Tag: internet

Republicans Are Walking Into A Trap On Section 230 Repeal

Among political conservatives, there is no hotter potato at the moment than the civil liability protections afforded by Section 230 to online operators. Unless Republicans learn to love it again and reject the censorship lawfare complex favored by Democrats, they risk dooming our tech leaders and everyone who uses their products to the sharks circling our legal system.

The twenty-six words tucked into the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shielded publishers from liability so they could host and moderate content and still allow a wide range of speech without fear of lawsuits. Since then, Section 230 has evolved to be one of the most powerful legal shields in the nation against civil litigation in U.S. courts. This gave the early digital economy the guardrails it needed to thrive by incentivizing creatives and disruptors to bring their big ideas to life.

Nothing ices a good idea like the fear of a lawsuit.

Yet, to be a rising star in the Republican Party today conveys some kind of fealty to the idea that Section 230 is antiquated – a relic of the early Internet that has outlasted its usefulness.

Last month, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called on his colleagues to “fully repeal Section 230” to cut the knees of AI companies and thwart their LLM training models. “Open the courtroom doors. Allow people to sue who have their rights taken from them, including suing companies and actors and individuals who use AI,” said Hawley.

He’s joined in these efforts by fellow Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marsha Blackburn, not to mention Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Amyâ?¯Klobuchar.

According to the Section 230 Legislation Tracker maintained by Lawfare and the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, there have already been 41 separate bills aimed at curbing some aspects of the law by both Democrats and Republicans in the last two sessions.

The principal motivation for Democrats, including former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has always been to force censorship of social media platforms to stop “disinformation,” a pretext for muting opposing views. The coordination of Democratic officials pressuring platforms to censor, as revealed in the Twitter Files, proves this beyond dispute.

To highlight the irony, we should remember that President Donald Trump is not only the chief executive of the United States, but also the owner of a social media platform that currently enjoys broad Section 230 protections afforded to any online publisher.

A wish to cripple Section 230 means making Truth Social a target as much as YouTube or Instagram. We should harbor no illusions that right-leaning media publications, podcasters, and websites would be the first to be kneecapped in a post-Section 230 world. Can MAGA and the GOP swallow that pill?

In that scenario, it will be the millions of Americans who currently enjoy freedom of speech online that will lose out. It’s the tens of millions of Americans turning to AI tools to become more productive, create value, and build the next great economic engines of our time who will be harmed by dismantling Section 230.

If Republicans want to cement American dominance in technological innovation, they will have to abandon this devil’s dance on gutting Section 230 liability protections. This is a censorship trap laid by Democrats to benefit them once they return to power.

The premise of broad civil liability protection for platforms is a core principle that has and should be applied to producers across America’s innovative stack, whether it’s oil and gas firms fending off dubious climate cases or artificial intelligence firms building the tools that are the key to America’s present economic dominance.

Keep reading

Proton launches observatory to shed light on dark web crimes

Internet privacy company Proton launched a service on Thursday aimed at shedding light on cybercrimes by revealing new data breaches as stolen data turns up on the dark web.

Switzerland-based Proton, known for its encrypted email and virtual private network services, said it was kicking off its new Data Breach Observatory with data drawn directly from the dark web — a hidden part of the internet where criminals trade in stolen data.

Since the start of this year alone, the company said it had detected nearly 800 notable breaches in single, identifiable companies, leaving more than 300 million individual records exposed.

If it had included the countless compilations of data from multiple breaches found on the dark web, “the true scale of exposed records Proton uncovered in 2025 is actually closer to 1,571 incidents with hundreds of billions of records”, it said.

Going forward, the company said it would update the Data Breach Observatory “in near real time”, and would publish details of newly-discovered breaches “whether or not the companies involved have chosen to be transparent with their users”.

Proton said there was a dire need for these observations, pointing out that while many people are aware that cybercrime is on the rise, facts have so far been hard to come by.

Instead, they rely mainly on self-disclosure by affected companies, who may opt to hide breaches out of embarrassment.

The dark web, which is inaccessible via standard browsers, is often used by criminals as a marketplace for illicit activities.

