Privacy

I know it's not exactly hot news, but I entirely missed the article, so here you go.

From Cult of the Dead Cow, Veilid allows anyone to build a distributed, private app. Veilid will give users the privacy to opt out of data collection, and online tracking. Veilid is being built with user experience, privacy, and safety as our top priority. It will be open sourced and available to everyone to use and build upon, with flagship apps available from the launch.

We all deserve privacy in our communications, and part of that is trusting that the government will only access them within the limits of the law. But at this point, it’s crystal clear that the FBI doesn’t believe that either our rights nor the limitations that Congress has placed upon the bureau matter when it comes to the vast amount of information about us collected under FISA Section 702.

The latest exhibit in this is in yet another newly declassified opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). This opinion further reiterates what we already know, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation simply cannot be trusted with conducting foreign intelligence queries on American persons. Regardless of the rules, or consistent FISC disapprovals, the FBI continues to act in a way that shows no regard for privacy and civil liberties.

According to the declassified FISC ruling, despite paper reforms which the FBI has touted that it put into place to respond to the last time it was caught violating U.S. law, the Bureau conducted four queries for the communications of a state senator and a U.S. senator. And they did so without even meeting their own already-inadequate standards for these kinds of searches.

How many times will the FBI get caught with their hand in the cookie jar of our constitutionally protected private communications without losing these invasive and unconstitutional powers?

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Apple has warned that it will shut down services such as FaceTime and iMessage in the U.K. if the government goes ahead with controversial legislation.

A proposed update to the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 is currently in open consultation. Members of the public are invited to offer feedback on the amendments, which include a requirement for messaging services to notify the Home Office, a department of the British Government that handles immigration, security, and law and order, of new security features before they are rolled out, and the right for the Home Office to privately demand that security features be disabled immediately. Under current legislation, the latter can be requested, but there is an independent oversight process and room for appeal before action is taken.

One of my go to list when I am searching for privacy respecting alternatives.

Hi, so I stumbled on some videos and decided to change my browser and search engine for more privacy. I wrote about it in my blog, hope u find it useful.

Before the API changes Teddit was one of my favorite ways to browse Reddit. It seems like more and more that companies make changes that reduce privacy.

A new deal on data transfers between the EU and US has alarmed businesses and privacy campaigners.

The pact, known as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, was announced on Monday by the European Commission. The EU’s executive body concluded that the US offered an “adequate level of protection” for data transfers under the new arrangements.

The framework replaces the Privacy Shield, which the EU’s top court had struck down in July 2020 over concerns that the US didn’t provide sufficient protection against government surveillance.

Hey all, I've been taking my digital privacy and security much more seriously this year, but the one thing I've been stuck on and feels overwhelming to me is email. So I wanted to know what do you guys use or what practices do you follow? Do you keep a separate email or alias for every single account, or just compartmentalize, like one email address for online shopping, one for business, one personal correspondence, and etc.

What services do you use? Right now I have a free Tutanota and ProtonMail account but haven't decided which one to pay for, if either. ProtonMail makes me iffy with the amount of controversy and debate that has come out of them in recent years even though it comes with a lot of other nice stuff like cloud storage and a vpn. Tutanota I just dislike the fact I can't add it to third party mail apps like Thunderbird, but this might not be a deal breaker. I know there are others, so what do you guys use? I don't need something to protect my emails from the NSA or organizations like that but definitely something more private and secure than gmail. Thanks.

It is important to note that although this may be a result of Reddit's UI not displaying the content users posted to now-private subreddits, it remains a problem. Additionally, I agree with the author's comments in the video description, as it appears strategically unrealistic for Reddit to ask that users manually delete the content themselves.

This is particularly true when considering that many automated methods to accomplish this task will be hindered by Reddit's upcoming API pricing changes. Furthermore, Reddit has demonstrated a recurring pattern of rolling back databases using historical backups, thereby disregarding user deletion requests that were submitted prior to the database rollback.

See similar discussion of this video on Hacker News:

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36482168

In my opinion, considering both usability and privacy:

1. SearxNG/Searx (Selfhosted) +++++
2. SearxNG (Trusted instances: searx.be, paulgo.io) ++++
3. Brave Search +++
4. DuckDuckGo +++
5. Whoogle (Selfhosted) +++
6. Kagi (credit card and name required) ++
7. MetaGer ++
8. Swisscows +
9. StartPage +
10. Qwant +
11. Ecosia +
12. Presearch +
13. You . com +
14. etools .ch ?

Avoid:

• Google
• Bing/Yahoo
• ¿Phind?

More info:

• https://www.searchenginemap.com/
• https://www.privacyguides.org/en/search-engines/

Privacy & Freedom in the Information Age