Al Ghaff

ORG at 20: Cory Doctorow in conversation with Maria Farrell As well as being a renowned author, activist and journalist, Cory Doctorow was a founding member of Open Rights Group!

ORG turns 20 this year! 🎈 🎉 🎂

To celebrate two decades of fighting for digital rights, join us for Cory Doctorow in conversation with @mariafarrell.bsky.social‬.

Register now to hear about Cory's work and how to fight Big Tech ✊

🗓️ 16 July, 6pm BST
💻 Zoom

www.openrightsgroup.org/events/org-a...

35 Years for Privacy, Free Speech, and a Brighter Future Through July 10, new monthly or annual Sustaining Donors get an EFF35 Challenge Coin! With your help, EFF is here to stay.

Become a Sustaining Donor today and:
🤑 Become a member for just $5 a month
🪙 Receive our new EFF35 challenge coin
👕 Grab one of our new Cityscape t-shirts
❤️ Support the leading nonprofit protecting your rights online!

This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops Massive Blue is helping cops deploy AI-powered social media bots to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined “protesters.”

Police are paying big money for unproven “undercover bot” tech that uses AI-generated online personas to collect intelligence, @404media.co reports. “So like, what is it effective at, violating protesters’ First Amendment rights?” asks EFF’s @maassive.bsky.social.

Wasn’t she a Minister in the Govt that brought in all the legislations (such as online safety) which she and Trump are now critical of?

Superb work!

EFF Border Search Pocket Guide border-pocket-guide-2.pdf

If you're critical of the US government and you are planning to cross the US border any time soon, today is a good day to review EFF's border search pocket guide: www.eff.org/document/eff...

Meta settles UK ‘right to object to ad-tracking’ lawsuit by agreeing not to track plaintiff A human rights campaigner, Tanya O’Carroll, has succeeded in forcing social media giant Meta not to use her data for targeted advertising. The agreement is contained in a settlement to an individual challenge she lodged against Meta’s tracking and profiling back in 2022. O’Carroll had argued that a legal right to object to the use […]

Meta settles UK ‘right to object to ad-tracking’ lawsuit by agreeing not to track plaintiff

Accessible version: archive.is/4Vvms

Let’s knock down social media’s walled gardens I envisioned the web as a place for the shared benefit of all — by reclaiming our data we can make that happen

This is an interesting Op-Ed by Tim Berners-Lee on #interoperability in the Financial Times, of all places!

“Let’s knock down social media’s walled gardens.” — This is exactly what many #DigitalRights organisations & experts have been advocating for years.

www.ft.com/content/79d2...

Backdoors and Backsteps - Ctrl-Alt-Speech In this week's round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben are joined by a group of students from the Media Law and Policy class at the Ameri...

New Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Backdoors and Backsteps

This week we have guests from @aramsinn.bsky.social's media, law & policy class at @au-comm-studies.bsky.social!

We kick off with a discussion of the UK's demand that Apple break all encryption & why that's bad

podcast.ctrlaltspeech.com/2315966/epis...

UK Orders Apple To Break Encryption Worldwide While World Is Distracted In a stunning escalation that confirms our worst fears, the UK government has finally shown its true hand on encryption — and it’s even worse than we predicted. According to a bombshell repor…

Just wrote about the UK Apple encryption mess. This is a BIG deal. It doesn't just apply to the UK. It would be an absolute disaster for online privacy and security. www.techdirt.com/2025/02/07/u...

UK Government undermines security with demands for Apple users encrypted data Open Rights Group has responded to a Washington Post article that claims the UK has demanded that Apple build a backdoor to retrieve content that any Apple user has uploaded to the cloud.

🚨 Encryption is under attack 🚨

🔴 The UK government has demanded that Apple build a backdoor to retrieve content that any user has uploaded to the cloud.

🔴 This will undermine the security of millions of users and expose them to higher risks of cybercrime ⬇️

www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releas...

Signal allows synching with new devices Ever linked a new device to your Signal account, only to find you didn’t get your old messages? No longer!

📩 Ever linked a new device to your @signal.org account but didn’t get your old messages? No longer!

A new feature helps import the last 45 days of messages to a new device.

Read about how to use it in our digital security newsletter (and subscribe):

Everyone knows your location How I tracked myself down using leaked location data in the in-app ads, and what I found along the way.

⛔️⚠️🚨 Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads!

An explainer on how data brokers get access to all your data, including your precise location, screen brightness, and whether you are wearing headphones!

timsh.org/tracking-mys...

Prof @jdportes.bsky.social doing the media's job for them.

