Tag: privacy

Microsoft confirms it will give the FBI your Windows PC data encryption key if asked — you can thank Windows 11’s forced online accounts for that

Microsoft has confirmed in a statement to Forbes that the company will provide the FBI access to BitLocker encryption keys if a valid legal order is requested. These keys enable the ability to decrypt and access the data on a computer running Windows, giving law enforcement the means to break into a device and access its data.

The news comes as Forbes reports that Microsoft gave the FBI the BitLocker encryption keys to access a device in Guam that law enforcement believed to have “evidence that would help prove individuals handling the island’s Covid unemployment assistance program were part of a plot to steal funds” in early 2025.

This was possible because the device in question had its BitLocker encryption key saved in the cloud. By default, Windows 11 forces the use of a Microsoft Account, and the OS will automatically tie your BitLocker encryption key to your online account so that users can easily recover their data in scenarios where they might get locked out. This can be disabled, letting you choose where to save them locally, but the default behavior is to store the key in Microsoft’s cloud when setting up a PC with a Microsoft Account.

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Group Chats About ICE Whereabouts Are Protected Speech. The FBI Is Investigating Anyway.

Group chats about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents aren’t illegal. But FBI Director Kash Patel doesn’t seem to care.

On Monday, Patel told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that the FBI was investigating a Signal group in which people had been chatting about ICE agents’ whereabouts.

The Trump administration has said that people are doxing federal agents, employing a term once reserved for the act of publishing private information about someone’s identity or address online. “Doxing” generally implies that this sharing is done with ill intent.

But there are all sorts of perfectly benign reasons why Americans—whether in the country legally or not—might want to keep tabs on where immigration authorities are going. Sharing this information allows people to protest, observe, or document ICE activity, or avoid run ins with ICE agents.

Chatting about ICE agent whereabouts is unambiguously speech that’s protected by the First Amendment. So the idea that the FBI would investigate on these grounds is worrying.

“There does not appear to be any lawful basis for this investigation,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “The First Amendment generally protects the publication of legally-obtained information, including much of what the Trump administration has labeled ‘doxxing.’ That protection extends to using an app to share information about ICE activity.”

In his interview with Johnson, Patel paid lip service to the First Amendment. Yet he also framed Signal chats pertaining to ICE whereabouts as inherently suspect and/or likely to lead to criminal actions. “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way,” he said, drawing a direct link between constitutionally protected activity and criminality.

Of course, trapping ICE agents and harming them would indeed be illegal. But the illegal part of that is the trapping, the plotting harm, and the harming, not merely the knowing where the agents are or chatting about where they are. And even if some individual ultimately uses the location information to inflict harm, it still would not make the mere sharing of that information illegal.

“The First Amendment has narrow exceptions for true threats and speech intended and likely to provoke imminent unlawful action, but the government cannot trigger those exceptions simply by claiming that speech puts officials in harm’s way,” notes Terr. “The First Amendment also does not protect criminal conspiracy, but that requires evidence of an agreement to commit a specific crime and a substantial step toward carrying it out. No such evidence appears in the Signal messages that have been made public.”

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Google agrees to $68m settlement over claims it recorded private conversations

Google is facing a class action after its users claimed the company was spying on them.

The company has agreed to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit as users accuse the company of violating their personal privacy.

Google’s virtual assistant, an AI powered software available on android phones and tablets, has been accused of recording private conversations.

The software activates when users use “wake words”, a verbal cue prompting the device to actively listen to commands, like “Hey Google” or “Okay Google”.

The assistant is designed to only switch from passive monitoring to active listening when it hears wake words.

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Only ‘braindead’ believe WhatsApp is secure – Durov

Pavel Durov, the Russian tech entrepreneur who created the Telegram messenger app,  has claimed there is no doubt WhatsApp lacks any meaningful privacy, after its parent company was hit with a new lawsuit.

In a major class-action lawsuit filed against Meta Platforms, Inc. in a US district court last week, an international group of plaintiffs from countries including Australia, Brazil and India has accused the company of making false claims about the privacy of its WhatsApp service.

“You’d have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026,” Durov posted on X on Monday, mocking suggestions that Meta cannot read users’ messages. “When we analyzed how WhatsApp implemented its ‘encryption’, we found multiple attack vectors.”

