Tag: internet

Operation TorNado: 354 Arrested, $234 Million Seized In Global Dark Web Drug Crackdown

U.S. and international authorities arrested hundreds of people and seized drugs, guns, cash, and cryptocurrency in Operation TorNado, a crackdown on dark web sales of fentanyl and other drugs, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Nov. 12.

The department put the total at 354 arrests and said the cash and cryptocurrency seized were worth more than $234 million.

Vendors and buyers on dark web marketplaces such as Archetyp, Bohemia, Nemesis, Kingdom, and Tor2Door were caught in the crackdown.

The arrests included 132 in the United States, 59 in the UK, 45 in Hungary, 41 in Germany, 23 in France, 13 in New Zealand, 12 in the Netherlands, 11 in Slovenia, six in Austria, five in Ireland, four in Czechia, two in Australia, and one in Finland.

The department described Operation TorNado as a coordinated, multi‑agency, and international law enforcement effort.

The department’s Joint Criminal Opioid and Darknet Enforcement (JCODE) team and Europol jointly announced the results, marking the latest operation in their ongoing partnership against illicit trade on the dark web.

“Operation TorNado represents the sixth – and most extensive – internationally coordinated action since JCODE was created in 2018,” the DOJ said.

An undisclosed number of investigations are still underway to identify people behind dark web accounts.

The SpeedyPharma Case

One of the suspected drug traffickers was Jonatan Gonzales, 35, of South Bakersfield, California. Gonzales, known by the dark web distributor name SpeedyPharma, allegedly used his home to ship illegal drugs to multiple addresses across the country.

Law enforcement officers seized 48 pounds of methamphetamine, 386 grams of black tar heroin, 588 grams of cocaine, $40,565 in cash, 2.8 grams of carfentanil, and 3.5 grams of fentanyl at his home.

“Now that might not sound like a lot of fentanyl, but remember, the potentially lethal dose of fentanyl is just 2 milligrams,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a press conference in Washington on Nov. 12. “That means that the amount of fentanyl seized at his residence was potentially lethal to over 1,700 people.”

Keep reading

From eBay To Vinted, UK’s “Age Verification” Rules Spreading Already

The UK’s so-called “social media ban” hasn’t even come into force yet, and already its remit is set to spread beyond social media.

We previously reported that OfCom – the UK’s official censorship office – have announced that facial scans aren’t accurate enough to enforce the ban, and adults hoping to prove they are over 16 may need to use their photo ID.

Well now Lisa Nandy, the UK’s “Culture Secretary” – named in the ironic tradition of Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” – has told the media that the government is going to include non-social media sites in the ban.

The BBC reports:

Government ‘looking seriously’ at banning under-16s from Vinted and eBay

The concern is that – allegedly – the direct messaging available between sellers and customers on second-hand selling services is enabling “grooming”.

So the ban for under 16s is going to be extended to those platforms as well.

Of course, just as with the “social media ban”, the more correct description would be “requiring ID verification from everyone”.

This was always going to happen.

Once the “social media ban” is in place to “protect children”, you have a wedge in the door that can widen in two directions – either new “dangers” to children can be discovered, or you can broaden the definition of “social media”.

The UK government has already gone both ways.

Let us not forget what “Culture Secretary” Lisa Nandy said in her speech at the Labour Party conference last month:

“[We] must be a very active interventionist state, policing and regulating the online space so that people are safe.”

We’re well on our way there.

The social media ban already exists alongside other new regulations limiting online chats in multiplayer games (unless you verify your ID), “digital curfews” for 16 or 17 year-olds, age gating pornography, or suggested measures like device-level “nudity detection” – which would be, in reality, mandatory software scanning every image you look at and every photo you take, or even TRY to take, in real time.

The number of digital services, shops or websites for which all British citizens will be required to supply their ID is growing.

We’re now adding eBay, Vinted, DePop and Facebook Marketplace to that list.

From there it will be Amazon, or Etsy, or Temu. Then Deliveroo, JustEat, UberEats or any online shopping at all.

