

See also: Britain Admits Defeat in Controversial Fight to Break Encryption

Although the UK government has said that it now won’t force unproven technology on tech companies, […] the controversial clauses remain within the legislation, which is still likely to pass into law.

the continued existence of the powers within the law means encryption-breaking surveillance could still be introduced in the future.

So all ‘until it’s technically feasible’ means is opening the door to scanning in future rather than scanning today. It’s not a change

The implications of the British government backing down, even partially, will reverberate far beyond the UK

“It’s huge in terms of arresting the type of permissive international precedent that this would set […]. The UK was the first jurisdiction to be pushing this kind of mass surveillance. It stops that momentum. And that’s huge for the world.”

In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN [sécuriser et réguler l'espace numérique] Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.

--France’s browser-based website blocking proposal will set a disastrous precedent for the open internet

[Unfortunately one should no longer trust Mozilla itself as much as one did 10 years ago. If you do sign, you might want to use a fake name and a disposable email address.]

This bill is obviously disturbing. It could be that eventually they assume that .onion sites are all suspicious and block them, or something similar might happen, which would be bad news for privacy-oriented users including Monero users, for freedom of thought, and for freedom

In the past I’ve recommended sms-activate for easy, quick and low cost phone verification. When you want to log in, they now force you to click on a verification link send by email, meaning you are f’ed if you used a single-use email address.

Are there any alternative options that accept monero and don’t have this restriction?

Having free and open-source tools and a decentralized way of fighting back and reclaiming some of that power is very important. Because if we don’t resist, we’re subject to what somebody else does to us

While Tor is useful in several situations, probably we shouldn't believe in it blindly. For clearnet, LibreWolf is a great option too, and I2P might be the future.

Hello, fellow privacy enthusiasts!

I've been on a journey to find a VPN provider that aligns with my privacy values, and I wanted to share my experiences and concerns here, hoping for some insights and recommendations.

Primary Criteria:

• Outside of the 14 Eyes: Ideally, I'd prefer a provider outside of the 14 Eyes intelligence-sharing countries.
• Accepts Monero: Given its the only real privacy coin there is, I'm keen on providers that accept Monero as a payment method.
• I need port forwarding for the services I host.

Current Options: I've considered Mullvad and IVPN, both of which I trust for their privacy focus. However, they recently disabled their port forwarding support, which I need since I host services from home. SPN by Safing sounds really interesting too but they also do not offer port forwarding sadly.

ProtonVPN seemed like a close alternative, but I've come across several red flags:

• Logging Concerns: ProtonMail, under the same parent company, provided IP logs i

The Online Safety Bill, now at the final stage before passage in the House of Lords, gives the British government the ability to force backdoors into messaging services, which will destroy end-to-end encryption.

Requiring government-approved software in peoples’ messaging services is an awful precedent. If the Online Safety Bill becomes British law, the damage it causes won’t stop at the borders of the U.K.

Random thoughts...

Even if platform-assisted end-to-end encryption (pseudo e2e) is censored, perhaps we could still use true user-to-user encryption. If "end" means the messenger software itself or a platform endpoint, then the following will be true e2e - "pre-end" to "post-end" encryption:

1. Alice and Bob exchange their public keys. While using a secure channel for this is ideal, a monitored channel (e.g. a normal message app) is okay too for the time being.
2. Alice prepares her plain text message locally: Alice.txt
3. She does gpg -sea -r Bob -o ascii.txt Alice.txt
4. Ali

Congress is trying to push through a swarm of harmful internet bills that would severely impact human rights, expand surveillance, and enable censorship on the internet. On July 20, we’re launching a week of action to get loud about our opposition to legislation like KOSA and EARN IT and demanding that Congress focus on passing badly needed comprehensive privacy legislation to actually protect us from the harms of big tech companies and data brokers, instead of pushing through misguided legislation before August congressional recess.