Starmer might be packing his bags, but the "Online Safety Act" is staying exactly where it is.

This isn't about safety; it’s a government-mandated monopoly. Private firms help write the laws, then "win" the contracts to sell the solutions. While the PM resigns, the "vicious circle" of corporate surveillance just keeps grinding forward.

(LONG RANT)-A public service announcement. I know it might be obvious since I am posting in Privacy. Most of you might know this already. But I have to rant. Just in case if this helps anybody. You can test this for yourself. Click on any, usually political posts, you will see nonstop arguing, then you will start getting more and more posts like that. Same thing with TikTok and Reddit for sure. The sites want you to engage more so you stay on there. Especially now in these crazy political times. I have grown very disgusted with this and have deleted every app I can think of that does it. It is also very bad for your mental health. Now, who knows what data they are trying to get from those sites too. And some sites require your phone number or some kind of stupid verification process. This will get worse, you might have to add your ID just to enter in more websites online eventually. It is happening already with age restricted adult sites and with Discord. But honestly, you should already be watching what your kids are doing anyway. There will always be parental control tools. Now, the social media apps sure don't help your child's mental health either. They could be talking to anybody on them, a very disturbing thought. With them also posting photos and videos. I would never let my child do that on any website. Too many creeps out there. Obviously, when they are an adult that is a different story. But, children being on sites like these is very harmful to their minds. Even kids apps, they can click on AI slop that might say the ABC's wrong or something like that. They have to be watched when you give them some random iPad. This whole rant might sound nuts, but I had to say it.

OC by @Anonymous_Leaker@lemmy.world

A marked police van will be used outside major events or in crowded areas to live scan the faces of people walking past, in an Australian first.

The faces of people will be matched against a database of people with outstanding arrest warrants and registered child sex offenders, as well as missing persons.

"This is not about mass surveillance," [the police commissioner] said, "This is about specifying those in our community who are wanted by police."

While the trial only includes one marked van, the police commissioner is not ruling out further covert technology being used in the future, including at protests.

The updated Bill S-209 creates an offence for any organization that, for commercial purposes, makes pornographic material available on the Internet to persons under 18.

Supporters argue that this will protect minors from harmful online content. However, critics are warning that this will still apply to general purpose platforms, not only pornography-focused services. While Bill S-209 uses narrower language and responds to some of the criticisms of Bill S-210, the bill’s sponsor told the committee that the government is free to apply the age-verification requirements—and presumably site-blocking orders—to any site, not just pornography sites. On top of that, the bill allows court-ordered blocking of websites deemed non-compliant, which may create serious risks for lawful expression and access to information. While the bill mentions privacy, it leaves big gaps around how personal or biometric data would be collected, stored, or protected. To understand how these laws could backfire, we should look abroad.

Canada is not the first country to take on this issue. The United Kingdom's recent experience provides a valuable lesson. When its Online Safety Act introduced strict age-verification rules, automated filters ended up blocking LGBTQ+ forums, and sexual-health education. Canada now faces a choice: repeat these mistakes or learn from them. By learning from their story and others, we can find a better path for Canada.

The UK’s experience shows that technical fixes cannot solve complex social problems by themselves. When privacy safeguards are weak and rules are written too broadly, efforts to protect children can end up erasing the education, artistic and community spaces that help people stay informed and safe. As Canada debates Bill S-209, it faces the same dilemma: how to safeguard young people online without turning the internet into a system of surveillance and censorship.

This "over-blocking" problem is concerning, as the power to order website blocks could be misused. Bill S-209 creates an offence committed by any organization that makes pornographic material available to individuals under 18 for commercial purposes. While the bill attempts to limit its scope by excluding search engines and other services that only incidentally provide access to such content, the government would still be free to apply age-verification requirements, and potentially site-blocking orders, to a broader range of services, not only pornography sites. This leaves open the possibility that the bill’s reach could expand well beyond what the text currently suggests.

It shuts people out and reinforces digital inequality. For many people, especially those in rural or marginalized communities, the internet is a great place for them to learn about sexual health, identity, and mental health issues. When age-verification systems over-block content, these groups risk losing access to legitimate sexual-health information and resources. Additionally, people who don’t have a government ID or their own device to pass the strict ID-verification system and complete the age checks, are at risk of being excluded or cut off unfairly from essential services, communities, and the information they rely on.

Meanwhile, creators, especially smaller ones, also face their own risk of being shut out. With fines of $250,000 for the first offence, the stake could crush them, while large tech companies can easily absorb the cost. In the UK, similar high costs motivated some small and volunteer-driven services to pre-emptively shut themselves rather than face legal risk they could not possibly absorb.

Privacy safeguards are unclear. To verify age, Canadians may need to upload identification or personal data to a verification provider chosen by the site they’re dealing with, not them. Bill S-209 lacks strong rules on what happens to our data once it enters those vendors' hands. Who keeps our ID scans, and for how long? What happens if they leak or sell our data? Without clear regulations, the risk of major data leaks is significant.

consumerrights.wiki/w/Leonardo_ELSAG_SignalTrace sjud.senate.ca.gov/content/bill-hearings/2026-bill-hearings/june-23-2026-bill-hearing

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/1183337

Comments

via https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1ucesku/elsag_integrated_signal_intelligence_platform/

archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260620122134/https://www.leonardocompany-us.com/lpr/elsag-signaltrace

ELSAG SignalTrace is a groundbreaking software system for law enforcement, designed to identify suspect people or vehicles, even when a license plate number is not known. This system integrates seamlessly with the ELSAG Enterprise Operations Center, our standard data management and analysis software.

