In 2012 the UN unanimously affirmed that rights enjoyed offline must be protected online, especially free speech. Fourteen years later, the democracies that championed that principle are racing to gut it. My piece on "Digital Sovereignty" in @ForeignAffairs

If AI destroys humanity it will be because it was allowed to run docker compose down with the --volumes flag on some vital piece of infrastructure that causes devastating secondary effects.

📲 Saviez-vous que dans iOS 27, Apple a prévu une liste de pays où le chiffrement des messages RCS (SMS) est interdit ? Chine 🇨🇳. Corée du Sud 🇰🇷. France 🇫🇷. Le reste du monde déploie l'E2EE, le chiffrement de bout en bout entre iPhone et Android. Une avancée majeure pour la confidentialité de vos SMS. En France, c'est bloqué. Les opérateurs sont prêts techniquement. Ce n'est pas un problème d'infrastructure. C'est un choix politique. Les raisons sont multiples, la France ayant toujours une longueur d'avance pour affaiblir votre sécurité et s'assurer de pouvoir garder un oeil sur vous. Mais l'une des pistes probables : La PNIJ - la Plateforme Nationale des Interceptions Judiciaires. Un outil qui permet à l'État d'accéder à vos communications. Le chiffrement de bout en bout sur ces millions d'échanges quotidiens lui couperait l'accès. Définitivement. Alors notre gouvernement fait tout pour que vous restiez exposés.

I just open sourced my "Is this slop?" simple test

How, exactly, will Europe compel Signal to leave that market, when it has forced Apple and Google to permit app sideloading? Signal could just ignore Europe's orders, keep its European users, and pull out all of its personnel.

We're being pressured to accept digital surveillance by default, under the banner of child safety. The proposals stink, and should be fought tooth and nail - because we've already seen the inevitable resulting mission creep in the "Online Safety Act":

This is what people don't realize. North Korea and China already do this with their phones. Every minute on your phone is watched, every image you download or share is hashed and compared against government blacklists and every message you send is scanned. We are copying that model.

I'm appalled but not surprised by the UK government's announcement today. The measures they propose will amount to permanent, automated monitoring of UK citizens' phones without a warrant or any recourse or protection from state overreach. Once implemented, these powers will be hard to unravel but easy to extend. Western democracies used to recoil from the way the USSR and DDR used to surveil their citizens but this is every bit as sinister. Will there be technical ways to subvert it? Probably, but we shouldn't have to. The bigger issue is that UK and European citizens clearly lack sufficient legal protections from the overreach of their own governments and the technocratic class who seem to increasingly regard internet freedom and digital privacy as a problem to be solved. Local elections, jury trials, and now internet privacy are liberties that the government has tried to do away with because they are an administrative inconvenience for technocratic government. I am encouraged by the ideas of @prestonjbyrne and his legislative proposals to improve and secure the basic rights of UK citizens. Give him a follow.

I need the government to lock up criminals, defend the nation, build infrastructure, collect the bins, and a few other services - basic research etc. I’m not an anarchist or anything. What I don’t need from the government is moral instruction. I don’t need them to tell me how to raise my kids. I don’t need them to nudge me into better dietary choices. I certainly don’t need them hamfistedly backdooring my devices to check I’m not doing anything they don’t like. GTFO of my life, thank you. You’re not smarter than me, you aren’t qualified to manage me, please leave me alone.

Americans are not merely "accusing" Europe of imposing its laws beyond its borders. Europe *is* imposing its censorship laws beyond its borders. This is an established fact. I've seen these letters and forwarded them to Congress. Here's one such letter.

It's 31 years ago to the day that this was broadcast - for my money one of the most joyous bits of TV ever committed to celluloid. It is, of course, Mr Sting's appearence on The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. Chitter chatter chit

"Ultimately, middle powers cannot choose whether or not to live in a hierarchical world. They must choose which hierarchy gives them the most room to maneuver." For most middle powers, the choice "should be an easy one." foreignaffairs.com/guest-pas…

MrBeast plans to trap 1000 vibe coders in a room without Claude first person to center a div manually wins $1 million

The humans AI combo is where the magic is. A skilled person with good AI tools is an absolute wrecking crew. Oh a 10x engineer you say? HOLD. MY. BEER. You don't get that kind of whoopass by gutting your workforce and hoping a clanker figures it out. 5

ExpressVPN, @torproject, Tuta, Mozilla, @EFF and Mullvad, alongside 13 other organizations advocating for digital privacy rights, have published an open letter. In the letter, they express serious concerns regarding the age verification measures planned for implementation across the internet following the introduction of a new child protection law. The organizations argue that forcing users to prove their age across most websites and online services could severely undermine privacy, anonymity, and the open nature of the internet. The central message of the letter is that protecting children should not come at the cost of jeopardizing the freedom, security, and privacy of all internet users. The signatories are calling for more balanced, privacy preserving solutions to be developed instead. The 19 organizations that signed the letter are: 1- Big Brother Watch 2- Defend Digital Me 3- Electronic Frontier Foundation 4- ExpressVPN 5- Gamers Voice 6- Global Partners Digital 7- Index on Censorship 8- Internet Society 9- Mozilla 10- Mullvad 11- IPVanish 12- NO2ID 13- Open Rights Group 14- Privacymatters 15- Proton 16- Stop Killing Games 17- Tor Project 18- Tuta 19- VPN Trust Initiative

But in order to access *any* information, they want to know who you are. Uninstalled.

Welcome to @quiztime and it’s #MondayQuiz What is happening here this Wednesday at 3pm? 📮reply just to me with an answer 🤝 reply to all for collaboration 🌈have fun

There are a lot of so called investigators these days who have no investigative experience. What they are good at doing is creating viral threads with missing context and inflaming tensions on hot-button issues. You'll see threads that say things like "follow the money" from people who have never followed the money in their lives. But because they have large online followings, their followers amplify their shoddy research and think they are somehow contributing to justice in the world.

Another consequence of long term UK defence spending cuts...