GrapheneOS has a Hardware Partner! | This Week in Privacy #43 (Mar 6, 2026)

A major Android OEM agreeing to create a future graph you know as compatible phone, proton

mail sharing data with the FBI the open AI Pentagon deal and more these are the stories that we'll be

discussing in this episode of this week in privacy or weekly live stream where we discuss the latest

updates within the privacy guides community and this week's top stories in the data privacy

and cybersecurity space. I'm Jonah and with me this week is Nate. How's your week been going Nate?

been keeping really really busy but could be worse so I can't complain. Oh good. What's

a hop right into it? We'll start off with the biggest news story I think that we've seen in

privacy and security from the past week. Of course it's Motorola confirming graph you know as

support for a future phone and bringing over features to their lineup. This article we have is

from nine to five Google they published on March 1st and they said following rumors swirling

for quite some time Motorola has announced a partnership with Graphino S that will see the privacy

focused D Google version of Android pre-installed on upcoming Motorola devices. A new long-term

partnership between Motorola and Graphino S was announced at Mobile World Conference 2026. Earlier

this week on Monday with plans for both a future smartphone to have Graphino S pre-installed in

certain features from Graphino S coming over to other Motorola devices the company said in a media

briefing in Barcelona in a press release Motorola said Motorola is introducing a new era of

smartphone security through a long-term partnership with the Graphino S foundation the leading non-profit

and advanced mobile security and creators of a hardened operating system based on the Android

open source project together Motorola and the Graphino S foundation will work to strengthen smartphone

security and collaborate on future devices engineered with Graphino S compatibility. In the coming

months Motorola and the Graphino S foundation will continue to collaborate on joint research software

enhancements and new security capabilities with more details and solutions to roll out as the

partnership evolves. All of this comes after some leaks at the end of February that we saw on

Reddit and also discussed on our own privacy guides form where some Motorola or Lenovo media slides

were leaked ahead of this showing Graphino S being referenced in their roadmap for future devices

and so those rumors did prove to be true this week. It's not

it's unclear how this partnership is going to work especially with Motorola saying that they're

going to be bringing over features from Graphino S into their devices. We do know right now that

all of Motorola's current devices will not be compatible with Graphino S that will be coming

as a future device. We've seen social media updates from the Graphino S team confirming that

none of Motorola's devices currently meet their security standards and they're saying that

a future Motorola device that can run Graphino S will have similar specs to the flagship

end of Motorola's devices like the Motorola's signature but the current Motorola's signature

will not be supported. Graphino S social media team members have also said that we can expect a

device to come out in 2027 so this is not in immediate launch by any means but it is now confirmed

that they will be working with Motorola, putting to rest all the rumors of all the other OEMs

they could possibly be working with. I know there's a lot of speculation for the past few months

since Graphino S originally announced they would be working with an unnamed hardware device

partner and now that's confirmed. But yeah, this will definitely be a big shift for Graphino S and

how they've always done things in the past. So Nate, you've taken a look at this story. It's been

big news throughout the week. Was there any key takeaways that you wanted to discuss here?

No, I think you kind of covered it. I mean, at this point, it's still so early on that there's,

I mean, I don't want to say there's a lot of speculation. I mean, it is, there is a lot of

speculation like you kind of covered everything we know for sure. I'm interested, you know, Jordan

said here in the comments that Motorola was an interesting choice which I totally agree with but

also like I'm not, I'm not much of a hardware guy especially when it comes to phones. I know that

pixels of course have like the best security which is why we recommend pixels and also iPhones have

good security but obviously that's never going to happen. That would be interesting. But I think

I'm notoriously critical of Samsung security. So I've seen some people saying like, oh, I wish

they'd work with Samsung. I cynically do not see a world where Samsung security will ever be good

enough to run a graphing device. In my opinion, they would have to really do a lot of work there but

yeah, it's really just a, I can't think of anybody off the top of my head that I'm like, oh, it's

weird they didn't go with these people. I definitely was not expecting Motorola but I don't, again,

I don't know who I was expecting. I think I will be really impatient to see what comes next. I'm

really interested because Motorola's official announcement for this had a very heavy emphasis on

enterprise features. And I know that's historically something that's been missing from a lot of

fast projects is with all the stuff about age verification going on. A lot of people have pointed

out that a lot of fast projects like Linux are missing parental controls. And so it kind of makes

it harder to pull yourself out of those systems but still maybe monitor what your kids do.

