https://xcancel.com/GlobeEyeNews/status/2006995809632661935

But in all seriousness, this is a continuation of a previous post, namely: https://programming.dev/post/43003673

TLDR

I wanted to contribute to decentralization and to fighting censorship from home. This is were the project is right now. I bought shower rack, discarded its wheels and just attached it - with wires, ouch - to the underside of a shallow support table on which my TV stands.

1a

I get my 1 Gpsb connection from a pretty generous ISP. For one, they hand out static public IP addresses for free! Not that I understand what that would cost any ISP...

1b

The connection is distributed with a gigabit switch - which by the way supports jumbo frames 🤙 - to two routers.

2a - router one

This router is configured to route everything through a WireGuard interface (peers set to some Mullvad server, been "subscribed" for over six years now). Everything that goes through this router is encrypted. Too bad they still don't support DAITA on routers... I'm working on a workaround though, where I'm playing with the thought of forwarding traffic within a Linux machine through its DAITA-enabled Mullvad app, but that's another story...

3a - access point one

This is where I access the internet whenever I need encryption. Both wirelessly and wired. Here you will find endpoints such as PCs, smartphones and my only one IoT - a vacuum. This is also where a PC is running an i2pd daemon to share some bandwidth and a Snowflake proxy to enable Tor for people that live in places that ban normal Tor connections.

2b and 3b - router and access point two

Router two simply routes traffic between my unencrypted LAN and my ISP. No WireaGuard interface, just a WAN. Access point two is where I access my various servers residing in 4b. They are, for now, a Tor bridge. Upcoming: A Headscale "server"? Because the Tailscale control server one of the few parts of Tailscale that aren't open source.

Hardware and software

• 1a - some ONT provided by the city
• 1b - TL-SG105E
• 2a,2b - Raspberry Pi 4 with OpenWrt
• 3a - ASUS RT-AX58U with Asuswrt Merlin
• 3b - ASUS RT-AX58U v2 with Asuswrt Merlin NG
• 4b - Raspberry Pi 5 with Raspberry Pi OS Lite

Good night

Searching for Web browsers in the Aurora Store and checking for trackers I was really surprise that TOR Browser has 2 trackers according to Exodus. WTF!!!!

https://www.change.org/p/stop-google-from-limiting-apk-file-usage

I hope that my rooted One UI 7 doesn't get the update through some backdoor in the Google Play Services package... Or the next time I unblock Google Play to update the very few paid apps that I use...

I've found that my circle of contacts use the default messaging app for group chats even more now. I couldn't get them to use Signal but at least they're posting in the RCS group chat more instead of on Meta platforms.

I recently found out that my mobile provider "leaks" (if you can say that) while I've using a VPN. On wifi it is completely fine.

On my phone when I go to the Speedtest app, my Mobile ISP will show up like full name while connected to a VPN. However, if I'm on wifi it will show the VPN's server provider name instead.

Also instead of the wave wifi icon it shows "LTE". Is my mobile data actually leaking even though I'm connected to a VPN? How can I fix this?

So my cousin was here and saw a grocery receipt on the table and asked if I was using it and if he could take a picture of it, I was like what, why?

So, there is this app that pays you some cents for receipt pictures and supposedly it pays you if it finds items that have cashback... shit sounds sketchy as fuck, I saw that on their app they sell credit cards and you can invest in some crap, but what I really found disturbing is this thing about them paying you to send them all your receipts... what the fuck are they doing with that info lol

Crazy stuff, but I'm completely out of touch with cellphone things, is this crap normal??? I was quite shocked by it, and checking the company online, Méliuz, I just see stuff about it buying bitcoin.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7177319

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/15995

The House was debating a powerful National Security Agency spying program when Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., rose to side against privacy hawks.

The spring 2024 debate was over forcing the feds to get a warrant to search foreign communications for intelligence on Americans. Doing so would cost crucial time, Goldman said, citing his own tenure as a federal prosecutor.

“I can say with confidence that requiring a warrant would render this program unusable.”

“Based on that experience, I can say with confidence that requiring a warrant would render this program unusable and entirely worthless,” he said last year. “Even if it were possible, the time required to obtain a search warrant from a judge would frequently fail to meet the urgency posed by a terrorist or other national security threat.”

Goldman’s argument won the day.

Progressives had been rallying around the warrants provision but, under heavy pressure from the Biden administration, enough of them retracted their support and sided with Democrats like Goldman to doom the measure. It lost by a single vote.

With his election victory last November, Donald Trump would inherit the warrantless surveillance powers.

