Encryption

Lieutenant General Timothy D. Haugh is very clear on section 702:

"In my experience it is absolutely essential," he told lawmakers.

New York Times on Section 702: https://www.nytimes.com/article/warrantless-surveillance-section-702.html

A very "good" designed power point of section 702 by the US government: https://www.dni.gov/files/icotr/Section702-Basics-Infographic.pdf

The law text and section 702 (page 4), I had to search way too long to get to that, mostly you just find an overview by a three letter agency to justify the section. It is like the government does not want that you read it in full: https://www.congress.gov/110/plaws/publ261/PLAW-110publ261.pdf

I use Fedora as my main distro and was already playing with the idea of switching to another one because of RedHats (or IBMs) decision to partially close the source code.

This made my decision, I will abonden Fedora. Which is sad because the OS is overall a great distro and runs stable (especially with Sway) but the decisions regarding RedHat products just go in a very wrong direction...

Meta is one of the biggest privacy offenders,, not suprising that they already seem to break EU privacy law.

Some section sof the article:

Upcoming data privacy regulations are preventing Meta's new microblogging app "Threads" from launching in European Union (EU) markets. Experts say this is only the beginning of the privacy battle facing the Twitter clone.

Judging by its entry in the Apple app store, it's no wonder that Threads is being shielded from EU scrutiny. Browsing history, geolocations, health and financial information, and much more are all up for grabs. There's even a dedicated category for "sensitive information" which, according to Apple's documentation, includes "racial or ethnic data, sexual orientation, pregnancy or childbirth information, disability, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, political opinion, genetic information, or biometric data."

I'm still reading into it but this seems to be another step of the UK-Gov to further attack the privacy of their citizens and to circumvent EU privacy laws.

Short section of the article:

It would authorize the UK government to issue political directions to the UK data protection body, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the groups say. And it would enable the sharing of European personal data to other countries with reduced protections.

And as it seems (not suprising), the UK already has applied to the APEC-Framework Cross-Border data transfer:

The UK, the groups observe, has already applied to join the US-backed Cross-Border Privacy Rules Declaration, which allows international data transfers under the arguably weak Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework.

Bill Law text: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-protection-and-digital-information-bill-impact-assessments/data-protection-and-digital-information-no-2-bill-european-convention-on-human-rights-memorandum#summary-of-the-bill

Open letter against this bill: https://peoplevsbig.tech/open-letter-to-the-eu-commission-regarding-uk-s-data-bill

Edit:

• Added EU to the country tag because it also concerns EU citizens.
• Added the APEC section

cross-posted from: https://feddit.ch/post/86033

Apparently in France it is an act of terrorist behaviour to use VPNs, Signal, encrypted drives etc.

A short section of the article:

“All members contacted adopted a clandestine behaviour, with increased security of means of communication (encrypted applications, Tails operating system, TOR protocol enabling anonymous browsing on the Internet and public wifi)”.

General Directorate for Internal Security (Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure, DGSI)

“All members of this group were particularly suspicious, only communicating with each other using encrypted applications, in particular Signal, and encrypting their computers and devices […].

Open Letter from researchers against the online safety bill: https://haddadi.github.io/UKOSBOpenletter.pdf

Online safety bill law text: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-02/0285/210285.pdf

A section of the bill that shows the reach:

A person commits an offence if, in response to an information notice, the person—

(a) provides information which is encrypted such that it is not possible for OFCOM to understand it, or produces a document which is encrypted such that it is not possible for OFCOM to understand the information it contains, and (b) the person’s intention was to prevent OFCOM from understanding such information.

Edits:

• Added link to open letter of researchers
• Added link to law text
• Added section of the law text