So where I'm going with this is I will be interested to see if maybe graphing is able to pull

some of those optionally of course. Some of those like enterprise features to create like some

kind of parental control thing in a secure way or anything. I will be, I've seen some rumors that

there's not necessarily a guarantee that these phones will come pre-shipped with graphing but they

will be graphing compatible. I've also seen other rumors that graphing will be an optional.

Like when you buy it, you can select graphing. I hope that will be commercially available and not

just for enterprise users. So yeah, it's a, I don't know. Again, I feel like a lot of things we

could say at this point would be speculation. But I'm really hopeful. I'm really excited to see

where this goes. I'm happy that graphing has access. I'm assuming they now have access to Android

in a more stable kind of way because I know that was a big thing is Google's been locking down

Android slowly and making it less available and less open source in practice if not officially.

And a lot of ROMs have struggled with trying to get a hold of Android so that they can modify it

and get it ready for releases and that's been slowing down cycles. So I'm assuming now they have

better access to that kind of stuff. And they'll, you know, of course, they'll have I'm assuming

access to the hardware to be able to like modify that and they don't have to reverse engineer

things. I'll be interested to see if they continue to support the pixel or not. So just a lot of

questions, but I'm really hopeful to see where this goes. Yeah, for sure. I've definitely seen a lot

of conflicting reports on this. I know the nine to five Google said that graphing us would

come pre-installed. I'm not sure if Motorola said that because they didn't mention it in their

press release, but maybe they did at the in person event. I was in a mobile world conference,

so I wouldn't know. I do think, yeah, I'm definitely interested to see what this phone looks like

because graphing OS has for a very long time touted the idea of like the the the Titan security

chip in pixels being like the gold standard for for smartphone security. And a lot of their features

do rely on that. Whereas all of these other existing devices don't really have a

comfortable security chip in place that has all the same features. So if we look at like all of

Motorola's devices right now, which use Qualcomm chips, you know, Qualcomm has some sort of secure

element, which the name of is escaping me up the top of my head, but it's not as comprehensive

as the the Titan M chips that in the pixels in terms of what they can do. And so I'm really interested

to see if Motorola is going to be able to provide an alternative in these future phones and what

that will look like. I don't know what sort of secure element requirements would be would be needed

in this case. I don't know what commercially available options there are for Motorola to choose from.

That's kind of all that would be above my pay grade, but I'm sure graphing OS in their team is

is figuring out that stuff out and probably has been working with Motorola on this for for quite

some time. I mean, obviously this this news was released today, but graphing OS has been talking

about this for a while and they've obviously been planning this behind the scenes for quite some time.

It's also it's an interesting relationship that they seem to have with Motorola and I think it

explains why they haven't gone with other OEMs because I've seen graphing OS representatives on

social media say that Motorola essentially came to them asking for the partnership and committing

these resources as opposed to them reaching out and trying to find one that's most suitable for them.

Which makes sense because you would really need a pretty high level of buy-in from whatever OEM

you partner with to take on a lot of the responsibility. Grafhing OS is of course a very small

team still and can't exactly make all of these hardware decisions and software changes to support

a new device just like on a whim resources are limited. So being able to work with Motorola

and kind of maybe direct their team in a security minded focus is really interesting and it's

a really cool opportunity for them. So yeah, I think we'll just have to wait and see what this

looks like. I know I've seen some people disappointed. The OEM wasn't some of the other top picks.

