Wolfie Christl

Opinion | OpenAI Is Making the Mistakes Facebook Made. I Quit.

Former OpenAI researcher Zoë Hitzig is of course right to worry about the fate of the stated 'principles' of ads not interfering with responses in the next iteration.

More remarkable, she quotes German worker co-determination as inspiration for a possible solution:
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are

ICE "agents are tapping into a database, built by the data analytics company Palantir, that combines government and commercial data to identify real-time locations for individuals they are pursuing, the current and former officials said"
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/t...

ICE Asks Companies About ‘Ad Tech and Big Data’ Tools It Could Use in Investigations A new federal filing from ICE demonstrates how commercial tools are increasingly being considered by the government for law enforcement and surveillance.

The latest evidence that broadcasting people’s movements and intimate data in the Real-Time Bidding online advertising system is truly dangerous.

www.wired.com/story/ice-as...

Welcome to the American Winter In the frozen streets of Minneapolis, something profound is happening.

The Atlantic Magazine just dropped a tremendous story on the Minnesota Resistance. The author is a war correspondent & sees the echoes of leaderless community empowerment around the globe: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202... (supposed to be a gift link, might not work, it’s in Apple News, too.)

How surveillance companies track smartphone users through advertising data Companies are offering law enforcement agencies the ability to track smartphone users through advertising data gathered on their devices. Le Monde attended confidential presentations of these new surv...

"Companies are offering law enforcement agencies the ability to track smartphone users through advertising data ... Le Monde attended confidential presentations of these new surveillance tools to learn more"

...feat Penlink, RCS, Wave Guard, Rayzone, Cognyte:
www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/ar...

Gamified War in Ukraine: Points, Drones, and the New Moral Economy of Killing On a screen somewhere near the front, a drone operator scrolls through a catalog that looks uncannily like an e-commerce site. Instead of headphones or

"somewhere near the front, a drone operator scrolls through a catalog that looks uncannily like an e-commerce site… A few hours [after uploading drone strike vids] 'ePoints' can be redeemed on Brave1 Market…where frontline units select equipment using combat points"
warontherocks.com/2026/01/gami...

Ja, das hieße: Überwachungspflicht. Bei Werbeinhalten erscheinen mir die Risiken für die Meinungsfreiheit vertretbar. Nein, das muss nicht jeder Publisher selbst machen, das könnten Intermediäre übernehmen, die Haftung vertraglich über die Lieferkette verteilen, den Rest durch Versicherung abdecken.

Ernsthaft, was spricht dagegen, Publisher für irreführende bis betrügerische Online-Werbung viel weitgehender haftbar zu machen, d.H. das Haftungsprivileg zumindest für Provider von Werbeinhalten einzuschränken?

"Ohne irreführende bis betrügerische Werbeanzeigen keine Medien" kanns wohl nicht sein.

YIKES. One more reason why the CJEU needs to clarify that the sale of personal data is unlawful under the GDPR, unlike the "maybe yes, maybe not" position they have taken in C‑621/22.

That we're importing this US model is horrifying (and hopefully unconstitutional).

Get ready for more of this:

* the crossover of advertising data w/ state surveillance
* a way for law enforcement & intelligence to sidestep warrants and oversight b/c it's novel, a linked to data economies that are already intrusive and pervasive
* Govts (Germany 🇩🇪 here) evading accountability

Sicherheitsbehörden und Databroker: Bundesregierung macht Datenkauf zum Staatsgeheimnis Die Bundesregierung verweigert Transparenz darüber, ob deutsche Sicherheitsbehörden bei Datenhändlern einkaufen. Die Frage ist brisant, denn für den Kauf gäbe es keine sichere Rechtsgrundlage. Das zei...

The German government completely refuses to tell parliament whether German federal police uses unlawfully processed mass behavioral/location data from digital advertising for surveillance purposes or not.

Highly problematic in terms of democratic accountability.
netzpolitik.org/2025/sicherh...

Es ist demokratiepolitisch äußerst bedenklich, dass sich die dt Regierung weigert, dem Parlament zu beantworten, ob (bzw falls ja, wie) Bundespolizei und BKA - ethisch problematisch bis unrechtmäßig - Verhaltensdaten aus der digitalen Werbung für (Massen)überwachungszwecke missbrauchen, oder nicht.

How French spies, police and military personnel are betrayed by advertising data Using easily accessible advertising data, Le Monde was able to pinpoint the identities, home addresses and daily routines of several dozen people working for sensitive official entities.

"Le Monde was able to pinpoint the identities, home addresses and daily routines of several dozen people working for sensitive official entities" including French intel, military, nuclear weapon bases, power plants.

Digital advertising is a security threat, exhibit X.
www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/ar...

