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Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) has turned to contractors to keep an eye on social media and smoke out main critics – including by identifying them, and their location.

Other judicial institutions that are said to have contracts of a similar nature are the Superior Court of Justice, the Superior Labor Court, the Superior Electoral Court, and the National Council of Justice.

Reports out of Brazil about the contracting of outside entities to perform online surveillance is based on a public call for bids (the closing date was June 14), where STF looked to hire a company that will monitor, in real-time, what’s referred to as “the digital presence of the Federal Supreme Court” on social media.

The contractor will also have to provide alerts via instant messages, daily, weekly, and monthly – both quantitative and qualitative – analytical reports, as well as “occasional bulletins and preparation of a monthly action plan strategy for acting on social networks.”

This is yet another move by the country’s judiciary branch (the Superior Electoral Court’s activities offer more examples) that tests the boundaries of its powers. And, it’s a move that is explained as the need to protect democracy from “disinformation.”

But it didn’t stop there, as the Supreme Court’s lengthy investigations would at times cover not only “fake” but also real news – the kind that, in one example, exposed a former justice as having links with a company accused of corruption.

Contractors will now not only carry out “continuous monitoring” of social platforms (in search for “main detractors”), but also propose to the Court how it may “improve communication” with citizens.

In the past, Supreme Court justices and even a prosecutor general launched legal battles against people because of their online speech, but when these officials were allied with former President Balsonaro…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EU’s Mass Surveillance Faces Fierce Resistance

June 21, 2024

EU’s Mass Surveillance Faces Fierce Resistance

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

The European Union (EU) has managed to unite politicians, app makers, privacy advocates, and whistleblowers in opposition to the bloc’s proposed encryption-breaking new rules, known as “chat control” (officially, CSAM (child sexual abuse material) Regulation).

Thursday was slated as the day for member countries’ governments, via their EU Council ambassadors, to vote on the bill that mandates automated searches of private communications on the part of platforms, and “forced opt-ins” from users.

However, reports on Thursday afternoon quoted unnamed EU officials as saying that “the required qualified majority would just not be met” – and that the vote was therefore canceled.

This comes after several countries, including Germany, signaled they would either oppose or abstain during the vote. The gist of the opposition to the bill long in the making is that it seeks to undermine end-to-end encryption to allow the EU to carry out indiscriminate mass surveillance of all users.

The justification here is that such drastic new measures are necessary to detect and remove CSAM from the internet – but this argument is rejected by opponents as a smokescreen for finally breaking encryption, and exposing citizens in the EU to unprecedented surveillance while stripping them of the vital technology guaranteeing online safety.

Some squarely security and privacy-focused apps like Signal and Threema said ahead of the vote that was expected today they would withdraw from the EU market if they had to include client-side scanning, i.e., automated monitoring.

WhatsApp hasn’t gone quite so far (yet) but Will Cathcart, who heads the app over at Meta, didn’t mince his words in a post on X when he wrote that what the EU is proposing – breaks encryption.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NewsGuard Co-CEO: Lack of Internet Gatekeepers Allows Dangerous Opinions

June 13, 2024

NewsGuard Co-CEO: Lack of Internet Gatekeepers Allows Dangerous Opinions

NewsGuard is fully a product of a particular era – co-founded in 2018 by Steven Brill, and there to provide “a rating system” for news websites.

Opponents of what NewsGuard, Brill, et al. stand for would say that era unfortunately continues. Critics sum it up as NewsGuard (a browser extension and app) turning censorship into a business model, with a clear political bias, while working with governments, intelligence communities, and corporations.

“Anti-misinformation” and “brand safety rating for advertisers” is the business NewsGuard insists it’s in, and just this week Brill had the opportunity to speak for C-SPAN and rail against anything from a lack of internet gatekeepers deciding who can become a publisher, to branding as “dangerous” people’s right to express different opinions on issues like health and election results.