I know people were hoping for one plus or nothing or perhaps Sony. But I don't think Motorola is

is the worst choice out there and I think it's a very positive sign that Motorola

seemingly initiated this partnership or at the very least is very invested in making this happen.

So it's a good level of commitment on their end as far as we can tell.

Yeah, I agree. While you were talking I was thinking about some of the more

the more I guess open source aligned phone makers out there like nothing isn't really open

source but I think they have the whole modular thing going on. I might be thinking to somebody else

but like fair phone, purism, what's the other one? The pine phone which I know those were probably

never even on the table for security reasons. But yeah, I mean it's one thing worth noting is I

did see a video this week that dove into this topic a little more and showed also the hacker news,

why combinator forum where Daniel was pretty active responding to some people and he made a point

of saying like this is not an exclusive partnership. So he said at this time there's no plans for

graphing to work with any other OEMs but it's not off the table and I actually didn't know that about

Motorola coming to them but I think I mean I'm sure you said this and I'm sure this is a given but

like I think this is great for graphing and I think this is great for open source. I think this is

great for the general consumer to have this easily accessible potentially ships with graphing

device especially if that is again a consumer accessible option at checkout. So I think if this

phone does really well I think that will show other OEMs that there is an interest in this and

being that again graphing this is not an exclusive relationship then that would be that would

potentially be on the table that they could go to graphing and be like oh we want to work with

you to make our phones graphing compatible as well which would just give us even more option for

other manufacturers. So I mean I know I'm getting really really ahead of myself. This is probably

years down the road if that ever happens but you know we can dream right? So yeah absolutely.

I know I see some chats here about pine phone. It would have been nice certainly to see

a partnership with a more niche or especially like repairable phone. Fair phone I think would have

been a top choice for a lot of people for sure especially in this community because

a lot of these values I think go hand in hand a lot of the time between open source privacy security

repairability like a lot of people are very passionate in this community in this community about

all of those things but yeah no matter no matter which way you look at this any sort of partnership

I think with with an OEM and especially one that's big name as Motorola is huge for any

custom run but especially graph you know as it's definitely the the Android run of choice that

we would want to see partnering with with the OEM versus versus a lot of the other options out

there. So yeah it's it's very cool news. Yeah I don't have much else to add like I said

everything at this point is kind of a speculation we'll just have to wait and see where things go

but yeah I think in the meantime we can talk about a different phone if we're ready to move on

which is the iPhone and this is pretty exciting news but apparently the iPhone and the iPad are

now approved to handle classified NATO information. I'm not going to lie this is kind of a headline

says it all this is a for audio listeners this is a new press press release directly from Apple

so it kind of there's a little bit of information there nothing super technical but you know

Apple kind of touts all of the security features they built into their phones recently like

biometric authentication with face ID memory integrity enforcement they say best in class encryption

I mean I guess you know government has struggled to crack lockdown mode and even in the past just

the regular encryption so that's probably not terribly misleading but yeah they say that they

have gone through did they say there was an audit here I mean I'm assuming there was some kind of

audit certification process but yeah iPhones and iPads running iOS and iPad OS 26 are certified

for NATO use in all nations. I don't think I have too much to add to that again it's it's a pretty

self-explanatory headline but I think it just really really attests to Apple's security which

this is going to come up again later in the show but I want to remind everyone watching

that privacy and security and anonymity are all very different things they're very distinct things

and they do complement each other they do work together and some of them like security is how we

enforce our privacy wishes right you know with things like just as a really low hanging fruit example

a password at its most basic form is designed to control who has access to an account so that is

kind of a form of privacy controlling who has that password in theory at least so yeah Apple

we would definitely like to see them do more on the privacy front there is of course room for

improvement but again they are they do make incredibly secure devices and I think this is just kind

of a further testament to that one thing that's interesting is they say that this is the first

consumer first and only consumer devices in compliance with the information assurance requirements