Then any online activity.

Then internet access in general.

…unless you sign up to the government’s new app to verify your age.

The digital ID beast is slouching toward Bethlehem, to be born.

Keep reading

European Commission Says TikTok Recommendation Algorithm Breaches Censorship Law

The European Commission (EC) is once again going after TikTok, this time in a more brazen way, over its “For You” feed that it says is harmful to “vulnerable adults and minors.”

On Friday, November 6, the EU’s executive arm preliminarily found that the way the feed is designed and functions is in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a controversial online censorship and age verification law.

The Commission says the algorithm behind it creates a “rabbit hole effect” – and this is the first time it has cited a recommendation algorithm as the reason for a breach.

TikTok’s “For You” feed works in a way that “the more a user interacts with a certain type of content, the more TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed algorithm recommends similar content.”

According to the EC, this “can be harmful when such endless and repeated exposure involves, for example, content about sadness, isolation or body image.”

The Commission’s “investigation” focused on legal content – meaning that there is no doubt that what is shown in the videos is lawful – but the regulator has a problem with the frequency of such content being shown to users.

As officials told the press, a single video of this kind might not be problematic, but many of them, one after the other, could be. The Commission is essentially saying that it has the right to decide what and how many videos of a particular, lawful topic an adult is allowed to watch.

Bill tracker: EU Digital Services Act · Law · We oppose it

Track this bill →

The finding does not only concern minors – it explicitly mentions “vulnerable adults” as well. An official said that “We are addressing a business model.”

TikTok, the Commission says, needs to “change the design of the ‘For You’ feed” – and the Commission has some ideas on how to do it: “rely more on users’ explicit preferences, disable viewing time as an indicator to recommend content, increase the accessibility and usability of user controls, and regularly test its algorithm.”

The “not interested” button that users can click on videos they don’t want to see “may not be enough to change the content feed” – and the fact that people repeatedly watch or like a video is taken as a sign that they want to see more of the same.

In the Commission’s own words, “The system interprets these interactions as positive signs of interest and recommends more of the same.”

Keep reading

Musk’s Starlink Is Building An Orbital Bypass As Undersea Cable Sabotage Threats Mount

Undersea telecom cables are critical civilian infrastructure and are increasingly under threat. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have shown how civilian infrastructure can become easy targets.

On Friday, the Financial Times, citing maritime intelligence firm Windward, reported that several Iran-linked vessels slowed or lingered over cable routes in the Gulf of Oman as cable-cutting threats rise. For Gulf-allied states, the challenge is both to protect the cables from sabotage and to keep data centers humming amid Iranian drone threats.

It’s not just cable-cutting threats in the Gulf. Remember in 2024 when Baltic undersea cables were severed between Finland and Germany, causing weeks of “disruption.”

There must be a solution to cable sabotage that could bring parts of the internet down for days, if not weeks, and that solution might be Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Musk joined Ron Baron of Baron Capital on Friday afternoon to discuss several topics, including Starlink buildout and bandwidth, SpaceX Starship launches, the mega AI-chip plant called Terafab, and, of course, with Democrats set to control Congress, the future of orbital compute.

Keeping our focus on what could be the best solution to undersea telecom cables. Well, Musk told Ron: “Starlink version 4 will have 10x the capability of V3 (which itself is 10x better than V2), especially with the long-distance laser links. Our next-gen laser links will be 10-terabits per second. 100x better. And we’ll put 10 of them on.”

The clip of Musk and Baron was shared on X by Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt, in which Musk responded and said, “100 lasers per satellite, each operating above 10 Tb/s, with over 100k satellites should be able to outcompete undersea cables,” adding, “Speed of light in space is ~40% faster than cable and the path is direct, instead of following the outline of land masses.”

Keep reading

France’s Senate Approves Bill Expanding Police Powers Over Online Speech

France’s Senate has approved a bill that was originally tabled as a means to make rioters pay for the damages they cause – but ended up with provisions that are meant to allow for faster removal of online content at the police’s behest, ban people from social media for committing protest-related offenses, allow the police to fly as many drones as they want equipped with cameras, and use AI to analyze footage from those drones, as well as from CCTV cameras.