[

Related

Trump Might Get Unfettered Surveillance Powers. How Did We Get Here?](https://theintercept.com/2024/11/05/trump-surveillance-power/)

The April 2024 vote still stings for civil liberties advocates, who thought they could count on progressives as they sought to build a bipartisan coalition with libertarian-minded Republicans. Now they are girding for another battle next April, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is up for reauthorization.

The vote will happen in the middle of a primary season where many incumbents — including Goldman — are trying to burnish their progressive bona fides as they face challenges from the left. Already, some Democrats on a key committee are citing the Trump administration’s approach to privacy to explain their renewed support for a warrant provision.

Whether enough of them flip back could decide the future of one of the most controversial post-September 11 spying programs.

In a statement to The Intercept, Goldman did not commit to supporting a warrant requirement.

“Donald Trump’s blatant weaponization of the federal government makes accounting for potential abuses of power critically important,” Goldman said. “As we work through the FISA reauthorization process next year, I will be especially focused on those concerns, as I have been since Trump took office in January.”

Tie Goes to the Spy

The vote last year capped a monthslong period of intense lobbying pitting the Biden administration against privacy advocates.

Congress passed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008 to give its legal blessing to a massive spying program the administration of George W. Bush had already launched without authorization.

[

Related

Episode Five: What Fourth Amendment?](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/05/collateral-damage-episode-five-fourth-amendment/)

Under the law, the government was allowed to search through reams of surveillance conducted abroad for information on U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The Fourth Amendment did not apply, supporters of the law said, because those communications had been collected from wiretaps and hacks directed abroad by the cyber spies of the NSA.

Critics said that even surveillance directed abroad inevitably hoovers up the emails and text messages of Americans. The FBI, for example, conducted 200,000 “backdoor searches” of American communications in 2022 alone.

In a series of reauthorization battles, civil liberties advocates have squared off against administrations from both parties trying to force government agencies, including the FBI, to get a warrant before they rooted through foreign surveillance for information on Americans.

Advocates have won some procedural reforms but, on the biggest question of a warrant, they have fallen short every time. Last year, the House voted 212–212 on an amendment offered by a conservative Republican that would have added a warrant requirement. Under House rules, a tied vote fails.

The party breakdown showed how much surveillance scrambles typical partisan divides. Eighty-four Democrats and 128 Republicans voted for a warrant requirement, compared to 126 Democrats and 86 Republicans opposed.

Numerous Democrats flipped their vote at the last minute under heavy lobbying from the Biden administration, which took a traditional, centrist view of the need for expansive spying powers to ward off terrorists and other foreign foes.

“Pretty much every single person in the Biden administration was lobbying pretty hard.”

“It was top-to-bottom — pretty much every single person in the Biden administration was lobbying pretty hard,” said Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “There was a lot of fearmongering, which I don’t think was substantiated.”

Supporters of the Biden administration offered some cover to the lawmakers who switched their way by including modest, procedural reforms in the legislation.

The last-minute flippers included several members of the House Judiciary Committee, which traditionally has favored privacy protections more than members of the Intelligence Committee, who have overlapping jurisdiction over foreign surveillance.

It was hardly surprising that Democrats buckled under pressure from the Biden administration, but it was shortsighted, civil liberties advocates say.

[

Related

Top Senator Warns Sweeping New Surveillance Powers Will “Inevitably Be Misused” by Trump](https://theintercept.com/2024/12/18/trump-fisa-surveillance-spying/)

“In 2024, it was already clear that Donald Trump and the people around him might well return to power,” said Sean Vitka, executive director of the progressive group Demand Progress. “Some Democrats refused to install guardrails when they had the chance.”

Even worse from the perspective of civil liberties advocates, many Democrats voted to further expand the foreign spying law with a new provision that would allow the government to force “electronic communication service providers” — including, potentially, nonprofits, political campaigns, or news organizations — to help it spy.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., warned that that power will “inevitably be misused.”

House Judiciary Firms Up

With Trump in the White House, some of the Democrats who voted against a warrant provision seem to be warming up to the idea, according to their comments at a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on FISA reform.

Several Democrats who advocates were counting on last time — including now-ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who eventually voted against the warrant requirement — spoke in favor of passing further reforms next year.

Democrats at the hearing put the Section 702 program, named for the law that gives the surveillance power, in the larger context of the Trump administration’s erasure of privacy safeguards, including efforts to combine previously siloed Social Security, IRS, and student loan databases.

“In 2025, we no longer have to wonder if we were right to worry.”

They also pointed out that, when it came to Section 702, Trump has gutted the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and FBI Director Kash Patel has eliminated an office tasked with auditing the FBI’s use of the surveillance program.

