Since laser printers all encode metadata into the printed image, and handwriting is unique to the writer, I was wondering if a typewriter would provide a more anonymous form of paper communication.

I expect it would be possible to determine the model of typewriter, but would it be possible to tell if two samples were made on the very same machine? Are electric typewriters better or worse than manual? (assuming the same operator) What about Selectric or Wheelwriter – would frequently swapping out the typing element help?

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/64675314

Looks like this got deleted from the original community where I posted it, so re-posting what I can remember here.

This screenshot is from a post I made on my city's subreddit.

Monday the Washington Post revealed my city was using a first of its kind mass surveillance and facial recognition software that allows police to track individuals added to a watchlist via cameras installed around the city.

The ACLU is saying it is "the stuff of authoritarian surveillance states, and has no place in American policing.”

“Until now, no American police department has been willing to risk the massive public blowback from using such a brazen face recognition surveillance system,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “By adopting this system–in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security–the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line.

The NOPD has stopped using it since WaPo began investigating because it violated a city ordinance, but federal agents (ICE) and state police are still using the real time tracking app.

I realized after reading an Axios article about it on Wednesday that the ordinance was created after the mayor, suddenly asked the city to lift a blanket ban on the technology and other controversial predictive policing policies.

The city's mayor has been facing federal charges regarding a scandal for several years and is currently just running out the clock on her last term as mayor. She has also been accused of other corruption such as accepting gifts as bribes in the past

The ban on predictive policing policies was originally created following the end of a secret partnership between Palantir and the city of New Orleans from ~2012-2018.

Months after the city first abandoned it's contract with Palantir, Mayor Cantrell seemed to be looking for loopholes that would allow her to continue using controversial predictive policing

I have tried to avoid pile-on critique of the mayor, and I actually voted her the first time she ran. However, one of the most common questions people in my city ask, is "how has she not been arrested?" I want to stress this is my own speculation, but given the details that are emerging now, I do wonder if these charges may have been related to why she so willingly turned over the city's privacy to the federal government in 2022?

The proposed ordinance, if passed, would largely reverse the council’s blanket bans on the use facial recognition and characteristic tracking software, which is similar to facial recognition but for identifying race, gender, outfits, vehicles, walking gait and other attributes. One provision also appears to walk back the city’s ban on predictive policing and cell-site simulators — which intercept and spy on cell phone calls — to locate people suspected of certain serious crimes.

That provision could, for the first time, give the city explicit permission to use a whole host of surveillance technology in certain circumstances, including voice recognition, x-ray vans, “through the wall radar,” social media monitoring software, “tools used to gain unauthorized access to a computer,” and more.

Lastly the proposal would allow the city to use “social media or communications software or applications for the purpose of communicating with the public, provided such use does not include the affirmative use of any face surveillance.” The Lens asked Tidwell and Green why this was included and what it was meant to allow, but neither responded.

While she may not have realized it at the time, the removal of the ban, along with her oddly warm welcome of the Governor's own state police force, Troop Nola, has placed the entire city in danger as the 2025 Trump administration continues to remove protection for civil rights and liberties as well as oversight for potential abuse of NSA surveillance

Louisiana State Police (LSP) Troop Nola, are now permanently established in the city and cannot be regulated by city policy and regulations. This means that they can also not be regulated by the same city ordinance that compelled the NOPD to pause their use of the controversial surveillance and real time tracking notifications.

As of yesterday, the Justice Department decided to stop investigating civil rights accusations previously made against LSP, while Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and his long time friend Attorney General Liz Murrill, were reported to have celebrated the decision.

TL;DR: If you want to customize Firefox using Enterprise Polices, you can create customized policies via the handy Enterprise Policy Generator. You can also browse a collection of policies I created, available for download.

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

OC by @Charger8232@lemmy.ml

This is original content. AI was not used anywhere except for the bottom right image, simply because I could not find one similar enough to what I needed. This took around 6 hours to make.