The lawsuit challenges the cornerstone of WhatsApp’s privacy promise: its default end-to-end encryption, which uses the Signal protocol. The plaintiffs allege that, contrary to its in-app claim that “only people in this chat can read, listen to, or share” messages, Meta and WhatsApp “store, analyze, and can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications.” The complaint cites unspecified whistleblowers as the source of this information.

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America’s war on…sex toys! Pete Hegseth accused of policing troops’ private lives with Pentagon crackdown on use of intimate devices

As US troops carry out high-stakes missions from Venezuela to the Middle East, the Pentagon has waged an unlikely new battle at home: the war on sex toys. 

In its latest culture-war skirmish, the Daily Mail can reveal military officials recently blocked the delivery of sex toys to troops overseas, igniting ridicule and debate over how far the military should police private life.

First came prohibitions on piercings and nail polish for male military members. Then followed a ban on books with LGBTQ+ and anti-discrimination themes in military libraries. 

Then Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sniped at overweight troops, those with religious beards and chaplains embracing what he deems as new-age beliefs.

Now the Department of War, as Hegseth has renamed the Defense Department, is taking aim at a new target – adult toys. 

In a glaring display of sweating the small stuff, Hegseth’s Navy sent two testy letters to an adult emporium in Toronto slamming it for fulfilling an order to American personnel on a US base in Bahrain.

The items in question: a bullet vibrator and butt plug.

‘Pornographic materials or devices are not allowed into the Kingdom of Bahrain,’ warned one letter sent from the base with the subject line: ‘Adult item identified during X-ray mail screening,’ along with the returned pleasure goods.

Another letter categorized the items as ‘posing an immediate danger to life or limb or an immediate and substantial danger to property.’

The Pentagon has declined comment on the letters, sent over the summer, which the Navy framed as acts of cultural sensitivity meant to avoid offending the conservative Muslim majority in the Persian Gulf island kingdom.

But official customs lists published by Bahrain’s government don’t explicitly list sex toys as forbidden, although they do prohibit the sale and importation of ‘obscene or immoral materials’ that – by either Bahraini or Hegseth’s standards – could apply to personal pleasure devices.

A Navy instructional publication for trainees explicitly states that ‘possession of adult sex toys in the barracks is prohibited’.

The letters have triggered a host of playful social media posts, including sex-toy war stories about which dildos, penis pumps and anal beads current and former US service members have been using to pleasure themselves on overseas bases.

Troops deployed to Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf countries face strict social restrictions and limited interaction with locals.

One of our Pentagon sources notes that maintaining mental health among troops has been a challenge in the region, pointing most notoriously to the 2018 suicide of Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, the commander of the US Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet based on Bahrain.

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UK Orders Ofcom to Explore Encryption Backdoors

By now, we’ve all heard the familiar refrain: “It’s for your safety.” It’s the soothing mantra of every government official who’s ever wanted a peek behind your digital curtains.

This week, with a move that would make East Germany blush, the UK government officially confirmed its intention to hand Ofcom  (yes, that Ofcom, the regulator that once investigated whether Love Island was too spicy) the keys to your private messages.

The country, already experiencing rapidly declining civil liberties, is now planning to scan encrypted chats for “bad stuff.”

Now, for those unfamiliar, Ofcom is the UK’s communications regulator that has recently been given censorship pressure powers for online speech.

It’s become the government’s Swiss Army knife for everything from internet censorship to now, apparently, full-blown surveillance.

Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom has been handed something called Section 121, which sounds like a tax loophole but is actually a legal crowbar for prying open encrypted messages.

It allows the regulator to compel any online service that lets people talk to each other, Facebook Messenger, Signal, iMessage, etc to install “accredited technology” to scan for terrorism or child abuse material.

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Pakistan Blocks Major VPNs Under New Licensing Rules, Expanding State Control Over Internet Access

Over the past two weeks, internet users in Pakistan have watched their encrypted connections vanish one after another. Beginning December 22, 2025, major VPNs, including Proton VPN, NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Mullvad, Cloudflare WARP, and Psiphon have been systematically blocked across the country, according to Daily Pakistan.

The blackout follows a government licensing framework that, on paper, regulates VPN providers but in practice gives the state the power to decide which privacy tools are permitted.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) began enforcing its Class Value Added Services (CVAS-Data) licensing rules in November 2025, nearly a year after quietly introducing the policy.

