Gus Narea

EFF Sues DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management to Halt Ransacking of Federal Data EFF and a coalition of privacy defenders have filed a lawsuit today asking a federal court to block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the private information of mil...

BREAKING: We are suing DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management to stop the brazen and illegal data sharing of federal employee data with the “government efficiency” group.

WIRED is tracking numerous reports of Musk-related shenanigans across the federal govt.

We're looking for fed employees open to discussing the activity they're seeing or to help confirm other reports. Anonymity offered.

Please use @signal.org (contact dell.3030). Do not use work networks/devices.

Executive Order to the State Department Sideswipes Freedom Tools, Threatens Censorship Resistance, Privacy, and Anonymity of Millions In the first weeks of the Trump Administration, we have witnessed a spate of sweeping, confusing, and likely unconstitutional executive orders, including some that have already had devastating human c...

We want to draw attention to one of the new Administration's Executive Orders that directly impacts the freedom tools that people around the world depend on to fight censorship, and protect their security and anonymity.

How Europe Should Deal with Trump’s Oligarch-in-Chief As Donald Trump takes office again, tech billionaire Elon Musk will go from speaking for six companies to speaking for a $27 trillion economy. In response, Europe needs to concentrate on accumulating ...

In his contribution for @ipq.bsky.social, our Senior Research Fellow @weberv.bsky.social analyses Elon #Musk's worldview and foreign policy positions, urging that 🇪🇺 must focus on accumulating tech power in response to his rise in 🇺🇸 politics. /2

Censorship will continue to get worse for a few more years; governments will eventually stop cutting off the Internet (but blackouts will continue due to conflict); the splintering of the Internet will accelerate soon; AI will empower both censors and freedom defenders, beyond software development.

I adapted the season finale of the Inside Awala podcast, on how I see the future of Internet censorship and @awala.app's role, to a blog post: awala.app/en/blog/2025... - TL;DR below 👇

How AI-assisted coding will change software engineering: hard truths. About how these AI tools really work and how they could be the start of the return of software, as a craft.

Based on a guest post by @addyosmani.bsky.social. Read it here: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-ai-wil...

Welcome! 🥳

S00E05: The future of Internet censorship and Awala's role Podcast Episode · Inside Awala · EP5 · 19m

You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts:

- Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
- Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0Uho...
- YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kWz...
- On the Web: awala.alitu.com/episode/21fa...

I will be coming back in March with season 1. Stay tuned!

Despite global Internet freedom declining for the 14th consecutive year, I believe that we can eventually turn the tide against repressive regimes and their staggering censorship budgets.

The finale of Season 0 of Inside Awala is out! Join me as we dive into the future of Internet censorship and explore @awala.app's role. 👇

Smuggled Starlink devices allegedly used to defy India’s internet shutdowns Civilian and armed groups in conflict-ridden state of Manipur using SpaceX’s satellite internet, sources say

Smuggled Starlink devices allegedly used to defy India’s internet shutdowns

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Government Internet Shutdowns Cost $7.69B in 2024 Our annual report analyzes every major intentional internet shutdown in 2024 and reveals that they cost the world economy $7.69 billion.

The 2024 Cost of Internet Shutdowns report is out. 648.4 million people affected by 167 self-imposed internet outages across 28 countries. 88,788 hours of government-sponsored disruptions, of which 49,101 were Internet blackouts. See: www.top10vpn.com/research/cos...

GitHub - contaixt/laibrary: Context generation for LLMs to work reliably with a library Context generation for LLMs to work reliably with a library - contaixt/laibrary

This is precisely why I (literally just) started laibrary: github.com/contaixt/lai...

This is inspired by Aider's repo map: aider.chat/docs/repomap...

Not using LSP because I also use the LLM to reason about tech stack decisions before I even install dependencies.

Why? Is it because of o3?

Excerpted text from letter quoted in the story. You can follow links to find it.

Karsten Nohl, founder and chief scientist of cybersecurity company Security Research Labs and who has extensively researched SS7, told 404 Media in an email that “We definitely observe geopolitical adversaries abusing SS7 weaknesses with impunity.” In the newly released document, Senator Wyden’s office says the DoD confirmed it believes that all U.S. carriers are vulnerable to SS7 and Diameter surveillance, and that DoD has not reviewed third-party audits carried out by U.S. carriers of their own networks. “The DoD has asked the carriers for copies of the results of their third-party audits and were informed that they are considered attorney-client privileged information,” the DoD writes. Diameter is something of an efficiency upgrade to SS7, but it can still be attacked.

NEW: #China #Russia #Iran & #Israel spying on 🇺🇸Americans w/telecom vulnerabilities per #DHS

Concerning on heels of #SaltTyphoon breaches.

All US carriers exposed.

We know this thanks to @wyden.senate.gov 's tireless work.

Story by @josephcox.bsky.social 1/
www.404media.co/dhs-says-chi...

S00E04: Trying to test Awala in the real world, and charting a new route through China Podcast Episode · Inside Awala · EP4 · 26m

Listen to it now, wherever you get your podcasts:

- Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
- Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/37t5...
- YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCQQ...
- The Web: awala.alitu.com/episode/56a2...

The episode explores how this strategic shift, whilst definitely not ideal, could ultimately help fund crucial improvements to Awala's network whilst providing immediate value to users in censored regions. I also share insights about leveraging AI to accelerate development.

It was incredibly painful to record this episode, but here it is: Listen to my journey attempting to test @awala.app in the real world. After facing significant funding challenges with my initial plans, I decided to *extend* Awala's scope to incorporate a VPN, initially targeting China.

Yup. My coping mechanism is to use a speech-to-text tool to get my train of thought in writing, and then use AI to convert that nonsense into something eloquent.

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid cyberattack that exposed live phone calls FBI and CISA officials said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers.

The title is somewhat clickbait, but it's still great to see people within the FBI and CISA publicly advocating for end-to-end encryption.

www.nbcnews.com/tech/securit...

I knew it was going to be worth the read if you were involved. Thank you so much! 🙇🏽‍♂️

Undersea Surgeons (Gift Article) The cables at the heart of the lightspeed, globe-spanning internet run across the grimy, perilous, inaccessible deeps of the sea, in places no one ever sees or visits – until the cables break.

My latest collaboration with the NYT is finally out! (it’s been months in the making)
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is how you make 2025 the year of Linux on the desktop. Take that, Windows!

Ideally, there would be an easy-to-use tool that folks could use to figure this out quickly, without having to read too much and potentially misinterpret something.

Who are your adversaries? What are their capabilities and resources? Then consider the various scenarios in which you may find yourself, and what you'd do to avoid/mitigate it or when it inevitably happens.

It's hard to give universal answers to something like this. This is gonna be a difficult trade-off exercise, and a good old threat model should be the starting point.

Truly impressive to see that in a public company!

Crazy how fast you lot ship stuff. MCP was pretty much announced 5 minutes ago.

I highly recommend this video to anyone using AI, even if you're just using a chatbot like ChatGPT.

youtube.com/watch?v=ujnL...