All this was added to the “casseurs-payeurs” (rioters-pay) bill in the form of amendments, which senators approved on October 27 by 229 votes to 105. The bill was first submitted on September 16, and it had only five articles that made no mention of any of these issues.

The government’s use of the accelerated procedure means that after one reading in the National Assembly, the bill can go to a joint committee of both chambers.

All the quotes below are from the Senate’s record of the debate, translated from French.

“Social networks can contribute decisively to violence and damage, in particular through the dissemination of content calling for these offenses to be committed,” is how the government justified its amendment that was adopted with 219 votes to 115.

The amendment allows the administrative authority, rather than a judge, to order platforms and hosts to remove content that is seen as provoking crimes such as attacks on life, theft and destruction, where it is likely to cause a serious disturbance of public order.

If a host fails to remove such content within 24 hours, it will face six months in prison and a 150,000 euro fine, or up to two percent of its worldwide turnover for a company. The authority will also be able to have the site blocked and removed from search results.

The request goes to a designated reviewer, rather than a judge, before the content is removed.

The original filing of the amendment had a one-hour emergency procedure for content that calls for “an attack, for insurrection or for arming against the State” – but Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez pulled it in the chamber, saying, “I have just rectified my amendment so that we can secure the emergency procedure during the shuttle [between chambers], in view of risks regarding [EU-law] conformity and constitutionality.”

So this provision is expected to be back later in the legislative process.

Keep reading

Alberta to make sharing intimate deepfakes an offence punishable by up to two years in jail

Albertans who share intimate images, videos or audio of someone without consent could face a fine of up to $10,000, up to two years in jail, or both, under legislation tabled Tuesday. The new law would also apply to content that is AI-generated or digitally altered.

The changes are in Bill 33, the Justice Statutes Amendment Act, 2026 (No. 2). The bill would rename the Protecting Victims of Non-consensual Distribution of Intimate Images Act as the Intimate Content Protection Act.

The current law gives victims the right to sue when intimate images are shared without consent. Under it, they can seek compensation and court orders to have the content removed. It does not create an offence.

According to a government fact sheet, the bill would replace “intimate image” with “intimate content” to include audio recordings and livestreamed material. It would also add a definition of “altered intimate content” to cover modified or artificially generated media.

Victims could sue when someone threatens to distribute intimate content, even if it is never shared. They could also withdraw consent they gave earlier.

People whose negligence causes intimate content to be distributed could be held accountable. Courts could order community service in place of some or all punitive damages.

Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish said the bill “would make sure our laws keep pace with the technology.”

Haley Scott, co-chief executive officer of the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services, said the association welcomes the changes.

The intimate-content changes are part of the same bill that would ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public-sector hiring and training.

Keep reading

Michigan Retiree Without Internet Connection Credited with $4,500 in ActBlue Donations

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff said in a Wednesday report that federal records had tied an 88-year-old retiree in Milan, Michigan, to nearly $4,500 in new ActBlue donations over six weeks, among them four logged on a day she had no internet access.

LeDuff reported that 562 transactions were attributed to Elizabeth Waffle during that stretch. Four of them, totaling $22, posted the very day he first visited her rural trailer, where the power, water, and internet are all off.

During that first visit, LeDuff and Waffle tried to make a donation together and could not get online.

“Last time we were here, remember, we tried to make a donation,” LeDuff said, recounting the exchange in a follow-up interview.

Among the new transactions was $51 logged for Abdul El-Sayed, whom LeDuff called “the king of the Michigan micro-donors.” El-Sayed won the Democrat Senate primary in August by under a percentage point and faces Republican Mike Rogers in November, in a contest analysts rate as a possible tipping point for Senate control.

The retiree lost her house to a fire two years ago and has lived in the trailer since. She said the figures made no sense to her. Federal filings reviewed in July had attributed 14,696 donations to her over five years — roughly eight a day — a tally LeDuff put at more than $130,000.