Transcription (for the visually impaired)

(I tried my best)

The background is an iceberg with 6 levels, denoting 6 different levels of privacy.

The tip of the iceberg is titled "The Brainwashed" with a quote beside it that says "I have nothing to hide". The logos depicted in this section are:

• Instagram
• Apple
• TikTok
• PayPal
• Google Chrome
• CashApp
• WhatsApp
• Samsung
• Steam
• Microsoft Windows
• Ring (Security Camera)
• YouTube
• Amazon
• Discord
• Gmail
• ChatGPT

The surface section of the iceberg is titled "As seen on TV" with a quote beside it that says "This video is sponsored by...". The logos depicted in this section are:

• NordVPN
• Bitdefender
• Incogni
• Malwarebytes
• Opera GX
• ExpressVPN

An underwater section of the iceberg is titled "The Beginner" with a quote beside it that says "I don't like hackers and spying". The logos depicted in this section are:

• Telegram
• Authy
• Brave Browser
• Privacy.com (Virtual Cards)
• DuckDuckGo
• iMessage
• Proton Mail
• AdBlock (Browser Extension)

A lower section of the iceberg is titled "The Privacy Enthusiast" with a quote beside it that says "I have nothing I want to show". The logos depicted in this section are:

• Signal (Messenger)
• Tuta
• addy.io
• Linux
• Bitwarden
• uBlock Origin
• Tor and Tor Browser
• ProtonVPN

An even lower section of the iceberg is titled "The Privacy Activist" with a quote beside it that says "Privacy is a human right". The logos depicted in this section are:

• Monero
• GrapheneOS
• Vanadium (Web Browser)
• KeePassDX
• SimpleX Chat
• Accrescent
• SearXNG
• Aegis Authenticator
• OpenWrt
• Mullvad VPN
• An illustration of physical cash

The lowest portion of the iceberg is titled "The Ghost". There is a quote beside it that has been intentionally redacted. The images depicted in this section are:

• A cancel sign over a mobile phone, symbolizing "no electronics"
• An illustration of a log cabin, symbolizing "living in a log cabin in the woods"
• A picture of gold bars, symbolizing "paying only in gold"
• A picture of a death certificate, symbolizing "faking your own death"
• An AI generated picture of a person wearing a black hoodie, a baseball cap, a face mask, and reflective sunglasses, symbolizing "hiding ones identity in public"

End of transcription.

• In December, an investigation by Tom's Hardware found that Recall frequently captured sensitive information in its screenshots, including credit card numbers and Social Security numbers — even though its "filter sensitive information" setting was supposed to prevent that from happening.

glitr.io

im working on a p2p file transfer app. at the moment its a close-source webapp, but i hope to work towards some selfhosted options as seen on my other projects.

the storage is local-only from your browser/device. so like "the cloud", but the cloud storage capacity is made up of your devices.

ive recently updated the landing page and i hope ive got it as simple as possible to transfer a file from one device to another.

im looking for feedback on the experience.

(Note 1: its still a work in progress. if there is an issue, you can usually refresh the browser and try again)

(Note 2: it seems important to mention: this app is not libre software. This needs more consideration to see if I can align to this. For similar open-source projects, take a look at the docs.)

I recently stumbled upon Keet, which is a peer to peer messaging app with video calls and file sharing.

This app has a lot going for it:

• The user experience is really good
• Free and open source
• Privacy friendly (no datacentre, server or middleman between you and the people you are talking to)
• Better quality since there's no throttling of traffic
• No file size limit

I'm baffled that this app seems like a well kept secret, so I just wanted to share it with you guys.

To me, peer to peer technology seems really interesting because it addresses the root cause of many of the harms that plagues the modern day internet: surveillance, platform silos, the market dominance of multi-national tech-conglomerates, energy usage of datacentres, etc.

What do you think? Can P2P be the solution to these problems?