of NATO nations so yeah like I said I don't have too much to add to that Jonah did you have any

thoughts on this story yeah so it's very cool I think like you said according to this press release

and as far as I know these are the only consumer devices that can handle any sort of NATO classified

information which is a big accomplishment for Apple the auditing process for any of this

is fairly extensive and I think it's probably no surprise that one of the best phones we are

we already know for in terms of security can pass this but it is just more evidence that a lot of

the safeguards in place on these devices are functional and work as expected and can be trusted

audits like this aren't the end all be all of security by any means and they mostly make sure

there's no like super obvious mistakes but they don't test for everything and so it's not like a

a complete assurance that these phones are unhackable and indeed like if we look at the level of

classified data that these phones are now able to handle which is the NATO restricted level

that's out of the four classification levels that NATO has that's the lowest one

you don't even like necessarily need a specialized security clearance in order to access

NATO restricted information so you know the the most top secret governments are the most

top secret documents that NATO has are not going to be stored on iPhones anytime soon

but it is interesting that like a full operating system and especially a consumer one is now

able to handle this data because typically you would see like a NATO restricted classification

limited to something like a like a lot of those USB drives that have like hardware encryption

and a pin that you enter some of those will be like NATO restricted in terms of in terms of

security which is good but those are obviously much simpler devices they just have to handle

encryption and that's pretty much it whereas an iPhone is a complicated device and obviously

more challenging to to guarantee the security of those documents on it and so yeah it is it is a big

step for for Apple to have this done I don't know what the process is for like a company like Apple

or a OS developer to get NATO certified I don't know if that is something that like the company

itself would have to reach out foreign paved to get certified I would imagine it typically is

and so thinking about like this being the first consumer device to be to be certified to handle

NATO restricted information that might not be that surprising because I would imagine a lot of

consumer devices probably are not willing to undergo the effort to get this certification and

audit in the first place thinking about like graph you know as we just talked about

uh I can't imagine they would have the resources to do like a comprehensive audit to be

certified to handle NATO restricted information even if the operating system is theoretically

secure enough to do that so there is that takeaway that I would think about I don't think

for that reason like I wouldn't consider iPhones to be the most secure devices in the world now

or anything like that um but it is certainly um a good sign for them at the very least

for sure um I don't have anything to add to that but we did have a few questions in the chat

I thought might be fun to talk about um yeah Dyson fan said do you think this will be affected

by the war in the Middle East um I don't I don't think so I think overall I know there's a big

push in Europe right now for digital sovereignty um I think one of the reasons that NATO would view

Apple as a maybe less risky company compared to someone like Microsoft is putting aside the fact that

Microsoft has been hacked by China more times than I can count um I think Apple does have a history

of pushing back not all the time definitely not all the time I'm not defending Apple here

there's times they should have pushed back that they didn't but they do have a history especially

in the US of pushing back against government data requests and um I don't know I would just

imagine that kind of makes the the geopolitical landscape a little bit more uh nuanced I guess

in terms of why they might be willing to trust someone like Apple but um and then yeah Jordan

just real quick said I wonder what they used for computers because Mac was not included I don't

know that's a good question I know uh Germany specifically I know there's a few states in Germany

that are like switching over to Linux and and uh Libra office and stuff like that but I don't

know about NATO as a whole that is a really good question so yeah I'm not sure I mean as far as

war in the Middle East I NATO is I know the US is a part of NATO but the US typically when it comes

to like classified information or military stuff they kind of do their own thing and they have

their own requirements for all of this a lot of the NATO specific stuff like like this certification

for example is going to apply more to European countries um than than the US in its own interests so

there there is that the thing about too I believe um iOS and other Apple devices have been

certified for a variety of US government security standards for quite some time but I don't

remember exactly what level um they would be certified at or if it's comparable to this I'd have to

do more research into that cool yeah um I mean that was a pretty quick story but

that was all I had on that one um yeah before we go on oh yeah let's uh let's start with this

so this story was reported by tech crunchier meta sued over AI smart glasses privacy concerns

after workers reviewed nudity sex and other footage uh according to tech crunch meta is facing a

new class action lawsuit over its AI smart glasses and their lack of privacy after an investigation by