Brill appears to like the idea of the internet providing unprecedented reach (and therefore influence) – but only when that power of publishing online is to his liking.

“Someone who has a crazy opinion about the Covid vaccine can reach as many people as Dr. Fauci can,” Brill lamented, as he and the C-SPAN host agreed about the need for internet gatekeepers who would decide who can, and must not, be allowed to become an online publisher.

Other statements made by Brill reek of elitism, and why wouldn’t they – his company counts former CIA, NATO, and DHS chiefs among its advisers.

And so Brill doesn’t like it at all that on the internet, (theoretically at least) everyone has the same chance to express opinion and be heard. That’s “dangerous,” he claims, using the issue of health-related information and expertise to “soften the blow” of the very idea that free speech represents danger.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trudeau Pushes Online Censorship Bill To “Protect” People From “Misinformation”

June 11, 2024

Trudeau Pushes Online Censorship Bill To “Protect” People From “Misinformation”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week complained that governments have allegedly been left without the necessary tools to “protect people from misinformation.”

This “dire” warning came as part of Trudeau’s effort to have the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) – one of the most controversial of its kind pieces of censorship legislation in Canada of late – pushed across the finish line in the country’s parliament.

C-63 has gained notoriety among civil rights and privacy advocates because of some of its provisions around “hate speech,” “hate propaganda,” and “hate crime.”

Under the first two, people would be punished before they commit any transgression, but also retroactively.

However, in a podcast interview for the New York Times, Trudeau defended C-63 as a solution to the “hate speech” problem, and clearly, a necessary “tool,” since according to this politician, other avenues to battle real or imagined hate speech and crimes resulting from it online have been exhausted.

Not one to balk at speaking out of both sides of his mouth, Trudeau at one point essentially admits that the more control governments have (and the bill is all about control, critics say, regardless of how its sponsors try to sugarcoat it) the more likely they are to abuse it.

He nevertheless goes on to declare that new legislative methods of “protecting people from misinformation” are needed and, in line with this, talk up C-63 as some sort of balanced approach to the problem.

But it’s difficult to see that “balance” in C-63, which is currently debated in the House of Commons. If it becomes law, it will allow the authorities to keep people under house arrest should they decide these people could somewhere down the line commit “hate crime or hate propaganda” – a chilling application of the concept of “pre-crime.”

…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…

EU Plans Major Expansion of Mass Surveillance, MEP Claims

June 9, 2024

EU Plans Major Expansion of Mass Surveillance, MEP Claims

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

The European Union (EU) is planning to implement a new set of draconian mass surveillance rules shortly after Sunday’s EU Parliament election, a member of the EP has warned after the plans surfaced on the internet.

The conclusion that radical surveillance measures are in the works proceeds from documents detailing the meetings of working groups, dubbed “high level group(s) on access to data for effective law enforcement.”

The documents originate from the EU Commission, and contain a number of recommendations, including reintroducing indiscriminate retention of communications data in the bloc, creation of encryption backdoors, as well as forcing hardware manufacturers to give access to anything from phones to cars to law enforcement through what is known as “access by design.”

MEP Patrick Breyer announced that the plan contains 42 points produced by the EU Commission and governments of member-countries. The purpose of being able to access phones, IoT (such as “smart home”) devices, and cars is to make sure they can be monitored around the clock.

Meanwhile, the return of controversial data retention is planned despite a previous ruling of the EU Court of Justice, and could even be extended to include over-the-top services such as messengers (this is defined as retaining IP information data “at the very least”). That, Breyer explains, means that all internet activities will become trackable.

A favorite target of authorities actively undermining their image as democracies has for a while been end-to-end encryption. Here, the EU intends to ban secure encryption of metadata and subscriber data, as well as force messaging services who implement encryption to allow interception.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Twitter Files Fuel Massie’s Fight Against Government-Funded Censorship

May 24, 2024

Twitter Files Fuel Massie’s Fight Against Government-Funded Censorship

Congressman Thomas Massie has announced HR 8519, legislation aimed at ending the practice of spending taxpayer money to fund various censorship and “disinformation” research programs.

