Tag: internet

UK’s Burnham Moves Toward Authoritarian Rule, and That Means Trouble for the U.S.

Here we go again: leftists have shown us again and again that they hate dissent and debate, which are the foundations of any free society. Now the U.K. is heading decisively toward authoritarianism as its crazy-left prime minister, Andy Burnham, has just announced that he plans to establish a “National Centre for Information Defence” in order to fight — you guessed it — “disinformation.”

The “National Centre for Information Defence“ is a canny name. It beats Old Joe Biden’s abortive “Disinformation Governance Board” in couching the whole totalitarian move as “defense” (as we spell it in the land of the free and the home of the brave) rather than “governance.” This is intended to give Burnham’s hapless citizenry the impression that what’s being done to them is not more control from the ruling elites, but protection from the evil machinations of deceivers.

Yeah, Andy, the Mafia offered protection, too. Anyway, GB News reported Wednesday that Burnham, “the Prime Minister, addressing the United Nations, announced the centre to improve ‘community cohesion’ and prevent a ‘distorted and untrue narrative about Britain.’” As a result, Burnham “ordered security chiefs to set up the quango, which will detect, attribute and disrupt ‘hostile information attacks’ and ‘deepfakes’ which hurt British interests.”

A “quango” is an organization that receives government financing but is ostensibly an independent group. And we all know that the far-left British government will stay fastidiously out of the affairs of an organization that is charged with stamping out “hostile information attacks” that supposedly “hurt British interests,” now, don’t we?

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Dem Senator Wants To Regulate The Internet To Prevent Another Trump From Happening

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called for government regulation of the internet as part of a broader effort to reduce loneliness and powerlessness among Americans, two conditions he argues push voters toward leaders like President Donald Trump. Murphy made the remarks on September 21 during an appearance on the I’ve Had It podcast, where he discussed his book, Crisis of the Common Good.

Murphy told the podcast hosts that isolation and helplessness define the country right now. “Those are the two things I think Americans are going through right now… They don’t feel powerful at all, and they feel lonely,” he said.

His remedy for loneliness coincidentally becomes an excuse to grow the government even further.

“And so, government should build a set of rules in which people feel more powerful – that’s why the minimum wage is so important – and people feel so more connected,” Murphy said.

He added, “That’s why, you know, rebuilding healthy institutions in your town should be a project that government is involved in.”

Then he got to the internet and revealed his true objective. “Regulating the internet so that you’re spending less time alone on Instagram should be an important government project,” Murphy said. And if Americans feel more powerful and less alone, Murphy argued, “they are going to be less likely to fall for a bullshit demagogue like Donald Trump.”

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SHOW ME YOUR ID: Carney doubles down on sweeping internet regulation bill

Prime Minister Carney says his government will push ahead this fall with sweeping social media regulations that would create a new federal Digital Safety Commission and impose new rules on online platforms.

“We are fighting for Canada to lead the world in building the smart, safe digital tools of the next decade,” Carney told Liberal MPs ahead of Parliament’s return.

“This fall we will press ahead with the Act to protect Canadians online,” he said.

Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, was introduced by Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller in June.

The legislation would create a Digital Safety Commission with regulatory and enforcement powers over the online platforms covered.

It would require regulated platforms to address seven categories of “harmful content,” including child sexual exploitation, any content that ‘foments hatred’, incites violence or promotes terrorism or violent extremism.

The legislation also targets content that “undermines, weakens or destroys fundamental institutions or political, economic or social stability in Canada” when it could cause a serious risk to the health or safety of the public.

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Friedrich Merz Again Calls For An End To Online Anonymity

German Chancellor and CDU leader Friedrich Merz is once again advocating for an end to online anonymity.

Merz spoke at the Chancellery in Berlin on Tuesday, where he received the winners of the 61st federal “Jugend forscht” youth research competition, and took their questions. The event was streamed live by the government.