Swedish newspapers found that workers at a Kenya based subcontractor are reviewing footage from

customer's glasses which included sensitive content like nudity people having sex in using the

toilet meta claimed it was blurring faces and images but sources disputed that this was blurring

consistently worked the news prompted the UK regulator the information commissioner's office to

investigate the matter now the tech giant is facing a lawsuit in the United States as well in the

newly filed complaint plaintiffs Gina Barton of New Jersey and Mateo cano of California represented

by the public interest focus works in law firm alleged that meta violated privacy laws and engaged

in false advertising um so I mean looking at this story my immediate reaction is like well yeah

of course this would happen if you strap cameras to your face that are constantly streaming to

a big tech company um and this is really a problem that we've seen over and over

before uh the one that most immediately comes to mind um was pretty much a very similar situation

with Siri recordings um in those weren't video at the very least on like this but they were being

sent to a bunch of contractors um for review when that was not clearly stated in apples privacy

policy I believe there have been similar cases with other voice recording systems like Alexa

um and so it's it's just a sign that these these big tech companies they're not going to be

treating your data properly and they're not going to be giving it the protection that it needs because

they are more interested in consuming all of this data as much as possible and like having

a bunch of random people contractors who ever review all of it to supposedly probably

improve their AI services and other things that they that they're working on um just with complete

disregard to your own privacy or personal data and so yeah hopefully there's a big punishment

for meta here but I can't imagine a lot is going to change unfortunately I think that

uh we need to be aware of these dangers and we really need to just

eliminate devices like this um from everyday use it's a bit crazy to me um how much

things have changed in the past 10 years because I remember back when um Google Glass originally

came out um and there was this glass holes term for people who wore it and were constantly

recording in public spaces and now all of this stuff is kind of being normalized unfortunately

and there isn't as much pushback anymore and I think that we need to revisit that because I

don't think we were we were wrong back in those days I think that we we were on to something and

maybe we should remember how much we dislike products like this again

yeah totally agree that honestly that was something that really confused me to um with the whole

like you mentioned google glasses I remember when when those came out and they were such a flop

and so when meta announced their their AI glasses I was like okay we've already been down this road

and I know I think even before meta I think snap had announced their glasses and then I like

never heard of them again which I think those exist but I don't know I never hear about them anymore

so my point being I was like oh this isn't gonna go anywhere and now I think this article said that

last year they shipped like seven million of these things hold on where was it in this thing

but um uh yeah while I looked for that it just blew my mind that it's like wait how are yeah in 2025

over seven million people bought meta smart glasses and it's like how how did it like what's

different this time that it worked when it did not last time I'm very confused um I think

but yeah it's gotta be like are are they making it fashionable I know the Ray Ben

partnership must have a lot to do if that are people willing to

give in to hopefully to use it yeah if they're partnered with like more recognizable brands um

kind of an unfortunate way to shop but I think that might be it for a lot of people

I mean that does yeah that that could be it um I mean maybe it's the AI part like I I I have said

before that like I get on paper I get the idea because I'm I'm convinced I have like a mild form

of face blindness and I run into people all the time I mean not obviously like it was someone you

like you that I work with all the time and I see every week I know you but like I run into people

all the time that they're like oh hey Nate it's me so and so and I'm just like who are you

and then when they're like oh we like did this thing together and I'm like oh yes yes like

I'm a contextual person when you tell me like how I know you then I remember but I'm so bad

with names and faces so I would love the idea of like AI glasses that tell me like do the facial

image like oh you know this person from this like saved me that whole step but I don't want it

hanging back to the cloud which of course it would have to do to do that but my point being is like

