What's wrong with EU age verification? (Nothing) https://lobste.rs/s/29laqs #privacy
https://blog.vrypan.net/2026/06/29/260629-whats-wrong-with-eu-age-verification/

"2025 saw a new college of European Commissioners in office and, with that, the beginning of an era of deregulation under the guise of ‘simplification’ and ‘competitiveness’. Many vital EU regulations – from laws that protect labour and social rights, to environmental protections – have been targeted in these efforts and the digital rulebook has not been spared.

Armed with a new strategy, EDRi held the line to protect and promote digital rights and justice. It took a leading role in the EU’s broadest and most diverse coalition of civil society, trade unions, and public interest groups from various sectors. These groups have joined forces in response to the ongoing and anticipated wave of drastic cuts to this vital legislation. In October, EDRi hosted a two-day summit for over 100 European delegates, unifying their opposition to the deregulation agenda through shared strategy and storytelling. This culminated on 19 November — the launch date of the controversial Digital Omnibus — with a massive billboard campaign across Brussels urging the EU to prioritise people’s rights over the interests of Big Tech.

These are just a couple of the milestones we have achieved this year, but there is much more to be proud of. Read about our network’s achievements in the annual report, which was validated by EDRi members at our May 2026 General Assembly."

https://edri.org/our-work/edri-annual-report-2025-championing-digital-rights-in-the-eu-deregulation-era/

#EU #DigitalRights #Privacy #DataProtection #AISafety #Deregulation

Post 1/3

I ordered my firewall/router upgrade today. Not the bleeding edge, but solid enterprise-grade hardware that punches above its weight class.

The Core Unit (Lanner NCA-1515A):
CPU: Intel Atom C3758 8-Core Denverton
RAM: 16GB ECC DDR4 (expandable to 32GB)
Storage: 512GB SSD
Networking: 6x GbE RJ45 + 2x GbE SFP slots
Crypto: Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT)

#Homelab #OpenSource #Privacy #SelfHosted #OpnSense #FOSS

IMO the situation with Mullvad CEO's donation to a red-brown tankie party (funny ppl call it fascist because it seems to be actually an authoritarian leftwing party, like George Galloway's WPGB) proves one crucial thing: if majority of workers don't have a say about company ethics and there's no transparency wrt donations related to politics by upper management, then they'll continue doing this.

after all, CEOs will care about themselves first and foremost.

#Privacy #Mullvad #VPN

Voicebox is a free and open-source AI voice studio that runs entirely on your computer.

It lets you clone voices, generate speech, transcribe audio with Whisper, and use voice dictation without sending recordings to the cloud. It also supports multiple TTS engines and MCP integration for AI assistants.

More details: https://digitalescapetools.com/tools/tool.html?id=voicebox

#OpenSource #AI #Privacy #SelfHosted #Linux #Windows #macOS #SpeechToText #TextToSpeech

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Screenshot of the Voicebox project page featuring a gold microphone icon and the title "Voicebox." The page describes it as an open-source AI voice studio that runs entirely on your computer, allowing users to clone voices, generate speech, dictate into any application, and interact with AI agents using custom voices. Project badges show approximately 1.4 million downloads, version 0.5.0, 36k GitHub stars, an MIT license, and a link to DeepWiki.

Let's get this out of the way: corporations like Google that have been busily scraping users' data to feed their monstrosities don't give a hoot about privacy. This response isn't about privacy or cybercrime. It's about Google trying to protect its own.

Google says EU proposals to open up its search data and Android operating system to competitors "could lead to people’s search queries being hacked and an increase in cybercrime across the content."

Wired: Top Google Security Staff Warn Search Data Could Be Hacked if EU Rules Change https://www.wired.com/story/top-google-security-staff-warn-search-data-could-be-hacked-thanks-to-eu-plans/ @WIRED @mattburgess #Google #infosec #privacy #Android

Mullvad's co-founder is bankrolling the far right

https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html

#HackerNews #Mullvad #FarRight #Funding #Controversy #Privacy #TechNews

Democrats & Republicans’ KIDS Act would push online age verification, forcing platforms to collect more identity data—undermining anonymity for everyone, especially journalists and whistleblowers. Mandating verification can hand government a “skeleton key” to sources, not make kids safer. 🗞️🔍🚫 https://theintercept.com/2026/06/28/age-verification-privacy-surveillance-journalists-whistleblowers/ #FirstAmendment #Privacy #PressFreedom #Whistleblowing

This is a very important bi-partisan privacy issue, and for anyone who is interested in free journalism, a must-read. It also has a section about Vimeo.

"Big Brother is watching you" - George Orwell's 1984.

Engadget, from yesterday: Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast https://www.engadget.com/2203000/flock-cameras-recording-license-plate/ @Engadget #Flock #surveillance #privacy

„A Double Threat“: The EU Revives Chat Control 1.0 in the Same Week That Negotiations on Version 2.0 Are Wrapping Up

Last week, I wrote about Monday’s final meeting on the „Chat Control“ regulation. At that time, there was only one outstanding issue on the table. It was…

https://vsx.global/a-double-threat-the-eu-is-reviving-chat-control-1-0-in-the-same-week-that-negotiations-on-version-2-0-are-wrapping-up/

#infosec #privacy #opensource #digitalsovereignty