I know I could and should encrypt whole drives but I want another layer of protect specific folders when my devices are unlocked, a password. I want the folders to behave like regular folders where I can add or remove files as usual, without a clunky UX like password protected zips. I looked it up and didn't find any straightforward solutions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31957116

Millions of Americans have downloaded apps that secretly route their internet traffic through Chinese companies, according to an investigation by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), including several that were recently owned by a sanctioned firm with links to China’s military.

TTP’s investigation found that one in five of the top 100 free virtual private networks in the U.S. App Store during 2024 were surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies, which are obliged to hand over their users’ browsing data to the Chinese government under the country’s national security laws. Several of the apps traced back to Qihoo 360, a firm declared by the Defense Department to be a “Chinese Military Company." Qihoo did not respond to questions about its app-related holdings.

[...]

VPNs allow users to mask the IP address that can identify them, and, in theory, keep their internet browsing private. For that reason, they have been used by people around the world to sidestep government censorship or surveillance, or because they believe it will improve their online security. In the U.S., kids often download free VPNs to play games or access social media during school hours.

However, VPNs can themselves pose serious risks because the companies that provide them can read all the internet traffic routed through them. That risk is compounded in the case of Chinese apps, given China’s strict laws that can force companies in that country to secretly share access to their users’ data with the government.

[...]

The VPN apps identified by TTP have been downloaded more than 70 million times from U.S. app stores, according to data from AppMagic, a mobile apps market intelligence firm.

[...]

The findings raise questions about Apple’s carefully cultivated reputation for protecting user privacy. The company has repeatedly sought to fend off antitrust legislation designed to loosen its control of the App Store by arguing such efforts could compromise user privacy and security. But TTP’s investigation suggests that Apple is not taking adequate steps to determine who owns the apps it offers its users and what they do with the data they collect. More than a dozen of the Chinese VPNs were also available in Apple’s App Store in France in late February, showing that the issue extends to other Western markets.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23777198

especially estonians

Fastbackgroundcheck. com says there's info on me on truthfinder, spokeo, peoplefinders and instantcheckmate. When I try going through all four of those sites takes a super long time, including a few times in the past when I tried getting reports on myself.

The progress bars reach 100% and reset continously. If these sites are legimate like some reddit users claim, then why or be upfront about wanting me to pay? Right now I'm convinced that these sites are snake oil, maybe they work if you pay but the behavior of the free options turn me off. They act 100% like typical scam websites, the kind that asks you to complete three surveys on external sites with fake progress bars.

Basic info like my full name, address, age, and siblings can be found with search engines easily but I feel like there's no point in trying to wipe it if there aren't methods that could definitely work.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19675447

Archived version

Here is an Invidious link for the video (and 'Lola' part starts at ~5 minutes)

To demonstrate this, Sadoun introduces the audience to “Lola,” a hypothetical young woman who represents the typical web user that Publicis now has data about. “At a base level, we know who she is, what she watches, what she reads, and who she lives with,” Sadoun says. “Through the power of connected identity, we also know who she follows on social media, what she buys online and offline, where she buys, when she buys, and more importantly, why she buys.”

It gets worse. “We know that Lola has two children and that her kids drink lots of premium fruit juice. We can see that the price of the SKU she buys has been steadily rising on her local retailer’s shelf. We can also see that Lola’s income has not been keeping pace with inflation. With CoreAI, we can predict that Lola has a high propensity to trade down to private label,” Sadoun says, meaning that the algorithm apprehends whether Lola is likely to start buying a cheaper brand of juice. If the software decides this is the case, the CoreAI algo can automatically start showing Lola ads for those reduced price juice brands, Sadoun says.

TL;DR: With Firefox 56, Mozilla combined Firefox Health Report and Telemetry data into a single setting called “technical and interaction data”, which was then enabled by default. This data was then shared with advertising partners on a de-identified or aggregated basis.