This system uses strategically placed sensors to collect electronic communication patterns and identities of consumer electronics, like vehicle components, Bluetooth, RFID tags, and Wi-Fi. As the electronic devices emit signals, sensors in the SignalTrace software capture their identifying or categorizing details to create an additional data set to enhance the records captured by LPR cameras in the area.

Product Features

• Identifies the movements of electronic devices, individuals, and vehicles
• Stores data on the SignalTrace server where it can be queried and analyzed to aid investigations
• Respects individuals’ privacy rights (does not decrypt or read content from devices)
• Allows law enforcement to recognize a specific vehicle included in an electronic signature, without the license plate number
• Reveals signatures frequently travelling together with an individual or vehicle, which can lead to the discovery of convoys and other movement and travel patterns
• SignalTrace is effective in off-road areas such as in subways and malls
• Performs with or without license plate readers at every collection site, allowing for a wider coverage area while keeping deployment costs down

How it works

As the devices emit signals, SignalTrace sites captures them and correlates them together, along with LPR data if present. The data collected shows what group of devices are travelling together. As part of investigations, algorithms can determine which specific mix of devices are predictably moving together. That specific mix of devices—linked by common time stamps and locations—are described as an electronic fingerprint and can aid in the identification of suspects or witnesses.

For example: while 70 cars in 100 may contain iPhones, only one will have an iPhone 13rev2, an Audi radio, a pair of Bose headphones, a Garmin sports watch, a key finder, and the license plate ABC-1234. The collection of data represented by these specific things is an electronic signature.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1211514/danish-privacy-activist-lars-andersen-raided-by-police

Police go directly for the circuit breaker panel to avoid being filmed

This post will be in English, because there apparently is a lot of interest in what happened to me yesterday.

I'm a libertarian danish privacy activist and former police officer and I have been doing activism for about 15 years.

I have had a bit of time to think about my arrest and the actions of the masked police that broke down my door - with no prior warning.

The prefece to the story is, that I in a kind of roundabout and (I think) humorous way published "my two favorite numbers" by spelling out a 10 diget and a 8 diget number with letters. I didn't tell what they ment, but they where prime minister Mette Frederiksen's social security and phone number.

I also published a screenshot of me trying to interview Mette Frederiksen on what app, asking her about her wanting to ban encryption (CSA) and introducing mass surveillance via granting the police intelligence services access to all sorts of information (medical journals, social media posts, DNA registers ment for research and so on).

That resulted in me being arrested by armed and masked police breaking down my door without me having any chance of opening it for them.

When the two civilian dressed masked men entered the apparentment one of them immediately went for the circuit breaker panel to shut off the power to my router. They then removed my Google Nest cameras - because they knew that the cameras contains local storage.

That way they could avoid having video of the (in my view) illegal arrest. Only the few moments before the power is cut was filmed. There is video of me asking them for the charges - and them refusing to tell me (which is illegal). But I can't access it, because they took the cameras.

I'm not even sure if that is legal. In Denmark it is (nominally) totally legal to film the police. That way it is possible to know what happened and it's not just your word against there's.

Denmark and the West are moving in the wrong direction, and it makes me sad.

Source: Lars Andersen on X(Twitter).

No

I don't think so

I went looking through different virtual card providers for something that'd let me make a purchase I originally intended to use a prepaid for, yet they wouldn't accept it. This led me to looking into Virtual Card providers as they'd work more consistently.

Problematically, Privacy.com seems overkill on what all it demands as far as KYC standards go, and some suggest IronVest as an alternative because it demands less. Yet, their privacy policy explicitly states they can share your information with advertising partners.

I haven't encountered many providers, but seeing this trend, I wanna raise the question: Is there any virtual Card provider that really cares for privacy, and the privacy-minded?

Kansas City, Missouri

Indeed, the evidence has long suggested that these kinds of bans actually can make things worse by isolating kids who are at most at risk and who need support. At a time when fear mongering and moral panics have cut off basically everywhere that kids can be kids with each other and without adults hovering over them at every moment, social media became that kind of digital third space. Social media didn't become the default digital third space because it's uniquely 'addictive' — it became the default because adults have spent decades overreacting and shutting down every other place kids could gather and communicate without supervision.

From IP Geolocation to WiFi Positioning: The KYC Evolution

Full article: https://telegra.ph/From-IP-Geolocation-to-WiFi-Positioning-The-KYC-Evolution-06-17

Discussion welcome — counter-detection techniques, vendor behavior, regulatory angles, and real-world deployment notes especially valuable.

Daniel Zekveld is a Policy Analyst with the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada.

This is a concern Canadian governments can and should also take action on.

Other jurisdictions are already doing so, including the U.K., France, Australia, and over two dozen U.S. states. These jurisdictions have typically passed laws requiring age verification to prevent children from viewing online pornography.

Canada’s Senate recently completed its study of Bill S-209, which would require pornography companies to verify the age of potential viewers through a third-party organization. That legislation passed third reading in the Senate to a standing ovation and will now be reviewed and debated in the House of Commons.

As Senator Miville-Dechene, the bill’s sponsor, concluded during the third reading debate, “By passing this bill, we’ll be sending a clear signal that Canada is serious about protecting its children in the digital world.”

Certainly, age verification is not perfect. Some children may be able to access pornography through a virtual private network, to hide their location. But using a VPN adds a barrier and would radically reduce incidents of youth accidentally stumbling across porn.

There are also ways for the government to target the use of VPNs to improve the effectiveness of age-verification for pornography.

The government ought to move Bill S-209 through the House of Commons swiftly and prioritize rules to limit youth access to pornography on social media.