One of the participants asked Merz about introducing a real-name requirement on the internet, and how it could be reconciled with the work of informants, investigative journalism, and the need to sometimes be able to communicate anonymously.

Merz’s answer did not address the question of journalism at all. Instead, he spoke about the difficulties in establishing who is behind an online message, and who to hold responsible, as well as the proliferation of messages generated by bots.

“Please, nobody come to me with free speech. This has nothing more to do with free speech,” Merz said. Free speech, he continued, is “at best” a libertarian understanding of politics out of parts of the United States, “that I personally do not share.”

A liberal society, he went on, must be able to protect its citizens “from false information, from personal denigration, from discrimination.”

Merz, who “grew up in the analog world” said he often wonders if the digital world should be allowed to have “completely different rules.”

In the old world, he said, if a newspaper published false information, one could take action against it, and this, he said, created a certain “hygiene.”

In the digital world, Merz is unhappy that people can use pseudonyms, abbreviations, or made-up names, “and we have enormous difficulty establishing at all who is responsible for it. Is it the platforms or is it the authors themselves? And if so, who actually are the authors?”

He mentioned the “coarsening of manners” and the role of bots in generating messages. According to Merz, his party’s (CDU) competitor, AfD, had benefited in Saxony-Anhalt from messages generated by bots.

It is essential to protect personality rights and “our democracy,” Merz said.

He did allow that there are good reasons to allow for anonymous expression, but did not go into any of them.

It’s also important to note that Merz was not announcing any new policy, bill, or law, and was answering a question from a teenager.

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Australia Wants to Remake the Internet in the Name of “Safety”

The Australian government has published its proposed Digital Duty of Care legislation, a plan that it says will give people more control over their social media feeds, but which opponents fear is a way to introduce more online censorship.

The exposure draft of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 was published on September 8 for consultation, and it is not yet law. The deadline for submissions is noon on September 22, and Communications Minister Anika Wells said the plan is to formally introduce the bill to Parliament in October.

We obtained a copy of the draft for you here.

In the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, “This is not about giving government control, it is about giving people control.”

And while the proposal is often referred to as My Feed, My Way, it is not about banning algorithms, but giving new and existing users a choice between feeds based on recommendations, and one that shows posts from accounts they follow.

But beneath this choice, there is a broader change to the Online Safety Act 2021 that would be introduced by the Digital Duty of Care bill, and that is to impose a duty on those behind online services to ensure a safe online environment as far as reasonably practicable.

This duty would apply to a wide range of services, including social media, messaging, games, hosting, search, app stores, internet providers, AI services enabling generated material to be shared through covered services, as well as certain equipment providers.

The minister in charge would be able to exempt services that are low-risk or minimally used. The proposal is designed to protect adults from what is described as seriously harmful material and conduct, while under-18s would have additional protection against harmful content and design features.

The list of harmful content and conduct that the draft seeks to protect adults from includes child sexual abuse, threats of violence, encouragement of self-harm, and support for listed terrorist organizations.

For children, the list includes pornography, encouragement of disordered eating, hostile attitudes towards women or gender equality, glorification of crime, dangerous stunts, abuse and bullying.

However, the minister would have the power to add more categories of harmful material or conduct by issuing a legislative instrument.

Wells must first seek and consider advice from eSafety, and the instrument can be disallowed by Parliament.

The draft bill also targets features that the government considers to have negative behavioral impacts, such as recommendation systems, endless feeds, and engagement-feedback tools, as well as time-limited content. Social media services would be required to stop these features for children under 16.

The proposal also includes a system of risk assessment that online services would have to conduct at least once a year, and keep for six years. These assessments would have to be provided to the eSafety commissioner on request.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who has a history of censorship demands, would be in charge of enforcing the scheme, which would bring maximum company penalties of A$109.2 million.

The draft bill does contain some safeguards, such as the definition of reasonably practicable, which takes into account the risk, available measures, cost, and the potential for a measure to have a disproportionate effect on privacy.