When the reporter returned last week with printouts, the widow turned on him, asking whether he was building a hit piece on the platform.

“I think it’s a bunch of hogwash,” Waffle said.

She suggested Republicans cheat too, and agreed when LeDuff asked if her view was to “fight fire with fire.” Then she softened.

“I believe in honesty,” she said. “I do care if somebody is fudging and putting stuff in.”

Asked whether she wanted him to keep looking, Waffle agreed. “Yeah, if they are,” she said.

Not every independent review matches the Michigan Enjoyer’s totals. The Center Square reported that FEC records show $100,295 in contributions tied to Waffle’s name across three cycles, and noted that ActBlue’s Tandem Fundraising tool can split a single donation form across many campaigns, generating multiple logged transactions from one gift.

The renewed attention follows months of federal scrutiny of the Democrat fundraising platform. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment rights before the House Administration Committee this year. President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department in April 2025 to examine whether online fundraising platforms had processed illegal contributions.

Keep reading

Florida Wants to Put an Age Gate on the Entire Internet

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has announced a legislative proposal that would bring age verification to the app store, the operating system, and AI chatbots.

The announcement was made at Polk State College in Winter Haven, and Uthmeier was joined by Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and education leaders.

Under the proposal, app stores and similar marketplaces would have to “determine the user’s age, link minors to a parent’s account, and obtain parental consent before a minor downloads or buys an app from a covered platform.”

In addition, the operating systems would have to “apply age-appropriate restrictions at the device level based on the user’s age,” while AI chatbot operators and platforms “must determine account holder’s age.”

The proposal, that has not yet been turned into a bill, is full of invasive promises, including that “all age determination must use commercially reasonable, privacy-protective methods,” as if that’s possible.

However, no method is named, and this is the same promise made with most age-check laws, while reports of identity document leaks keep showing that the promise is not being kept. As Reclaim The Net reported in April, Discord’s earlier experiment with government ID age checks ended in a massive breach that exposed over 70,000 government-issued IDs.

Other provisions of the proposal include forcing social media accounts of those aged 14 to 17 to have a “quiet mode” that blocks access from 11 pm to 7 am, and from 8 am to 3 pm on school weekdays. The release says, “Muting notifications is not enough.”

For the same age group, screen time would be capped at two hours a day and 60 hours a month, “including messaging and long-form content.” Like counts would be hidden, autoplay and infinite scroll would be off unless a parent turns them on, and cosmetic filters would be disabled. Teen accounts would not be recommended to unconnected adults, who may not message them. Every three days, teens would get a prompt to switch to a non-personalized feed that they cannot dismiss.

Reports of child sexual exploitation would get human review within 48 hours, with a “one-strike” rule for adult offenders.

AI chatbots would not be allowed to offer minors features that “simulate companionship through personification, emotional engagement, user-data retention, unsupervised therapy, sexual content” or ones that “suggest the chatbot is a real human” or “encourage isolation or discourage help from appropriate adults.”

The press release said that knowing or reckless violations would be considered unfair practices under Florida Statutes section 501.1736, and would carry a fine of up to $50,000 per violation. The AG’s office would also be able to “maintain a public website to track incidents.”

Uthmeier said, “Parents deserve real control, and companies must design for safety, not addiction.” He also noted that “Florida already prohibits social media accounts for anyone under 14, and the Eleventh Circuit just upheld that law. The Safe Screens Act goes further.”

“If you invite Florida’s children onto your platform, you have a duty to keep them safe,” he also said.

Judd, meanwhile, praised the proposal, saying, “It takes the power and determination of an Attorney General to keep large social media and gaming companies from exploiting and endangering our children.”

Keep reading

Rush is on to patch a software vulnerability that could impact 70% of websites worldwide

Governments and corporations worked throughout the night on urgent security updates after the AI-assisted discovery of vulnerabilities in a programming language vital to 70% of websites globally.