Under these regulations, companies that want to operate legally must install “Legal Interception” compliant hardware and hand it over “to nationally authorized security organizations” at their own expense whenever instructed.

Any VPN not listed as licensed is automatically subject to blocking by domestic internet providers.

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RFK Jr. Stops Requiring Doctors to Report Patient Vaccine Status

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stopped mandating health care providers report the immunization status of patients.

Kennedy decided to stop requiring doctors to list vaccinations children have received, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said in a Dec. 30, 2025, letter to state health officials.

Doctors participating in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program were previously required to report how many children received specific vaccines by their second birthday, and other shots by the time they turn 14 years old.

Kennedy also eliminated a requirement that doctors report the immunization status of pregnant women, according to the notice.

“Government bureaucracies should never coerce doctors or families into accepting vaccines or penalize physicians for respecting patient choice. That practice ends now,” Kennedy, head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), of which CMS is a part, said in a post on X. “Under the Trump administration, HHS will protect informed consent, respect religious liberty, and uphold medical freedom.”

Federal law requires that doctors report certain measures while caring for the approximately 78 million people on Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and that states convey that data to CMS. The reporting was voluntary when first implemented. It began being mandated in fiscal year 2024.

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Ireland’s Simon Harris to Push EU-Wide Ban on Social Media Anonymity

Ireland’s next term leading the European Union will be used to promote a new agenda: an effort to end online anonymity and make verified identity the standard across social media platforms.

Tánaiste Simon Harris said the government plans to use Ireland’s presidency to push for EU-wide rules that would require users to confirm their identities before posting or interacting online.

Speaking to Extra.ie, Harris described the plan as part of a broader attempt to defend what he called “democracy” from anonymous abuse and digital manipulation.

He said the initiative will coincide with another policy being developed by Media Minister Patrick O’Donovan, aimed at preventing children from accessing social media.

O’Donovan’s proposal, modeled on Australian restrictions, is expected to be introduced while Ireland holds the EU presidency next year.

Both ideas would involve rewriting parts of the EU’s Digital Services Act, which already governs how online platforms operate within the bloc.

Expanding it to require verified identities would mark a major shift toward government involvement in online identity systems, a move that many privacy advocates believe could expose citizens to new forms of monitoring and limit open speech.

Harris said his motivation comes from concerns about the health of public life, not personal grievance.

Harris said he believes Ireland will find allies across Europe for the initiative.

He pointed to recent statements from French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who he said have shown interest in following Australia’s lead. “If you look at the comments of Emmanuel Macron…of Keir Starmer…recently, in terms of being open to considering what Australia have done…You know this is a global conversation Ireland will and should be a part of,” he said.

Technology companies based in Ireland, many of which already face scrutiny under existing EU rules, are likely to resist further regulation.

The United States government has also expressed growing hostility toward European efforts to regulate speech on its major tech firms, recently imposing visa bans on several EU officials connected to such laws.

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Indian Supreme Court Judge Says Those With Nothing to Hide Shouldn’t Fear Surveillance

A courtroom drama over state surveillance in India took a striking turn when a Supreme Court judge suggested that people who live transparently should not be troubled by government monitoring.

The case involved allegations that Telangana’s state intelligence apparatus was used for political snooping, but the discussion soon widened into a philosophical clash over privacy and power.

Former Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) chief T. Prabhakar Rao, accused of directing unlawful phone tapping during the previous BRS government, was before the bench as the State sought more time to keep him in police custody.

During the hearing, Justice B.V. Nagarathna questioned why citizens would object to being monitored at all, asking, “Now we live in an open world. Nobody is in a closed world. Nobody should be really bothered about surveillance. Why should anyone be bothered about surveillance unless they have something to hide?”

Her comment prompted Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to caution against normalizing government spying. He asked whether this meant “every government will have a free hand in putting people under surveillance,” warning that secret monitoring without authorization was unlawful and incompatible with basic freedoms.

Mehta reminded the bench that the Constitution, as affirmed in the landmark Puttaswamy ruling, enshrines privacy as part of human dignity and liberty.

“The Supreme Court knows the difference between an ‘open’ world and being under illegal surveillance. My personal communications with my wife… I have a right not to be under surveillance,” he said.

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