vp.net

Foreign adversaries used the same commercial location data that sells ads to target US troops in a war zone. The Pentagon confirmed it. The same surveillance economy that tracks all of us put soldiers at risk. #Surveillance #Privacy More below.

Our Hero of the Week: 13 former Palantir staff who signed the 'Scouring of the Shire' letter. They knew the code of conduct. They said its principles were being dismantled. They signed their names anyway. Full conversation in the thread 👇 #Palantir #HideAndSpeak #HeroOfTheWeek #Surveillance

The DOJ subpoenaed Reddit and X to unmask anonymous users who criticized ICE. One user's posts, per their lawyer, were just a profane two word jab. Anonymous speech is under direct pressure here. #ICE #X #reddit #freespeech #surveillance Article + sources: s.vp.net/k4wcp More in thread.

California exempted Linux from its age verification law. Then the same bill extended age-gating to browsers and the open web, which reaches a lot more people. The privacy cost didn't go away. It moved. Thread below. #privacy #surveillance #digitalrights Sources + article: s.vp.net/wv0fJ

A city covered its own surveillance cameras with trash bags because it couldn't figure out how to switch them off. It's just one of four towns that moved against Flock this month. All four towns, fully sourced: s.vp.net/Ej1w2 Full video in thread.

1.8 million fingerprints just got stolen from NYC's largest public hospital system. You can reissue a Social Security number. You cannot reissue a fingerprint. The attackers were inside for more than two months before anyone noticed. More below. #privacy #biometrics #databreach

Two customers found their own Trump Mobile data on the open web. They tried to warn the company. The researcher who spotted it tried too. Silence, until the story went public on May 20. Then the confirmation came two days later. #privacy #databreach #surveillance #TrumpMobile Thread. 👇

A Milwaukee cop ran his girlfriend's ex through Flock 124 times in two months. Logged reason: "investigation." Internal review caught none of it. A resident found the pattern on a public site. Full version and breakdown below. #privacy #surveillance #ALPR

The argument Recently on Hide & Speak: There was never enough terrorism to justify fusion centers existing. So what do you do? You manufacture your own need. You sensationalize the threat to make it look imminent everywhere, always. #privacy #fusioncenters Full conversation in the thread 👇

South Carolina just told social media to keep profiling every adult in the state, in the name of protecting kids. The Stop Harm from Addictive Social Media Act passed almost unanimously. #privacy #ageverification #surveillance #SouthCarolina #socialmedia Continued in thread 👇

A VPN that advertised it would never cooperate with any court just handed police its entire user list. First VPN. Taken down May 19th and 20th. The encryption was fine. The promise wasn't. #VPN #privacy #cybersecurity More below.

In 2020 a hack of fusion center contractor Netsential exposed 269 GB of records (BlueLeaks). Inside: fusion centers surveilling BLM protesters and circulating rumors as verified threats. Maine pushed the "stacks of bricks" hoax from a fake account. #Surveillance Full conversation in the thread 👇

Google shipped the first phone feature built to catch Pegasus spyware, made with the people who defend journalists and dissidents from it: Amnesty Security Lab and Reporters Without Borders. Evidence finally belongs to the targeted user. #Pegasus #Surveillance #DigitalRights More below.

"Fusion center databases represent a modern general warrant." The whole point of the Fourth Amendment was to stop the dragnet. These databases are all-encompassing, exist in perpetuity, and anyone can fall in. #Surveillance #Privacy #FusionCenters Full conversation in the thread 👇

Canada's Bill C-22 would force service providers to give law-enforcement access into encrypted communications. It clones the UK notice Apple walked out on. 20 civil society groups want it withdrawn. The fight over private communication is moving country to country. #encryption #Canada #Apple 1/3

You do not have to be an activist to land in a fusion center database. You just have to be near the wrong moment. A neighbor's hunch becomes a Suspicious Activity Report becomes a permanent file you cannot see or contest. Full conversation in the thread 👇 #privacy #surveillance #civilliberties

Meta removed end to end encryption from Instagram DMs on May 8th, 11 days before a federal law requiring platforms to scan messages took effect. A platform that can't read your DMs can't comply. Now it can read them. Link in the next post. #Privacy #Meta #Instagram #encryption

Fake IDs. Not the laminated kind. The cryptographic kind. A 2nd mailbox inside your bmail account that even bmail can't link back to your primary. Built on blind signatures inside SGX. Free with any paid plan. 1/4 Full conversation in the thread 👇

