-
Across Civil Society you can almost hear the mumbling of activists suddenly staring at their shoes wondering if they now have to defend AI & “Effective Altruism” against Trump
ZOMG! Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk | The Verge https://www.theverge.com/policy/886632/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-ai-standoff archived at https://archive.ph/2026.02.27-231311/https://www.theverge.com/policy/886632/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-ai-standoff Anthropic response & rebuttal: https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war
-
The Wyoming GRANITE Act, America’s first-ever foreign censorship shield bill, has PASSED the Wyoming House of Representatives, 46-12! | Preston Byrne
If Wyoming pass such a law then the chances of it being replicated at a federal level are greatly increased: “BREAKING: the Wyoming GRANITE Act, America’s first-ever foreign censorship shield bill, has PASSED the Wyoming House of Representatives, 46-12! On to the Wyoming Senate!”
-
“Google and Apple today announced that testing of encrypted RCS messaging between Android and iPhone is now underway” | Yay, more end-to-end encryption!
My understanding is that the RCS E2EE test is available globally, except for China & France. Yes, really. https://9to5google.com/2026/02/23/google-messages-encrypted-rcs-iphone/ Google and Apple today announced that testing of encrypted RCS messaging between Android and iPhone is now underway […] In the iOS Messages app, green bubbles will be prefaced by “Text Message · RCS | [lock
-
Thought for the day: Online Safety and Age Verification
The Online Safety Act has made the United Kingdom the least-safe place to develop and build software to connect people, online.
Fediverse reactions
-
US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy explains that maybe age verification is not about child protection
[…] Child protection is a goal we share, but anyone who wants to force you to identify yourself to the government as a precondition for querying or speaking on the internet has other goals in mind.
Fediverse reactions
-
UK Govt to demand AgeVerification of “ALL regulated user-to-user” services, and VPNs for anyone under 18; well that would end online anonymity in the UK…
…or else it’ll just teach the teens to download TorBrowser and other circumvention tools. See page 54 & 55 of the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/64773/documents/7791
Fediverse reactions
-
I have a TCP/UDP port number, a patent*, a USENET** moderatorship, an RFC, and an Erdos Number of 2 twice over; it’s probably time for me to write that book
[*] just the one, before I learnt that patents are really evil [**] RIP
Fediverse reactions
-
Businesses may be caught by government proposals to restrict VPN use | Computer Weekly
The government’s announcement to limit the use of VPNs by under 16s is part of a wider proposal to restrict the use of social media by school-age children unveiled by the UK prime minister on Monday. However, it is unclear how the proposals will affect businesses, including small companies, that rely on VPNs to secure
Fediverse reactions
-
OFCOM update: so apparently the embargoed press-release email was circulated to one (more?) of their general discussion maillists, which I feel symbolic of their approach towards security
Highlights are as follows:
Fediverse reactions
-
HEADSUP: Ofcom *tonight* to announce demand for apps, websites to deploy “hash matching” (i.e. client-side scanning, fuzzy matching) of uploaded images “to protect children”
privacy impact: logfiles of fuzzy-matching hash databases become long-term surveillance pipeline to retrospectively track whistleblower leak images, Snowden 2.0, etc; plus enabling censorship of arbitrary content. WATCH THIS SPACE; ETA 2230H LONDON.
Fediverse reactions