The duty of care does not extend to lawful communications occurring in private solely between consenting adults, the draft bill states.

Opposition leader Angus Taylor on September 6 said he feared the proposal was “an attempt by the government to censor social media,” while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said that Australia should be moving away from government censorship, not “building the Orwellian machinery for it.”

The Greens, on the other hand, have supported the idea of making sure users have a choice when it comes to feeds, but they want to make sure that users have to opt in to have their feeds curated by algorithms.

White House spokesman Kush Desai reacted by saying that President Trump “has unequivocally warned trading partners against imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion on America’s leading technology sector.”

Desai added that “the administration remains committed to raising these issues with our trading partners.”

Communications Minister Anika Wells sought to downplay the significance of the White House statement, telling News24 that the US was responding to broader questions that also included Australia’s tax arrangements, and not only the Digital Duty of Care proposal.

“We’re a sovereign nation, we have the right to defend Australian parents and kids and we’ll do that,” Wells said.

The government’s proposal has been portrayed as giving users a choice between personalized recommendation feeds and those that show posts from accounts they follow.

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Gavin Newsom Says He Would Continue His Podcast if He Became President – Wonders What He Would Wear

Gavin Newsom recently did a puff interview with PBS and was asked if he would continue his podcast if he became president. His body language changed and he became positively giddy at the thought.

He then wondered aloud what he would wear for the broadcast.

How is anyone taking this man seriously as a governor, let alone as a presidential candidate?

If Newsom runs for president, he is going to have to answer a lot of questions about California.

Even the Associated Press knows it:

California made Gavin Newsom famous. Will it drag down his 2028 presidential ambitions?

Gavin Newsom’s secret is no secret here in South Carolina.

They were selling “Gavin 2028” buttons outside his events this past week as he trekked across the state that will hold Democrats’ first presidential primary. His allies, the state party chair, college presidents and pro-Newsom activists all openly hinted at his national aspirations. And people close to him privately referred to a White House campaign as “the next thing.”

Still, California’s Democratic governor has barely begun to address what may be his biggest political liability as he stakes a claim as an early front-runner in the Democratic Party’s 2028 shadow primary. That liability, South Carolina voters acknowledged this past week, is something he cannot change — his home state, California, is a symbol of modern-day liberalism that people across the political spectrum love to hate.

Vera DeVito, a 78-year-old Democrat who packed into one of Newsom’s eight public events across South Carolina, said she didn’t know much about him or his policies — except that he’s from the Golden State. On that basis alone, she suggested that supporting Newsom could be “risky.”

“It’s going to be hard for him to appeal to the whole country,” she said in the town of Summerville. “Everybody thinks California is different — especially in the South. They’re not crazy about California.”

People aren’t crazy about California because California is crazy for putting up with Gavin Newsom.

The state has lost population for the first time in history on his watch.

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OUTRAGE: Texas Student’s School Laptop BLOCKS Search for President Trump — But Allows Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Jeffrey Epstein

A Richardson Independent School District parent says her son’s school-issued laptop blocked him from searching for the sitting President of the United States, while searches for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein went through without a hitch.

The district has so far refused to explain why.

According to an exclusive report from The Dallas Express, an anonymous Richardson ISD parent provided video of her son attempting to research President Donald Trump for a school assignment. When he searched “Trump,” the device displayed a blunt message: “WEBSITE BLOCKED BY RICHARDSON ISD.”

The same block did not appear for Biden, Harris, or Epstein.

“My child was researching our current president for a school assignment and discovered that the district’s web content filter had blocked ‘Trump’ from search results,” the parent told The Dallas Express.

“This means students can’t access legitimate educational and news content, including current-events research, government and civics coursework, and basic search results about the sitting U.S. President. This is very concerning, as it amounts to censorship of information about a current public official.”

She then had her son test other names.