To Catch a Predator: Leak exposes the internal operations of Intellexa’s mercenary spyware - Amnesty International Security Lab Drawing on leaked internal company documents, sales and marketing material, as well as training videos, the “Intellexa Leaks” investigation gives a never-before-seen glimpse of the internal operations...

"target identifiers or selectors could include a known advertising ID, an email address, a geographical location or an IP address", i.e. "identifiers supported by the ad network or [DSP] used in the Aladdin system"

Deploying spyware via digital advertising:
securitylab.amnesty.org/latest/2025/...

Intellexa’s Global Corporate Web

Another related report identifies companies affiliated with the spyware group Intellexa that "may have served, or continue to serve, as front entities, including two possibly linked to AdInt-related attack vectors", Pulse Advertise and MorningStar TEC:
www.recordedfuture.com/research/int...

To Catch a Predator: Leak exposes the internal operations of Intellexa’s mercenary spyware - Amnesty International Security Lab Drawing on leaked internal company documents, sales and marketing material, as well as training videos, the “Intellexa Leaks” investigation gives a never-before-seen glimpse of the internal operations...

"target identifiers or selectors could include a known advertising ID, an email address, a geographical location or an IP address", i.e. "identifiers supported by the ad network or [DSP] used in the Aladdin system"

Deploying spyware via digital advertising:
securitylab.amnesty.org/latest/2025/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

"Credit scoring systems...embed opaque proxies that penalize socio-economic precarity under a veneer of actuarial neutrality."
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

I've been wondering for years how the majority of not-totally-cynical adtech practitioners justify their role in the daily amassing of extremely invasive data on the lives of millions. But what's truly beyond my understanding are those who knowingly help sell the data for non-marketing surveillance.

Yesterday, a major insurer's customer support refused to close a deal on the phone but suggested to buy the policy by myself on their website. Today, a premium manufacturer sent me an offer for an expensive device from a noreply email.

I thought the 'conversion funnel' was supposed to be sacred? ;)

Databroker Files: Targeting the EU Precise locations and revealing movement patterns: the mobile phone location data of millions of people in the EU is up for sale. Collected supposedly only for advertising purposes, this data can also...

Scoop: We obtained vast amounts of European mobile phone location data from data brokers. It was allegedly collected for advertising purposes only, but can be used to spy on high-ranking EU officials & NATO staff in Brussels. The Commission is 'concerned' & issued new security guidance to its staff.

Dug this stuff out of a dusty old box and am putting it in a new one, probably won’t see the light of day for another 20 years ,)

Back then, I was attending some kind of high school with a focus on electronic/information engineering, and either I was too slow or our teachers were too ambitious or both ;)

But we also got things completed, for example this Intel 8032/8051 board 🤖

Just stumbled across some things I built in school when I was 16 in the 1990s, all of them not exactly completed ehm.

- Heavy lab power supply (wounding the transformer included)
- Plotter (all the heavy metalwork!)
- 2m band receiver for packet radio (digital data transmission over amateur radio)

Python Foundation rejects $1.5M grant with no-DEI strings : Foundation says it won't compromise policy of inclusivity even if that cash would've really helped

The PSF "walked away from a $1.5m government grant and you can blame the Trump administration's war on woke for effectively weakening some open source security"

As a longterm Python coder since 2001, I love this as much as I hate this ridiculous ’anti DEI’ bs.
www.theregister.com/2025/10/27/p...

Pay or ok? Why Europe's data watchdogs must reject "forced consent" Case law and enforcement decisions show that Europe's data watchdogs already have all the evidence they need to reject Pay or OK

Pay or ok? Why Europe’s data watchdogs must reject “forced consent”
www.iccl.ie/digital-data...

Depending on what I'm looking for I use all of them, including Bing, Yandex and aggregators.

My typical use case is finding results for specific terms or confirming that there're none. Even without "AI", this often doesn't work anymore. Search is broken, also in 'verbatim' mode and when adding +".

With “AI”, it often just fabricates fake evidence trying to confirm what my search suggests.

I have to use Google Search a lot for investigative research, unfortunately.

With those “AI” overviews, I feel like >50% of the claims are just made up, and >75% of the referenced/linked web pages are completely unrelated to the claims in the overview.

Systematic misinformation at scale.

DPAs must also "act against the other source of behavioural profiles: the tech platforms [who] have bundled behavioural profiling with service provision"

In any case, "studies to quantify the economic impact of removing tracking data on publisher income are based on flawed pricing assumptions".

The True Cost of RTB Our second "Pay or OK" paper for EU watchdogs: not only does the law say "no" to forced consent; the business case is terrible, too. Publishers and advertisers will lose if users are forced to consent...

"A market in which behavioural data about users are rare rather than the default will reset prices for all forms of advertising. To achieve this, users must be protected against coercion into RTB via ‘consent or pay’."

Make consumer surveillance rare again.
www.iccl.ie/digital-data...