I get it on paper but I still can't believe that like they managed to to actually like make it stick

this time it's so weird to me uh well and I mean it doesn't have to do that necessarily ping

to the cloud I know not that I would advocate for this product to exist necessarily but certainly

facial recognition that's something that has been around for for quite some time and

well you would need to have like a local database in your context or whatever I do think a lot of

people will already use this feature in like the Apple photos app or the photos app on their

Android phone that automatically classifies faces and you can put a name for it I think that's a

fairly popular feature that runs entirely locally and extending that to a basic device like this

even if it has to ping your phone to run this computation um certainly it's not necessary to

ping servers if you don't want it to but big tech companies are very

disincentivized to do anything locally because there is so much data that they can that they can

slip up with their servers and use for for all sorts of AI and other purposes um and of course we'll

we'll talk about a future story here in the show about these AI companies partnering with people who

you probably don't want them to be um so that's the kind of direction that all of this

uh puts us in and yeah it's it's it's it's not great and it certainly doesn't have to be this way

uh just because just because this is the way that meta has decided to make this product doesn't

mean it's the only way that this product has to exist and I think that um that's really important

to remember for sure um yeah two things I wanted to add uh real quick in response to redacted

said someone needs to make glasses that beams lasers at cameras as you walk around um that's

probably destruction of property there is an app um this is not an official recommendation because

we haven't really vetted it but I know there is an app that's supposed to warn you if uh if there

are people nearby wearing smart glasses not just the meta ones but also the snap ones and apparently

there's more than just those two but um I do have it on my phone it has not pinged me yet although

I don't know if I live in an area where people are not using them I don't know if it's

maybe just false negatives um your mileage may vary but it is fully open source you can go take a look

at it um so I will say I've never seen any of these in person myself I don't know what area these

are super popular in um yeah but not around me yeah yeah and I've I've had situations where like

I've somebody's got like the big glasses and there's like a screw in the front and I've asked them

I'm like and I try not to sound like I'm upset about it because I mean if they think I'm angry

they're definitely gonna say no but uh you know I've asked people I'm like hey this is totally out

of left field but like are those like the meta smart glasses and they're always like no no they're

just you know whatever's and um so I haven't run in anybody yet but yeah um and then the other

thing I was gonna say just real quick to add some context to this article is says that the reason

there's a lawsuit is because meta's advertising specifically says and I quote you're in control

of your data and content and then there was like another quote there too um I don't know I lost

it oh built for privacy designed for privacy controlled by you so yeah it's it's I think they've got it

I hope I'm not a lawyer but I feel like they've got a really solid case here that if meta is going to

and I mean all of the veterans listening know that this is like oh no meta lied like the what's the

Kirk oh Captain Kirk William Shatner like shocked face but um when you explicitly say in your

advertising that like you control your data and then find out that there was no toggle not to submit

the footage and people are reviewing it um I think I put this in the newsletter that went out

actually for this episode that that's kind of as much as we've talked about these things we kind

of blew over that part where it's like you know part of training AI is that people have to review it

even if only every now and then people have to review it and make sure it's working and correct it

um which is a whole nother worm bag of worms that we we're not going to get into right now but

I I think it's funny that like for you and for you and me like that never even came up once because

we just thought that was kind of a given I guess or for whatever reason like we never even thought

to mention that they're like hey by the way there is no world in which people will not see so at least

some of the images and footage taken by these videos so yeah um one of our team members uh

