WHOA: Could Germany Ban Ad Blockers? German megapublisher Axel Springer is asking a German court to ban an ad-blocker. They claim HTML/ CSS of their sites are protected computer programs. And influencing they are displayed (e.g by removing ads) violates copyright. image I'm in puzzled wonderment at this claim. Preventing ad-blocking would be a huge blow to German cybersecurity and privacy. image There are critical security & privacy reasons to influence how a websites code gets displayed. Like stripping out dangerous code & malvertising. Hacking risks from the online advertising are documented. image Any attempt to force Germans to run all of the code on a website without consideration for their privacy and security rights and needs will end very, very poorly. Defining HTML/CSS as a protected computer program will quickly lead to absurdities touching every corner of the internet. Just think of the potential infringements: -Screen readers for the blind -'Dark mode' bowser extensions -Displaying snippets of code in a university class -Inspecting & modifying code in your own browser -Website translators Or blocking unwanted trackers. This is why most governments do it on their systems. image I'm not a lawyer, but if Axel Springer wins the consequences are just nuts: Basic stuff like bookmarking & saving a local copy of a website might be legally risky. The Wayback Machine & internet archives and libraries might be violators. This might even extend to search engines displaying excerpts of sites. Code sharing sites like GitHub could become a liability minefield... The list goes on and on. Finally, only one country has banned ad-blockers. China. This is not good company for Germany. READ MORE: From Mozilla
Open Policy & Advocacy
Is Germany on the Brink of Banning Ad Blockers? User Freedom, Privacy, and Security Is At Risk. – Open Policy & Advocacy
Across the internet, users rely on browsers and extensions to shape how they experience the web: to protect their privacy, improve accessibility, b...
 Bleeping Computer:
BleepingComputer
Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal
A recent ruling from Germany's Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has revived a legal battle over whether browser-based ad blockers infringe copyrigh...
NEW: UK reportedly drops secret demand for Apple encryption backdoor. Good. image While there was strong activist pressure here the key push came from the US government. image But there is zero rest for the weary as the UK has been leaning much harder into Age Verification. Which is another mechanism for gaining deep visibility into peoples online activity. Story:
The Verge
UK drops demand for backdoor into Apple encryption
Here’s hoping that ADP returns to the UK.
Behind every marble statue account is a... image
Location tracking based on interior pictures. It will be abused to target people. Post the inside your place at your peril. image
Earliest days of vibecoding-as-a-target. Without a radical increase in security, vibecoders will get wiped out & lose their savings. image And their companies will get hit with fat breaches. image Me? I'm waiting for attackers to figure out how to reliably slip backdoors into vibecoded outputs at scale.
Neuroticism? Ripping. Conscientiousness & agreeableness? Dipping. image Via FT:
Client Challenge
NEW: 🇩🇪Germany's top court says spyware severely violates fundamental rights. Bans spyware in cases with <3year sentences. Enforces tough proportionality tests on all surveillance. image Restricts spyware to serious cases. Interesting development. image Court says: capturing data at the source (i.e. on someone's phone) is maximally invasive. Especially given how much of our lives happens online. They also surface the security risks to systems from this kind of surveillance. image Watching Germany's highest court grapple with spyware's invasiveness & rights violations is instructive. States wielding spyware without robust legal limitations and tight judicial oversight... are almost guaranteed to be violating their citizens' basic rights. In so many jurisdictions, state secrecy & lack of effective legal challenges means spyware harms happening daily Huge credit to German digital freedoms organization #digitalcourage for bringing this case. Court statement:
Rules on preventative and criminal procedural (source) telecommunications surveillance and criminal procedural remote searches are constitutional for the most part
In orders published today, the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court rendered its decision on two constitutional complaints concerning s...
Internet-connected microphones in school bathrooms. What could go wrong? image Mandated microphones in private spaces are a bad idea. Throwing invasive sensors into private spaces rarely fixes socially scary problems. But is almost guaranteed to have risky downsides. image Story:
WIRED
It Looks Like a School Bathroom Smoke Detector. A Teen Hacker Showed It Could Be an Audio Bug
A pair of hackers found that a vape detector often found in high school bathrooms contained microphones—and security weaknesses that could allow ...
Regular people know that age verification mandates won't work. But they are worried about their children's safety, and they aren't being offered non-dystopian alternatives. image
LLM chat exposures keep on coming. Why? My theory is that these platforms don't do a very good job explaining to users what their public/share features mean. Result: users may think that while something is public that doesn't necessarily mean that anyone is indexing or caching. image Story:
404 Media
More than 130,000 Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, and Other LLM Chats Readable on Archive.org
The issue of publicly saving shared LLM chats is bigger than just Google.