Raskin said the results of a two-year “experiment” with modest FISA reforms have been “alarming.”

“For years, the leaders of this committee have warned of how executive branch surveillance powers could be abused by a president who didn’t care about protecting civil liberties, who used cutting-edge technology to spy on Americans, and who ignored basic principles of due process and constitutional freedom to achieve their own ends,” he said. “In 2025, we no longer have to wonder if we were right to worry.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., voted against a warrant requirement last year but spoke in broad favor of reforms at the hearing. His office did not comment on whether that includes a warrant requirement.

Moskowitz’s primary challenger Oliver Larkin, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, said in a statement that he supports forcing the government to get a warrant.

“Rep. Moskowitz has put civil society, political opponents, minority and undocumented communities, and journalists at risk of the Trump administration’s privacy abuses and political targeting of dissent,” Larkin said.

Another Judiciary Committee member who voted against a warrant requirement, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., did not respond to a request for comment. His left-leaning primary challenger, Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson, said in a statement that he supports a warrant provision.

“Democrats should be opposed to warrantless government surveillance no matter which party the president represents,” he said. “It should not have taken Donald Trump’s second election for some members of our party to finally stand up for their constituents’ basic civil liberties.”

Will GOP Cave?

The problem for civil liberties advocates going into the April reauthorization is that they now face losing some of the Republicans who rallied to their side the last time.

“People tend to be more skeptical about executive authority when the president is a president from the different party,” Hamadanchy said.

They are also unclear on two key questions: Just how many Democrats will flip back, and where Trump will land on the issue.

Some Democrats seem to be holding firm on their opposition to a warrant requirement despite challenges from the left. During an April committee hearing, Goldman said the FISA debate “pales in comparison” to the privacy violations being committed under the auspices of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Goldman, who is positioning himself as a progressive in his primary race, citing his support for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, is facing a challenge from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.

“Brad would vote to add a warrant requirement,” said a spokesperson for the Lander campaign. “The Trump administration’s abuse of power has highlighted the need for stronger 4th Amendment protections and now more than ever the House should take action to protect people’s privacy.”

Lander’s entry into New York’s 10th Congressional District race gives civil liberties advocates a vessel to challenge Goldman on the issue. Another Democrat who spoke on the House floor against the warrant requirement, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., has not drawn a primary challenger yet.

Trump is a bigger enigma. In 2018, his first administration opposed a warrant requirement, but last year he briefly urged Republicans to “KILL FISA” — apparently because he confused the 702 surveillance program with another that was used to spy on an adviser to his 2016 presidential campaign.

In support of the current law, surveillance hawks will likely cite the findings of a recent report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General.

Based on internal oversight reports from the DOJ’s National Security Division, the inspector general said, “it appears that the FBI is no longer engaging in the widespread noncompliant querying of U.S. persons that was pervasive just a few years ago.”

The report came with a crucial caveat. The inspector general relied on the FBI’s audits rather than conducting its own reviews of agents’ searches. The April 2024 to April 2025 period the report covered also meant that it tracked only a few weeks of Patel’s tenure.

The post Dan Goldman Supported Warrantless Spying on Americans. Now His Primary Opponent Is Hitting Him for It. appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

I personally love proton pass’s frontend app, but i don’t wanna host my data on proton’s servers(personal reasons). Is there any other password managers that support iOS, android, and browser extension, that is as good. (I tried bitwarden wasn’t good cuz on mobile I had to reenter master pass over and over. I tried keypassxc, but the frontend sucks and dealing with syncing between devices is a pain in the ass.) I appreciate everyone’s help!

Page 35. I haven't confirmed anything, so do your own research!

Happy new privacy respecting year!

According to a complaint filed by the U.S. Justice Department, following a referral from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Disney allegedly failed to tag kid-directed videos on YouTube as "Made for Kids" (MFK), a label that instructs YouTube to block personal data collection and stop displaying personalized ads on correctly designated content to protect children's privacy.

Regarding PGP being used between 2 providers, eg Google and Proton, what prevents Google from viewing the messages client side after they’ve been decrypted?

Learned a lot from this essay/presentation. One point that I "liked" is how Trump and US based big tech virtually (pun intended) hold other countries hostage, either with export/import tariffs or by threatening to stop trade ("adapt this policy or forget about trading with us") or with sensitive data.

Also, this is the organization that he is working for. They have some tools for and guides on privacy too: https://www.eff.org/

Late night reading. :)

Hey everyone,

I have a free protonmail account for years now and will be losing access to my (main) university mail soon. My proton mail is filling up and I will need a reliable personal mail address going forward.