A press release said that Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, and the subsequent publishing of the Twitter Files – a batch of internal documents showing how the government and this social platform colluded in the previous period – played a pivotal role in opening the public’s eyes to the realities of the situation.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

Ever since the 2016 elections and after those in 2020, speaking about what the Twitter Files revealed about online censorship, its methods, and levels, would have been discredited as “misinformation” or a “conspiracy theory.”

And one of the things revealed is that the US federal government had informally enlisted not only tech companies but also universities to do this, many say, unlawful work.

Unless it came as a result of pressure, like any work, it had to be paid for, and Massie now wants to make sure that kind of funding is banned going forward.

In this effort, the Republican senator had the backing of only his party colleagues, with over a dozen of them originally co-sponsoring HR 8519. Since it is blatantly unconstitutional for the money to change hands in any direct way, the bill aims to stop “the workaround”: the government using taxpayer money to further its political goals via various “disinformation” research grants.

Those would typically go to groups or networks made up of “select” universities and researchers. Moreover, HR 8519 seeks to prevent the government from bankrolling “specific programs within the National Science Foundation” which have been identified by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which Massie is a member of.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EU Commission VP: “We Believe Our Fact-Checking Is Already Influencing User Behavior”

May 22, 2024

EU Commission VP: “We Believe Our Fact-Checking Is Already Influencing User Behavior”

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, join Reclaim The Net.

The European Parliament (EP) elections are taking place next month and, considering that the president of the European Commission (effectively, “the EU government”) and all its commissioners are confirmed by the EP, no wonder many of them are currently on a campaign trail.

One is European Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova, and she is toeing the line the EU has taken ahead of this election: fear mongering about misinformation, AI, and Russia.

This is then used to make sure current, contested, and controversial policies remain at a minimum unchanged, and best-case scenario, from the EU bureaucrats’ point of view – ramped up.

What those policies amount to is succinctly demonstrated in just one recent statement by Jourova: not only is the bloc embracing “fact-checking”, and not only is this supposed to take car2 of “misinformation” – the intent seems far more profound, and threatening to democracy : fact-checking is already influencing user behavior, bragged Jourova.

“We believe our fact-checking is already influencing user behavior. We see that when people realize something is wrong with the material, they often refrain from sharing it with friends on social media,” she said.

She chose to take her “Democracy Tour” to a number of EU countries that are likely believed to be the most susceptible to her message of an impending “misinformation” doom around the election (the message framed around by and large unproven allegations of misinformation campaigns).

To promote current EU leadership policies, Jourova talks up all those things that have put the EU and its understanding of democracy and freedom of expression under so much scrutiny over the last years: various new regulations that allow for mass censorship and/or surveillance, and continued reliance on “fact-checkers.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EU Investigates Meta in Crackdown on Alleged “Rabbit Hole” Effects, Wants It To Push Digital ID

May 19, 2024

EU Investigates Meta in Crackdown on Alleged “Rabbit Hole” Effects, Wants It To Push Digital ID

There was a lot of talk about the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) while it was drafted and during the typical-of-the-bloc tortuous process of adoption, but now that it’s been here for a while, we’ve been getting a sense of how it is being put to use.

Utilizing the European digital ID wallet to carry out age verification is just one of the fever pitch ideas here. And EU bureaucrats are trying to make sure that these controversial policies are presented as perfectly in line with how DSA was originally pitched.

The regulation was slammed by opponents as in reality a sweeping online censorship law hiding behind focused, and noble, declarations that its goal was to protect children’s well-being, fight disinformation, etc.

The cold hard reality is that trying to (further) turn the screw – any which way they can – on platforms with the most reach and most influence ahead of an election is simply something that those in power, whether it’s the US or the EU, don’t seem to be able to resist.