The trading in stolen personal information there, including financial details and login credentials, creates a significant and largely hidden threat to both individuals and businesses, Proton said.

The Swiss company said its research had found that small- and medium-sized businesses were most impacted.

Companies with 10–249 employees accounted for nearly half of all breach incidents, while businesses with fewer than 10 employees made up 23 percent, it said.

As for the stolen information being traded on the dark web, Proton said email addresses, names and contact information were the most exposed, followed by passwords and sensitive information like government and health records.

Proton said its observatory would generate timely reports of emerging data breaches, enabling it to alert affected businesses and organisations potentially before they are even aware of a leak.

The reports would help them secure systems, protect against further attacks and alert their customers.

Keep reading

The Data Center Proliferation Must Be About Much More Than Data

With Amazon, it was never about the books. No doubt Amazon began as an online bookseller, but what made its stock attractive through years of losses is what books represented.

If Amazon could modernize buying habits with an online bookstore, it could eventually be what it became: an everything store. Markets are a look ahead, and book sales didn’t appeal to patient investors as much as what online book sales signaled about Amazon’s future potential as something much greater than an online bookstore.

It’s important to remember this with the rise of data centers around the country. Meta recently completed another one in El Paso, TX. The $1.5 billion project will, once operational, employ 100 people. Its construction employed as many as 1,800 workers.

It’s worth adding that El Paso is Meta’s third data center in Texas alone. Meta put $10 billion into the construction of all three.  

If asked, most would understandably say that data centers are being created “to store, process, and distribute” vast amounts of data. Translated, the data centers will rapidly bring down the already short wait times for AI-authored searches, paintings, papers, and all manner of other things that the AI-adaptive request.

It all sounds amazing on its face, but the bet here is that broad perception of data center capabilities in no way measures up to the towering reality of their potential. Just as Amazon was much more than a bookstore, it’s no reach to suggest that data centers are about much more than greatly enhanced, low latency searches.

Some will ask what they’re for if not just for searches, and the quick answer to the question is that the future would already be here if it were obvious what it was. Which means there’s no way to foretell the future, but it’s easy to say with confidence that it won’t much look like the present.

Evidence supporting the above claim can be found in the enormous investments being made by Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, X and others in the creation of the data centers. The sizable capital commitments signal confidence on the part of the biggest names in AI technology that the growth potential from the data centers well exceeds the enormous amounts of money required to create them. Since capital is expensive, there’s no room for break even or somewhere close to break even in its allocation.

Which is why the future can’t arrive soon enough. As substantial capital allocations meant to fund data centers indicate, their meaning to how we live, work, play, and get healthy so that we can live, work and play some more will be substantial. 

Just as Amazon.com as a source of books in no way resembles what Amazon has become, the cost of data centers signals that their perception in 2025 will in no way resemble how they’re perceived in 2035. Call it a generational thing, but data center will have different meaning depending on when you were born.

Keep reading

The EU’s Two-Tier Encryption Vision Is Digital Feudalism

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently showed a moment of humanity in a tech world that often promises too much, too fast. He urged users not to share anything with ChatGPT that they wouldn’t want a human to see. The Department of Homeland Security in the United States has already started to take notice.

His caution strikes at a more profound truth that underpins our entire digital world. In a realm where we can no longer be certain whether we’re dealing with a person, it is clear that software is often the agent communicating, not people. This growing uncertainty is more than just a technical challenge. It strikes at the very foundation of trust that holds society together. 

This should cause us to reflect not just on AI, but on something even more fundamental, far older, quieter and more critical in the digital realm: encryption.

In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and autonomous systems, trust is more important than ever. 

Encryption is our foundation

Encryption isn’t just a technical layer; it is the foundation of our digital lives. It protects everything from private conversations to global financial systems, authenticates identity and enables trust to scale across borders and institutions.

Crucially, it’s not something that can be recreated through regulation or substituted with policy. When trust breaks down, when institutions fail or power is misused, encryption is what remains. It’s the safety net that ensures our most private information stays protected, even in the absence of trust.

