"We recently announced the completion of our migration to remove all traces of disks in use on our VPN infrastructure."

"Today we can announce more steps forward - our Encrypted DNS service has also been converted to run from RAM!"

I've got a mate whos a big fan of Bourbon. He's tried all the standard brands like Buffalo Trace, JD, Jim Beam and Wild Turkey.

I want to get him a bottle for Xmas of something he might not have tried before, something I can say was recommended by Americans as a good bourbon. Doesn't need to be some weird flavour like Red Stag, just old fashioned American bourbon that maybe flies under the radar in other countries.

I don't know if this is 100% strictly privacy related but I think it does fall in the sphere of protecting one's right to express oneself privately.

"Government officials have drawn up deeply controversial proposals to broaden the definition of extremism to include anyone who “undermines” the country’s institutions and its values, according to documents seen by the Observer.

The new definition, prepared by civil servants working for cabinet minister Michael Gove, is fiercely opposed by a cohort of officials who fear legitimate groups and individuals will be branded extremists.

The proposals have provoked a furious response from civil rights groups with some warning it risks “criminalising dissent”, and would significantly suppress freedom of expression."

Recently a European Court has judged that Meta's way of collecting and using people's data in Europe has been in violation of privacy regulations between 2018 and 2023. Now Meta announced an option of Facebook and Instagram without personalized ads for 120 euros per year. European users would have the option to pay or agree to personalized ads. But is your right to privacy for sale? Let's find out!

Meta has officially confirmed its decision to introduce a subscription plan for ad-free access to Instagram and Facebook for users in the European Union, EEA, and Switzerland. This move comes a few weeks after Meta first considered the idea, amidst regulatory pressure from the EU regarding the company's ad targeting and data gathering practices.

The subscription plan is priced at €9.99 per month for web users, while iOS and Android users will have to pay €12.99 per month. Users who opt not to subscribe can still use the services for free, but will continue to see targeted ads.

Until March 1, 2024, the initial subscription will cover all linked accounts in a user’s Accounts Center. However, from March 1, 2024, an additional fee of €6 per month for web users and €8 per month for iOS and Android users will be charged for each extra account listed in a user’s Account Center.

"A company which enables its clients to search a database of billions of images scraped from the internet for matches to a particular face has won an appeal against the UK's privacy watchdog.

Last year, Clearview AI was fined more than £7.5m by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for unlawfully storing facial images.

Privacy International (who helped bring the original case I believe) responded to this on Mastodon:

"The first 33 pages of the judgment explain with great detail and clarity why Clearview falls squarely within the bounds of GDPR. Clearview's activities are entirely "related to the monitoring of behaviour" of UK data subjects.

In essence, what Clearview does is large-scale processing of a highly intrusive nature. That, the Tribunal agreed.

BUT in the last 2 pages the Tribunal tells us that because Clearview only sells to foreign governments, it doesn't fall under UK GDPR jurisdiction.

So Clearview would have been subject to GDPR if it sold its services to UK police or government authorities or commercial entities, but because it doesn't, it can do whatever the hell it wants with UK people's data - this is at best puzzling, at worst nonsensical."

I've done god only knows how many searches looking for a solution to this with no joy so any help you can offer would be great.

I'm after an image editor that has the following:

1. Must be PHP or JavaScript (even jQuery) or some combo of the two
2. Must allow images to be uploaded
3. Must allow text to be dynamically added, resized, color changed and positioned
4. Must allow fonts to be chosen from a list of fonts I upload to the server, not the basic browser fonts or Google Fonts etc.
5. Must allow generation and download of new image based on the old image + the added text

This is for my users, none of whom are experienced enough to do offline image editing.

A viral TikTok account is doxing ordinary and otherwise anonymous people on the internet using off-the-shelf facial recognition technology, creating content and growing a following by taking advantage of a fundamental new truth: privacy is now essentially dead in public spaces.

From the article:

Senior officials at the Home Office secretly lobbied the UK’s independent privacy regulator to act “favourably” towards a private firm keen to roll out controversial facial recognition technology across the country, according to internal government emails seen by the Observer.

Correspondence reveals that the Home Office wrote to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) warning that policing minister, Chris Philp, would “write to your commissioner” if the regulator’s investigation into Facewatch – whose facial recognition cameras have provoked huge opposition after being installed in shops – was not positive towards the firm.

Just passing on a tip from FediTips I didn't know about. Using the format

(server)/tags/(hashtag without the #).rss

Your RSS Reader can follow hashtags e.g.

https://mstdn.social/tags/dogs.rss

You can see everything with the hashtag 'dogs' on mstd.social and every instance mstdn.social can see.

Today we announce that we have completely removed all traces of disks being used by our VPN infrastructure!

Dark day for online privacy in the UK.