Here’s the European Commission (who’s current president is actively campaigning to get reappointed in the wake of next month’s European Parliament elections) opening an investigation into Meta on suspicion its flagship platforms, Facebook and Instagram, create “addictive behavior among children and damage mental health.”

After all, exerting a bit more pressure on social media just before an election never hurt anybody. /s

Thierry Breton, an EU commissioner who made a name for himself as a proponent of all sorts of online speech restrictions during the current, soon to expire European Commission mandate, reared his head again here:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Belgium and Hungary Launch Controversial Digital IDs, Vaccine Passport, Ahead of EU Regulations

May 18, 2024

Belgium and Hungary Launch Controversial Digital IDs, Vaccine Passport, Ahead of EU Regulations

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, join Reclaim The Net.

Belgium and Hungary are leading the way in launching digital ID wallets ahead of EU’s eIDAS (“electronic identification and trust services”) 2.0 regulation and EUDI Wallet coming into force later this month.

In Belgium, the MyGov.be app, covering all of the country’s federal public services, was launched on Tuesday, with the government promoting the digital identity as “simplifying” the use of its services, and “making life easier.”

In other words, the authorities there are playing the convenience card – while downplaying the risks that come with this type of centralization of people’s identities.

The wallet, via “eBox” mailbox, gives access to government-issued documents, as well as 683 services, identity data, Covid vaccination records, and more.

However, the success of the scheme is by no means guaranteed – on the one hand it is not mandatory, so people are free to decide not to use it.

Judging by an opinion poll Deloitte carried out last year, “71 percent of Belgians do not want a digital ID on their phone,” reports say, adding that the same survey showed that 79 percent “do not want a mobile driver’s license, while half refuse to fully digitize their IDs.”

“Ease of use” is also how digital ID is pushed in Hungary, where the appropriate app will be made available for download as soon as this week, while the service will be fully operational from September.

Enthusiastic reports about this development describe the digital ID program as “innovative,” “handy” and “saving costs.”

At the same time, putting all of a person’s data in one place and storing it in the cloud is advertised as something positive, instead of what opponents consider as scary – from the security standpoint alone.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Controversial FAA Bill Passes Senate, Promotes Digital IDs and Mobile Licenses, Facial Recognition Concerns Ignored

May 18, 2024

Controversial FAA Bill Passes Senate, Promotes Digital IDs and Mobile Licenses, Facial Recognition Concerns Ignored

The US Senate has passed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization act, which enjoyed bipartisan support, with an overwhelming majority (88-4).

The legislation includes a push to introduce digital ID and digital or mobile driver’s licenses, and will be considered by the House this week – the final hurdle before, if approved, it gets signed by President Biden.

The section dealing with acceptance of digital IDs and driver’s licenses is buried and we found it on page 1,015 of the document.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

It reads that the FAA administrator “shall take such actions as may be necessary to accept, in any instance where an individual is required to submit government-issued identification to the Administrator, a digital or mobile driver’s license or identification card issued to such individual by a state.”

While adopting the bill, the Senate left out an amendment drafted by Senator Jeff Merkley, meant to temporarily halt wider deployment of facial recognition tools at US airports.

The Democrat’s idea was to impose a moratorium on biometric surveillance proliferation by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at least over the next three years.

The reasoning behind the amendment was that the current usage of facial recognition technology lacks transparency and results in travelers being poorly, if at all, aware of their rights in this regard.

The Senate chose to ignore the amendment, which wasn’t even put up for a vote, despite it making what appears to be a reasonable demand to ensure people can make informed decisions about participation in the schemes – namely, provide “simple and clear signage, spoken announcements, or other accessible notifications” about the ability to opt-out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

YouTube Removes 35,000 EU Videos for “Misinformation,” Enhances Content Censorship Ahead of 2024 Elections

May 17, 2024

YouTube Removes 35,000 EU Videos for “Misinformation,” Enhances Content Censorship Ahead of 2024 Elections

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, join Reclaim The Net.