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CrowdStrike and Federal Authorities Dismantle Russian Malware That Secretly Stole Crypto for 8 Years

A campaign of malware operated by Russian cybercriminals for eight years was dismantled by federal authorities in conjunction with the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike on Thursday. The malware, identified by the security firm as “EggJagger” or as Sality malware, preyed upon thousands of users of virtual currency by engaging in “clipboard hijacking.” The most common method that users of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum employ in order to send currency is to copy a virtual currency address from a web page to a computer’s clipboard and then later to paste the virtual currency address into the corresponding field of a wallet application. The malware sat idle on a user’s computer and then, before the user had a chance to discover the substitution, would change the virtual currency address that had been placed in the user’s clipboard to an address controlled by the cybercriminals, reported CoinDesk.

Once the compromised address was pasted into the user’s wallet software, and the resulting transaction had been confirmed, the cryptocurrency was transferred irretrievably to the attacker. While there was no particular attack functionality that triggered any alerts, the single defense against such an attack was for the user to manually verify the address that they had pasted into the sending field. Typically the first and last characters of a wallet address would be verified against what was expected, but in this case all would need to be checked. The reason for this type of attack to have persisted for some eight years is that it is an easy one to implement, and places the onus of security on the end user to perform correctly in these situations.

Analysis by CrowdStrike has uncovered the malfeit cryptocurrency operators amassed 12.1 million rubles ($150,000) in the years the malware was active and operating, however most of the stolen cryptocurrency had been deposited into online wallets, remained untouched by the cybercriminals. However with the recent and ongoing surge in value of many of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies the hacker’s abandoned stash has appreciated significantly to an estimated $1.35m. The returns on such a relatively simple attack vector to extract cryptocurrency from individuals is significant and in this instance highlights that such malware, whilst still active after eight years, continues to reap significant returns on little more than foraging for victims, capitalizing on default settings and exploiting human nature of individuals utilizing online cryptocurrency services.

A major weakness of the botnet infrastructure behind EggJagger was the minimal security controls in place around the network of infected computers. As long as a compromised computer was responding to commands appropriately, it could be included in the botnet of other compromised systems. In a live demonstration of the vulnerability on Monday at CrowdStrike’s Day Zero summit in Las Vegas, the security team of researchers used the same hole to subvert EggJagger and replace the legitimate peer addresses embedded in the malware with the IP addresses of their own servers. Suddenly, more than 15,000 computers infected with EggJagger around the world lost connection to their command-and-control servers in an instant, bringing the whole operation crashing down.

The high-profile takedown of the long-running Russian malware operation highlighted the persistent cyber threats to financial infrastructure emanating from Russia, as well as the growing role of the private cybersecurity sector working in conjunction with law enforcement to counter threats to the financial system. Despite having developed sophisticated operational security measures over an eight-year period, Sality ultimately relied on a relatively simple vector to steal cryptocurrency from thousands of individuals and businesses – that of exploiting routine human practices. The botnet’s vulnerability to having its peer connections severed by not authenticating the connections was identified by law enforcement and subsequently exploited to dismantle the operation in a single action, bringing an end to a threat that had affected thousands of individuals and businesses across South Florida and the country.

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Microsoft knows your entire browser history — and it can send it to the FBI

Virtual Private Networks are meant to shield your browsing history from all manner of prying eyes, including your internet service provider, your workplace or school, and even potential hackers. If you use a VPN with your Windows PC, though, I have some bad news: Microsoft has a full record of your browsing habits, and it can even report your activity to the FBI.

According to court documents released on July 1, a 19-year-old young man working with the cyber criminal group known as Scattered Spider was caught hacking into a computer system belonging to a luxury jewelry store. While inside, the hacker stole company data and demanded $8 million in cryptocurrency for ransom. Ultimately, the jewelry store kicked the hacker out of its system without paying the ransom, and the perpetrator was later arrested and charged.

It’s a simple case of conspiracy, digital intrusion, and fraud … but there’s a catch.

The hacker’s identity should have been hidden from the feds.

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