The FTC sent 15 tech companies a letter telling them to start reading users' messages by Tuesday. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, TikTok, Discord, Reddit, X, Match Group, Bumble, Pinterest, Automattic, SmugMug. 48 hours to scan, $53K per miss. Read the breakdown: s.vp.net/NvWuj

The FBI and NSA just told Americans their home routers may be hostile. #GRU Unit 26165 spent two years rewriting DNS on TP-Link routers across 23+ states. Passwords and #emails of government officials may have been harvested. Article + sources: s.vp.net/mV9rK

The bar for email privacy has been set so low that ants use it to limbo. The question is whether anyone else bothers to raise it, or keeps shipping "trust me bro." Full conversation in the thread 👇

GM spent sold the driving data of hundreds of thousands of California drivers to data brokers who built a driver rating product to sell to auto insurers so they could raise premiums. 🧵 Continued in thread 👇

This week's Hide & Speak Hero of the Week: Mike German. 16 years FBI, deep undercover work. Caught colleagues running an illegal wiretap in 2002, reported it, got retaliated against, walked. DOJ later substantiated everything. Now he's exposing fusion centers. Full conversation 👇

Proton's no-IP-logging promise was one line on their website. Then a court order showed up. Then they hit delete. 🤯 Full conversation in the thread 👇 [1/4]

Iran has been under internet blackout since Feb 28. Now, the IRGC is selling internet access back through their own carrier. 28 million toman activation fee on a monthly wage of 20-35 million. The blackout is the business model. #Iran #IRGC #InternetBlackout Sources and breakdown: s.vp.net/r9b8X

Connecticut just sent SB 4 to the governor's desk on a 141 to 6 House vote. It builds a data broker registry, a one-request deletion tool, and bans the sale of precise geolocation data. #Privacy #DataBrokers #Surveillance

Password database breaches are common. Yahoo lost 3 billion accounts to one. bmail removed the target entirely. With OPAQUE zero-knowledge login, your password never reaches the server, not even hashed. The server cannot leak what the server never sees. bmail.ag Full conversation in the thread 👇

A warrant canary you can't gag order, because nothing is being said. The CPU measures the code, signs it, and refuses to run if it's been tampered with. Full conversation in the thread 👇 #privacy #encryptedemail

The EU's age verification app launched April 29. A Commission VP is already on record saying VPN circumvention is part of next steps. Utah and France are moving the same direction the same week. #DigitalRights #Privacy #VPN Read why three jurisdictions lined up: s.vp.net/OOFR7

In 2020, a German court ordered Tuta to build a wiretap into their own service. Tuta fought it. Appealed. Argued correctly under EU law that they weren't a telecom provider. They lost. By year end, the wiretap was live. #Tuta #privacy #email #emailprivacy Full conversation in the thread 👇

A Stop Cop City activist was identified in 2024. Not through broken encryption. The FBI subpoenaed the credit card through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Swiss authorities. Proton complied with Swiss law. Bank card, name, flight records, arrest. #ProtonMail #Privacy Full conversation 👇 [1/3]

Utah passed the first state law restricting VPN use. It lasted one day. SB 73 took effect May 6. Enforcement frozen by end of day pending a lawsuit. The bill even banned sites from publishing how a VPN works. #VPN #DigitalRights #FirstAmendment Read why it collapsed so fast: s.vp.net/zbckd

Proton's CEO said it directly: unless you live 15 miles offshore in international waters, it's "not possible to ignore court orders." That's the privacy guarantee. Either move to a boat or accept that your data is one subpoena away. #ProtonMail #EmailPrivacy Full conversation in the thread 👇

A court ordered him to decrypt 410,000 users. He printed the keys in 4-point font on 11 pages and handed them to the FBI. When they demanded an electronic copy, he deleted the entire company instead. That is what protecting users actually costs. #email #privacy Full conversation in the thread 👇

A class action filed in San Jose says the city's 474 Flock cameras racked up 360 million Fourth Amendment violations in 2024. ICE has been quietly running searches through the network with no warrant. #surveillance #fourthamendment #privacy How the side door works: s.vp.net/cbvq3

For 64 days, anyone who knew one trick could log in as root on 70 million websites running cPanel. CVSS 9.8. CISA flagged active exploitation Feb 23. Patch shipped April 28. 40,000 servers already showing signs of compromise. 🧵 Link to the full breakdown in 👇