YouTube has (“voluntarily” or otherwise) assumed the role of a private business entity that “supports elections.”

Google’s video platform detailed in a blog post how this is supposed to play out, in this instance, in the EU.

With the European Parliament (EP) election just around the corner, YouTube set out to present “an overview of our efforts to help people across Europe and beyond find helpful and authoritative election news and information.”

The overview is the usual hodgepodge of reasonable concepts, such as promoting information on how to vote or register for voting, learning about election results, etc., that quickly morph into yet another battle in the “war on disinformation.”

And what better way to “support” an election (and by extension, democracy) – than to engage in another round of mass censorship? /s

But YouTube was happy to share that in 2023 alone, it removed 35,000 videos uploaded in the EU, having decided that this content violated the platform’s policies, including around what the blog post calls “certain types of elections misinformation” (raising the logical question if some types of “election misinformation” might be allowed).

As for who is doing this work, YouTube suggests it is a well-oiled machine hard at it around the clock, and “at scale” – made up of “global teams of reviewers” and machine learning algorithms.

The blog post first states that one of the goals of YouTube’s efforts is to help users “learn about the issues shaping the debate.” But then in the part of the article that goes into how the platform is “dealing with harmful content,” it at one point starts to look like the giant might be trying to shape that debate itself.

“Our Intelligence Desk has also been working for months to get ahead of emerging issues and trends that could affect the EU elections, both on and off YouTube,” reads the post.

In case somebody missed the point, YouTube reiterates it: “This helps our enforcement teams to address these potential trends before they become larger issues.”

And while machine learning (aka, AI) is mentioned as a positive when it comes to powering YouTube’s ability to censor at scale, later on in the post the obligatory mention is made of AI as a tool potentially dangerous to elections and democracy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Warrantless Surveillance Bill Renewal Is Even Broader Than Many Noticed

May 16, 2024

The Warrantless Surveillance Bill Renewal Is Even Broader Than Many Noticed

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, amended in 2008), as a whole and its Section 702 in particular have been a “gift that keeps on giving” where all manner of controversies are concerned.

In late April, it was time to once again reauthorize this legislation whose privacy safeguards have been routinely bypassed by law enforcement for years, and this did happen, with persistent major points of contention being warrantless access to data belonging to Americans (and respect for their constitutional rights).

The issue this time surfaced in a provision that changed the definition of electronic communications service providers (ECSPs) – in terms of which companies fall under this category, that is, which providers are obligated to give the government access to communications.

As things stand, more US businesses than ever would have to provide access to phones, Wi-Fi routers, and other equipment.

This in April launched a debate in the Senate around the scope of surveillance authorities – opponents were saying it significantly expanded them – yet in the end, they failed to stop the reauthorization (“Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act”).

The question was left open with a “pledge” that it would be revisited down the line, and now reports say that Congress is working to “fix” the problem through the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual intelligence authorization bill.

The promise was originally made by Senator Mark Warner, who heads the committee when he assumed a major role last month in making sure the reauthorization bill passed without incorporating changes to the controversial provision.

The Democrat was now speaking at the RSA security conference when he repeated that promise, saying that work is being done toward fulfilling it, and adding that he is “absolutely committed to getting that fixed.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WEF Panelist Says COVID Response Made People More Receptive to Central Bank Digital Currencies

May 5, 2024

WEF Panelist Says COVID Response Made People More Receptive to Central Bank Digital Currencies

COVID-19 the path for a cashless future, according to Bahrain’s central bank chief at WEF.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) “globalism caravan” was in Saudi Arabia late last month, when one of these “special meeting” panels heard about the usefulness of what one might call “behavioral population lessons learned” during the Covid pandemic.

Specifically, regarding the current push to introduce central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) around the world.

The pandemic itself may have done a sudden “disappearing act” about two years ago – but it’s clearly seen by some as paving the way for a host of other things.