You’ve been pro-Remain since 2016 and a solid Starmer supporter for years.

Maybe you can tell us why Starmer — who was Mr Remain under Corbyn — has reversed on Brexit since becoming Labour leader & PM?

Labour has a giant majority in Commons & the hard-left of the Party are long gone!

How Denmark became the NSA's listening post in Europe Sunday's revelations that Danish spies helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitor European leaders highlighted the pivotal role that the Scandinavian country has played for US intelligence…

Danes probably feel very betrayed right now, but this might make them think twice when they next decide to turn their country into a listening post to spy on their nearest neighbours & allies in Europe!

www.france24.com/en/technolog...

Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez wants to "end anonymity" of all users on social media.

Ending online #anonymity is a terrible idea, because it:

👉 Protects free expression
👉 Protects LGBTIQ+ community
👉 Protects targets of bullying
👉 Vital for press freedom
👉 Ensures safety of vulnerable groups

Musk and Zuck: Engineering Free Speech Under the guise of protecting free speech, an alarming alignment between government power and Big Tech’s corporate power is unfolding.

With Meta bending the knee to a Musk addled Trump, social media is in a politico-corporate bubble.

And these bros in arms say it's all in the name of free speech. It's enough to make you think double.

Our latest blog on the need to break these monopolies ⬇️

www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/musk-an...

CALL TO ACTION: The Senate needs to advance the PRESS Act ASAP to protect journalist-source confidentiality against retaliatory gov’t surveillance.

Tell your senator that you support the #PRESSAct today!

Use this ACLU tool to send a message to your senator now: go.peoplepower.org/letter/congr...

A Twitter post by The New York Times states that Elon Musk spent over $250 million to help Donald Trump win the presidency. The post includes an image of a group of people walking, with one individual prominently carrying a child on their shoulders.

One person spent this much money in a very close election. Our system can’t withstand this kind of assault. Citizens United must be overturned.

With Threats to Encryption Looming, Signal’s Meredith Whittaker Says ‘We’re Not Changing’ At WIRED’s The Big Interview event, the president of the Signal Foundation talked about secure communications as critical infrastructure and the need for a new funding paradigm for tech.

Signal is famous for knowing as little about its users as possible. The app isn’t hoarding metadata, tracking you, or showing you ads.

President @meredithmeredith.bsky.social sees a shift underway as the monoliths of big tech lose popularity and the old economics of Silicon Valley become brittle.

Petition: AI Says No; People, not machines should oversee life-changing decisions.

⚠️ The #DataBill will unleash AI ⚠️

Being stripped back is the right to human review over automated decisions – even if they have life-changing impacts.

Life mustn’t be haunted by the ghost in the machine.

Sign and share our petition to keep human review!

✍️ ⬇️

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ai...

The government must tackle distrust in politics – starting with our voting system If the fight for trust is “the battle that defines our age”, as the Prime Minister has said, it is a battle Westminster is losing.

'First-past-the-post has just delivered the most disproportionate result in British history'

✍️ Labour MP @alexsobel.co.uk on the launch of the new Fair Elections APPG

UK gym scraps facial recognition following our pressure — Big Brother Watch

Amazing work by Big Brother Watch 👏 #StopFacialRecognition

bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/blog/uk-gym-...

Become a member Open Rights Group is the UK’s largest grassroots digital rights campaigning organisation, fighting to protect everyone’s rights to privacy and free speech online.

Open Rights Group fights to protect digital rights 🦾

Becoming a member helps us to campaign, lobby, go to court – whatever it takes to challenge restrictions to our human rights.

Join the movement today ⬇️

#DigitalRightsAreHumanRights

www.openrightsgroup.org/join/

Work with us — Big Brother Watch

📣 #HumanRights #Jobs

We’re looking for two exceptional people to join us @BigBrotherWatch — one of the UK’s leading human rights NGOs.

✅ Interim Director
✅ Advocacy Manager

bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/work-with-us

Unlike X, Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts Bluesky, a social network that’s experiencing a surge in users this week as users abandon X, says it has “no intention” of using user content to train generative AI tools. The social network made the announcement on the same day that X (formerly Twitter)…

Unlike X, Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts

Bluesky adds 700,000 new users in a week There are now more than 14.5 million users total on the platform.

Bluesky has added 700,000 new users in the last week 🚀

Work with us — Big Brother Watch

📣 #HumanRights #Jobs

We’re looking for two exceptional people to join us @BigBrotherWatch — one of the UK’s leading human rights NGOs.

✅ Interim Director
✅ Advocacy Manager

bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/work-with-us