Many government sites appeared to be functioning normally Thursday, but outages or limited service continued while security work was under way.

The FBI’s cyber division warned on Wednesday that the vulnerabilities could allow malicious actors to remotely execute code in the programming language, PHP, which powers websites and web applications. That raised the risk of sensitive data and networks being compromised, said the agency, which recommended that operators take websites offline if they can’t update them immediately.

In Britain some “limited” government services may temporarily be offline while work is carried out to address potential cybersecurity issues, the prime minister’s office said.

“Work has already taken place across Government to identify and fix potential exposures to our systems, and our experts are continuing to work closely with both OpenAI and international partners on this issue,” a spokeswoman said Thursday.

“No large public-facing critical services are being affected by the exercise, but some limited services may temporarily be offline while security work is carried out, the spokeswoman said.

The two critical flaws identified by AI could allow bad actors to get unauthenticated access to sites which, in theory, could allow them to control a web server remotely without needing a password, said James Sullivan, Director of Cyber and Tech at the Royal United Services Institute in London. That could allow a hacker to steal data, alter data or use the system as a platform from which to launch other attacks, he said.

Taking websites offline while fixing the problem is “good practice,” and appropriate cyber risk management but it’s “staggering” that some of the flaws are more than a decade old, Sullivan said.

Artificial intelligence agents helped uncover the vulnerabilities. In a blog post, OpenAI said it had led a coalition of researchers, security providers and others to address vulnerabilities in PHP over the past two months.

OpenAI called the flaws “one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory.” It said AI appeared to find the vulnerabilities before any attackers did.

Keep reading

Eleventh Circuit Lets Georgia Social Media Age Checks Proceed

A federal appeals court has given a green light to a controversial part of a Georgia law that requires social media platforms to verify the age of every user, and in the case of those under 16, obtain parental consent.

The ruling came on Thursday, October 15, from a panel composed of Judges Newsom, Luck and Tjoflat, with Judge Kevin Newsom writing the opinion.

The case now goes back to the district court, but the decision did not address whether the law is ultimately constitutional – only that NetChoice went about its lawsuit the wrong way and did not provide enough evidence to prove the law is not constitutional.

Paul Taske, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said, “While we are disappointed in the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling, the court notably did not hold that SB 351 is constitutional.”

On June 26, 2025, Judge Amy Totenberg of the Northern District of Georgia ruled that the law was too vague, that it was preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), and that it likely violated the First Amendment, and blocked it.

The law’s social media part requires platforms to “make commercially reasonable efforts to verify the age of account holders” and obtain a parent’s consent for anyone under 16. For those under 16, platforms can only use age and location for ad targeting.

According to the court’s own summary, the law “requires platforms within its ambit to verify the ages of all their users.”

If a platform does not verify, it must “apply the special conditions applied to minors under this chapter to all account holders.” The ways a platform can confirm a parent include “Collecting information related to the minor’s parent’s or guardian’s government issued identification or financial or payment card information.”

The attorney general can seek up to $2,500 for each violation.

There is also another section of the law that requires sites that are more than 33.33 percent “harmful to minors” to check every visitor’s age, including by submitting government-issued ID. This part of the law has been in force since July 1, 2025, and was not challenged by NetChoice.

The Eleventh Circuit panel found that NetChoice had standing to sue but did not meet the test set by the Supreme Court in Moody v. NetChoice to prove the law was unconstitutional in a facial challenge – that is, across the full range of its application. The group had to show that the law was unconstitutional across the board, and it did not.

“NetChoice hasn’t provided even a full list of its own members to which SB 351 applies,” Judge Newsom wrote.

“We’ve learned the facial-challenge lesson the hard way,” the ruling states. “We needn’t address the merits of its First Amendment claim,” it continues.

The panel also reversed the lower court’s ruling that said the law was too vague and that it was preempted by Section 230.

Attorney General Chris Carr said, “This is a major win for Georgia families and a huge blow to those who would stand in the way of commonsense solutions to protect our kids.”

Keep reading