One – the vast majority of people responded to extreme movement and activity restrictions that profoundly affected their lives, plus vaccines – without basically any resistance.

And this by no means went unnoticed.

And that has clearly emboldened a certain class of policy-makers to make further assumptions, about other controversial policies (like CBDCs).

A Gulf central bank chief – Khalid Humaidan of Bahrain – told WEF’s Riyadh “Digital Currencies’ Opportunity in the Middle East” panel that his country is working to get rid of cash altogether, and replace it with digitally centralized, (therefore almost perfectly controlled and tracked) CBDCs.

That’s in and of itself not a Middle East thing – many governments around the world want to do the exact same. Nevertheless, Humaidan for some reason “went there” and actually made the link between what some theorists see as “the great social experiment” – namely, the pandemic – and how it has opened the path for, effectively, corralling billions of people into a certain pattern of thinking and acting.

Humaidan had an interesting take on what “control over cash” means – according to him, central banks were previously “very much in control with all aspects of cash.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Australian Authorities Push for Encryption Backdoors After Internet Censorship Attempt

May 2, 2024

Australian Authorities Push for Encryption Backdoors After Internet Censorship Attempt

Australia ramps up calls for “accountable encryption,” pushing tech giants toward compliance with controversial backdoor legislation.

In a relentless bid to give some of the most authoritarian regimes in the world a run for their money where internet censorship is concerned, Australia’s government continues to come up with one dubious initiative after another.

Recently, there was an attempt to censor content globally (related to two stabbing attacks in Australia), and shortly after, the country’s intelligence chief Mike Burgess, and Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw addressed the National Press Club, to launch yet another attack on encryption by urging compliance with encryption backdoors legislation.

Burgess chose to call this – “accountable encryption.”

It isn’t “accountable” right now because, while Australia has passed laws to essentially break encryption, those who are supposed to implement them, technology companies, are not cooperating.

“I am asking the tech companies to do more. I’m asking them to give effect to the existing powers and to uphold existing laws. Without their help in very limited and strictly controlled circumstances, encryption is unaccountable,” he said.

Burgess was careful to nestle his encryption backdoors plea among seemingly reasonable arguments, such as that encryption provides privacy and is “clearly a good thing” that “enables” transactions (he for some reason chose not to stress that it is in fact necessary for secure transactions).

But, the Australian spy chief went on, encryption also “creates safe spaces for violent extremists to operate, network and recruit.”

And it is their encrypted messages – and only theirs, governments around the world promise faithfully – that the authorities, as “good actors,” would like to be able to access communications at will.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Free Speech Platform Gab Rejects German Request for Data on User’s Posts Insulting Politician Ricarda Lang

May 2, 2024

Free Speech Platform Gab Rejects German Request for Data on User’s Posts Insulting Politician Ricarda Lang

Gab is standing up to citizens facing Germany’s oppressive speech policies.

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The German authorities have attempted to get Gab, a free speech software company, to release personal data identifying a user of its platform, for making comments about a politician’s weight that are considered offensive.

Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba revealed this in a blog post, reassuring the user community that the request will not be complied with – the response was “a firm rejection,” he wrote. He also provided details of this fairly, even by today’s standards of government speech control and repression, an extraordinary case.

Namely, the user targeted by Berlin made a comment in 2022 that described the Greens politician, Ricarda Lang, as “fat.”

In addition, the user is accused of making two posts that “sexualize” Lang, the sum total of all this, according to the German government (the request came from the German Federal Criminal Police Office), being an attack “on the honor of the politician,” as well as a show of disrespect.

Greens Politician Ricarda Lang.
And that, the notice received by Gab continued, violates the section of the German criminal code that deals with the offense of “insult” (and envisions imprisonment – up to five years according to Torba – or a fine).

From here, things start to spiral: the posts, the federal police said in the request, were in German, so they suspect the user is located in Germany.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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