A cryptographic system isn’t like a house with doors and windows. It is a mathematical contract; precise, strict and meant to be unbreakable. Here, a “backdoor” is not just a secret entry but a flaw embedded in the logic of the contract, and one flaw is all it takes to destroy the entire agreement. Any weakness introduced for one purpose could become an opening for everyone, from cybercriminals to authoritarian regimes. Built entirely on trust through strong, unbreakable code, the entire structure begins to collapse once that trust is broken. And right now, that trust is under threat. 

Keep reading

Secret details of Israel’s mammoth deal with Google and Amazon revealed – media

Israel has forced US tech giants Google and Amazon to violate their own legal obligations under a 2021 cloud services contract with West Jerusalem, according to a joint investigation by several news media outlets, including The Guardian.

The Jewish state’s contracts with US tech platforms have been under close scrutiny following widespread accusations, including from the UN, that its military response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed over 1,200 people constitutes a genocide.

Known as Project Nimbus, the $1.2 billion deal reportedly bars the firms from restricting the Israeli government’s access to cloud services they provide, even if it violates their terms of use, the reports, carried by The Guardian along with +972 Magazine and Local Call, suggest.

The deal also reportedly requires the two companies to secretly notify West Jerusalem using a so-called “winking mechanism” should any foreign state or court seek access to Israeli data stored in the cloud.

Keep reading

Obama’s Latest Ploys at Shadow Government, Internet Censorship Exposed. He Needs to Be Held Accountable.

Former President Barack Obama’s presidential legacy is crumbling before our eyes. While he works to perform the roles of former president and titular head of the Democrat Party, running interference for the flailing campaigns of Democrat gubernatorial candidates Abigail Spanberger (VA) and Mikie Sherrill (NJ), and propping up CA Gov. Gavin Newsom and his unconstitutional gerrymandering scheme, he has the looming threat of the government for whom he used to be the head, precipitating his legacy’s increasing demise. 

In July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard dropped evidence that exposed how then-President Obama and his intelligence apparatus created fraudulent documents that spearheaded the entire Russia Collusion hoax lodged against President Donald Trump 45. 

As DNI Gabbard stated,

The stunning revelations these intelligence documents expose should concern every American. There is irrefutable evidence detailing how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false, promoting the contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, as though it were true. The documents we released shows how they did it: manufacturing findings from shoddy sources, suppressing evidence that disproved their false claims, disobeying IC tradecraft standards, and withholding the truth from the American people,” said DNI Gabbard. “In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people and worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump.

Keep reading

Huge Microsoft cloud crash leaves half the world without internet AGAIN

Microsoft‘s Azure, one of the world’s biggest cloud service providers, is suffering outages, triggering widespread internet disruptions across major companies. 

According to Downdetector, problems began around 11:30am ET, with reports surging from users who could not access cloud-connected services, websites or apps. 

The outage appears to be affecting dozens of platforms that rely on these cloud networks, including Microsoft 365, Xbox, Outlook, Starbucks, Costco and Kroger. 

Even popular developer and data tools like Blackbaud and Minecraft are showing connectivity issues. 

Downdetector has received nearly 20,000 issue reports from Azure users in the US. 

The Microsoft outage comes just days after Amazon Web Services disrupted ‘half the internet.’ 

The incidents have raised concerns about how much of the global online infrastructure depends on these two companies, which host everything from retail and entertainment platforms to business operations and cloud storage. 

Frustrated users have flooded social media to vent, with one post on X reading: ‘First AWS, now Azure goes down. I love it when big companies own half the internet!!!’ 

Keep reading

Trump Administration Overhauls Biden’s DEI Broadband Program that Connected Zero Households in 4 Years

Trump’s Assistant Secretary of Commerce and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Arielle Roth, outlined the Administration’s policies for reforming the wasteful Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in a speech at the Hudson Institute this week. According to Roth, “For years, BEAD was weighed down by red tape and extralegal conditions that slowed down states, deterred providers, and sidelined innovative technologies.”