In 2015, Yahoo's CEO ordered a custom tool built to scan every incoming email from hundreds of millions of users in real time, for the NSA and FBI. No court order required. She just said yes. Full conversation in the thread 👇 #Privacy #Yahoo #EmailPrivacy #Bmail [1/3]

Congress kicked FISA 702 down the road for 45 days because the House tried to staple a crypto ban onto the renewal. Wyden traded his hold for a declassified March 17 FISA opinion he says shows abuse against Americans. #FISA #Surveillance #Privacy Read why this 15 day clock matters: s.vp.net/JlbjV

May 11. Brussels decides whether private messages in Europe stay private. Mandatory encryption breaking is out. Voluntary mass scanning and ID-or-face-scan age checks are still in. #ChatControl #DigitalRights #Privacy What's still on the table: s.vp.net/sfsHW

Utah's new law holds adult sites liable for visitors physically in the state, regardless of IP. The "fix" is demanding government ID from every visitor. Age verification keeps becoming surveillance infrastructure with extra steps. #Privacy #AgeVerification Full breakdown: s.vp.net/ot4Is

40,000 people who legally bought weed just had their IDs & selfies leaked from a database with no password. Identity verification systems are just future breach notifications with a timer. #Privacy #DataBreach #DigitalRights Read the full breakdown: https://s.vp.net/gSBCz

A private company now runs data mining for the IRS, picks neighborhoods for ICE raids & sits in the Pentagon & police stations. That isn't a vendor. That's a shadow government with a sales team. #Palantir #Surveillance #HumanRights Read the receipts: https://s.vp.net/1kpix

Wisconsin tried to ban VPNs to "protect the kids." Civil liberties groups pushed back. The VPN ban died. Then the whole bill got vetoed on privacy grounds. Sometimes the good guys win one. 🎉 #DigitalRights #PrivacyMatters #HumanRights Read the full story: https://s.vp.net/e2tV1

The FBI can't say if your VPN turns you into a "foreigner" under FISA Section 702, stripping your Fourth Amendment rights. Six members of Congress just asked DNI Gabbard. Lawmakers are still waiting. 📰 https://s.vp.net/AArzR 🛡️ Verifiable, zero-trust: https://vp.net

The Most Significant Surveillance Overhaul in Decades Lawmakers are moving to ban the government from buying your data and require warrants for all domestic searches. It is a massive win for digital privacy. #Privacy #FISA #Rights Read the article and see our sources: s.vp.net/M2GOA

Think you have privacy in public? Think again. ALPR systems are mapping your life in real time. Chris from Hide & Speak explains how ALPR systems like Flock Safety can be used to unfairly target people based on political or religious views. Full clip in comments 👇🏻

The KIDS Act: Washington's New Plan to Mandate Age Verification New bills force platforms to verify ages, block minos, & store sensitive ID data. Critics warn this creates a massive privacy risk for all users. #Privacy #KIDSact #COPPA Read the article and see our sources: s.vp.net/sF79Z

Apple Mandatory Age Checks and Digital ID 📱 Apple is turning your iPhone into a digital ID tool. New API updates in 2026 will mandate age sharing for app access in multiple countries and US states. #Apple #Privacy #TechPolicy Read the article and see our sources: s.vp.net/l2IUt

We are proud to name the @eff.org as our Hide & Speak Hero of the Week! 🛡️ The Electronic Frontier Foundation has spent 35 years defending our digital world. From protecting free speech to fighting mass surveillance, they are true legends. Link to full livestream in comments 👇

Mount Sinai Healthcare Deploys Mandatory Facial Recognition Mount Sinai is mandating CLEAR1 biometric scans for check-ins. Critics say it unfairly affects immigrants, afraid to seek help for fear of deportation. #Privacy #Healthcare #NYC Read the article and see our sources: s.vp.net/fxS8X

The Global Trap: Why 400+ Experts Oppose Age Verification Computer scientists warn that OS level age checks hand governments and tech giants dangerous control over user access. #Privacy #TechPolicy #InternetFreedom Read the article and see our sources: s.vp.net/2EcFO

Traffic Cameras Hacked & Use To Kill A World Leader?!?! Watch Chris from Hide & Speak make a shocking predication that came true just weeks later 🤯 #FlockSafety #Surveillance #ALPR Link to full clip in comments 👇

OS-Level Age Checks: The End of Digital Anonymity? New state mandates turn your device into a data-harvesting checkpoint, forcing OS makers to share your age with every app and service. Read the article and see our sources: s.vp.net/8bNnF #privacy #tech #surveillance