What is the current status with privacy oriented mail providers in the EU? I am willing to pay for my mail service but ideally not too much, protonmail is 4€/mo which is a bit much I think.

What is the general opinion now after some months on the protonmail ceo? Will the Swiss privacy laws cause issues soon? What about tuta and mailbox.org? I think I want to switch to my own domain soon so supporting custom domains is definitely something I look for. Also the ability to use imap and not have a separate app would be good.

Last time I checked half a year ago I found mailbox to be the best compromise but I decided it’s not worth the hassle yet to deal with my mail provider.

edit: I changed my location and that seems to have worked for now. still a strange thing that it was localhost and not "site blocked" or something if my location was the issue. my VPN (ExpressVPN) was set to NJ. I switched to Toronto. ___ 🤷

hi all!!

has anyone else had this issue and been able to fix it? it happens on any browser (vivaldi, brave, lightning, vivandium...), phone or desktop, if I'm connected to my VPN.

I'm using startpage specifically because it's supposed to be privacy-focused... I don't want to keep disconnecting my VPN every time I have to make a search.

(internet connection is working perfectly and no issues with other sites)

(I have some other search engines I use for specific things, but looking to troubleshoot this if anyone knows the solution...)

Is it worth unlocking the bootloader on my phone? It's a Samsung with One UI 7.0 (I've been avoiding upgrading to 8.0 since they don't let you unlock it after that). I just want to avoid having Google Services and AI installed. I use my phone to take photos of my art / send it to friends on signal and hate the idea of it being scanned by AI. I use a camera and gallery from fdroid but somehow the default photos app still has access (I know because it makes GIFs of pictures I took even though I marked permissions as "not allowed"). I also would love to get rid of the default apps I don't use. While I can unlock the bootloader (for now), I can't install a custom ROM because there are none compatible with my phone, so will I just be forced into using 8.0 at some point anyway? :( ATP I'm pretty much ready to give up smartphones and get a digital camera for anything I don't feel comfortable feeding to tech companies.

I used to run this already sketchy software with its even sketchier crack on my old notebook because I really didn't give a fuck about how syphilitic it was, but now that I need it again and only have my current device, I'm kinda worried.

ps: it needs internet connection.

TLDR: 1) I recommend the cyber security related podcast Jack Rhysider's Darknet Diaries. 2) This seemingly (former) normie guy who got hacked and then recovered gave me some insight into how cybercrime can affect people.

Probably more related to cyber security and hygiene in general rather than pure privacy.

I follow the amazing Jack Rhysider's Darknet Diaries and came across this video in one of his playlists on his YouTube channel.

I appreciate and admire people who work with cyber security on either red or blue teams. I am also a huge fan of hackers that use their skills to stand up against oppressive regimes or for instance those hilarious guys that make videos of when they hack scammers.

I mean, I obviously realize logically speaking that it must be a truly awful and horrible experience to become the victim of a sinister and malicious cybercrime, but until I saw this video, I had never really felt it. And I still haven't been a victim myself. I've invested a lot of time and energy in learning IT and networking in order to stay safe, both against private individuals but also against state level actors. But that's a different story.

It's heartbreaking to hear how the hacker turned his hopes and dreams upsidedown, almost making him want to quit. Hats off for you (young?) man! His dexterity is fucking next level and it's inspirational!

Sorry if this is yesterday's news to you all, but I just found out about this Android app that makes it easier - as in, less steps - to encrypt and send any message in a highlight-copy-paste fashion, with automatic integration in several e-mail front ends.

It still receives security updates and the repo is still maintained, but the app is no longer being actively developed to add new features. https://github.com/open-keychain/open-keychain

There is a lot of totalitarian shit going on, this being only one of the recent tragedies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fshsk8MCAf4

I always try to say to myself: don't wallow in grief, organize and act!

Except for advocating for online privacy in one's everyday life and being politically active when I have the ability to, do you have any tips on what one can contribute with technologically, from home?

I have:

• A 1Gbps up/down connection
• An RTX 3080
• A few Raspberry Pi:s
• 20TB storage
• A static public IP if I ask for it

What I have found so far:

• running a Tor bridge or guard/middld relay - bridge for the sake of our peers living in places where Tor in inaccessible and middle relay to contribute with bandwidth
• running a Monero node - although my GPU is LHR, so perhaps it wouldn't contribute much to decentralization...?

Smart TVs with an internet connection: Lets grab screenshots and send them to cooperate analysis advertisement department.