As Breitbart has previously reported, BEAD was filled with DEI mandates, climate-regulation burdens, and a fiber-technology bias that virtually banned viable satellite and fixed-wireless solutions — despite fiber being inefficient in sparsely populated areas. Rather than prioritizing connecting rural Americans most cost-effectively, BEAD under Biden became an ideological vehicle — so much so that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) admitted four years after the bill’s passage that it hadn’t connected a single household.

The $42.5 billion federal program prioritized woke corporate mandates and handouts to the politically connected fiber and broadband lobby, while discriminating against far more efficient Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite technology, such as SpaceX’s Starlink. Four years after it passed, it proposed spending tens of thousands of dollars per household, but failed to connect a single American.

Assistant Secretary Roth agreed, noting that “For years, BEAD was weighed down by red tape and extralegal conditions that slowed down states, deterred providers, and sidelined innovative technologies.” However, she alluded to the problem of state governments undermining the Trump administration’s priorities on BEAD, explaining, “As BEAD moves toward final plan approvals, delivering results means keeping defaults to an absolute minimum.  A program this large and unprecedented must be managed with discipline and careful oversight.  That means meticulously reviewing state proposals to ensure compliance, prevent distortionary outcomes, and protect against waste.”

Keep reading

UK Expands Online Safety Act to Enforce Preemptive Censorship For “Priority” Offenses

The UK government is preparing to expand the reach of its already controversial censorship law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), with a new set of rules that push platforms toward preemptive censorship.

The changes would compel tech companies to block material before users can even see it, under the claim of stopping “cyberflashing” and content “encouraging or assisting serious self-harm.”

On October 21, the government laid before Parliament a Statutory Instrument titled The Online Safety Act 2023 (Priority Offences) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.

This legal mechanism, used to amend existing legislation without requiring a full new Act, adds two additional “priority offences” to Schedule 7 of the OSA:

By classifying these as “priority illegal content” under Section 59 of the OSA, the government triggers the law’s strictest obligations for online platforms.

Keep reading

AWS outage post-mortem fingers DNS as the culprit that took out a chunk of the internet and services for days — automation systems race and crash

The recent Amazon Web Services outage that took out a significant portion of the internet, games, and even smart home devices for days, was extensively covered in the news. Cloud services’ distributed architecture should protect customers from failures like this one, so what went wrong? Amazon published a detailed technical post-mortem of the failure, and as the famous haiku poem goes: “It’s not DNS. / There’s no way it’s DNS. / It was DNS.”

As a rough analogy, consider what happens when there’s a car crash. There’s a traffic jam that stretches for miles, in an accordion-like effect that lasts well after the accident scene has been cleared. The very first problem was fixed relatively quickly, with a three-hour outage from October 19 at 11:48 PM until October 20 at 2:40 AM. However, as with the traffic jam example, dependencies started breaking, and didn’t fully come online until much later.

The root cause was reportedly that the DNS configuration for DynamoDB (database service) was broken and published to Route53 (DNS service). In turn, parts of EC2 (virtual machine service) also went down, as its automated management services rely on DynamoDB. Amazon’s Network Load Balancer also naturally depends on DNS, so it too encountered issues.

It’s worth noting that DynamoDB failing across the entire US-East-1 region is, by itself, enough to bring down what are probably millions of websites and services. However, not being able to bring up EC2 instances was extra bad, and load balancing being affected was diamond-badge bad.

The specific technical issue behind the DNS failure was a programmer’s “favorite” bug: a race condition, in which two repeating events keep re-doing or undoing each other’s effects — the famous GIF of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck with the poster is illustrative.

The DynamoDB DNS resolution uses two components: a DNS Planner that, as the name implies, periodically issues a new Plan that considers system load and availability. The DNS Enactors, whenever they see a new Plan, apply it to Route53 as a transaction, meaning a plan either fully applies or it doesn’t. So far, so good.

What happened was that the first DNS Enactor was taking its sweet time to apply what we’ll call the Old Plan. As New Plans came in, another Enactor took one and applied it. There’s now good and updated data in Route53, and a clean-up of outdated plans (Old Plan included) is issued, just as First Enactor finished applying Old Plan.

Keep reading