Jordan asked sorry I'll let you do it what protection do people have against being recorded in

public um which is a great question unfortunately I think the answer in most countries including

here in the United States is not much but I think that this is a good example of um I think why

data privacy concerns are certainly not only a technical issue because people

very often get caught up in this um trying to think of technical solutions and I do like

unredacted suggestion of lasers being being that cameras as you walk around but at the end of the day um

the the best way to prevent something like this is to get strong data privacy laws

out there that would prevent people from from doing this and using your data without your consent

because I don't think that just being out in public or walking around is necessarily

um consent to be like recorded and filmed and that footage stored permanently for the rest of time

right it's um it we really have to rethink like our relationship with technology and privacy

and uh we we can't just apply like past norms to the current state of what we're in but of course

there are so many incentives to not do this that I think people need to be more more vocal about

because you know we we've talked about this in in the past few episodes but um even governments

are getting in on this like constant master valence via companies like flock for example um just

constantly trying to collect as much data as possible in seeing what they can do with it in a

lot of cases I think they don't really know what they can do with it yet I think meta with these

glasses probably doesn't know what they can do with the data yet but they're collecting it all

in the hopes that they can do something with it um and that that's not that's not good and I don't

think um we should allow that so hopefully so hopefully that can change yeah the only technical

solution quote-unquote solution that came to mind was um I really want to buy some and review them

one of these days but uh I know you've probably heard of there's a company that makes glasses

that they've got a few different models and one of them is supposed to reflect IR so they look

like relatively normal glasses depending on how you feel about the style of them but the frames

are designed to very invisibly uh reflect light back to a camera and it's mostly for facial

recognition if I've I've read graded this all came from their website so it may not be 100% accurate

but according to their marketing materials it's like some cameras like surveillance cameras

they'll use IR to like better map your face for facial recognition purposes and it's designed

to throw those off but the nice thing is again if I pose for like a family photo my glasses look normal

as opposed to they have another model that like will explicitly like if you take a flash photo

it'll reflect and block you and um so anyways my point is like something like that comes to mind

but I mean that comes with so many like let's just assume it works for the record but you shouldn't

have to like if you don't wear glasses why are you gonna buy them just to throw off facial recognition

you shouldn't have to buy them because I think they're pretty expensive the frames are like two or

three hundred dollars um which I guess is how much frames normally cost without insurance but either

way it's it's I guess my point is like it's one of those like I agree with you like I don't like

when ordinary people just trying to live their lives have this unnecessary burden put upon them

and I understand that like like I understand that there's there's a limit to that right like

we're not all entitled to like free door dash twenty four seven or anything like that right like

there's gonna be times you have to put in some work and you have to put in some effort and learn

some things but I mean in this situation like I feel like these companies are just so out of control

and there is no data privacy law in the US at least not universally there's a patchwork of limited

laws like somebody here said there's some states in the US which don't allow facial recognition

without explicit consent yeah there's like two or three that I'm aware of I think there's like

Texas Illinois um probably California with the their privacy law and maybe like a couple others but

you know overall there is no like US version of GDPR that says like hey here's the bare minimum

and I the more we go through this stuff the more I feel like we really need something like that

that just kind of sets a standard which for the record it will not be good enough I guarantee

that but at least something some kind of bare minimum thing so that people ordinary people don't

have to jump through 150 hoops just to try to have like a basic level of privacy it's so insane

and it's really important that like you can't just claim to be working around these privacy

restrictions by like anonymizing that data or whatever because in cases like this for example

we know that that technology doesn't really exist or it will like if you want to blur faces

in all of these videos it probably relies on AI which again I'd point out meta said that they

were doing in this case and it didn't work consistently that's just going to be inherent to all

of this technology you're never going to be able to 100% ensure that all of this data is being

handled privately no matter what meta is claiming about this and really the only solution here is

to not collect that data in the first place and to not give meta that data in the first place

so yeah this whole thing's a bummer because it really puts a bad spin on AI glasses in general

which is probably a good thing because it seems like every single one that's come out lately has been

just the in the form of like cameras strap to your face right which is always like that's never

been what I wanted smart glasses even before I got into privacy I was I've always just been a

huge fan of future technology and I was like smart glasses that could be that could be cool because

I would want to like a heads up display to see like navigation or live translation or a ton of

stuff that does not at all require cameras like recording people constantly that's probably

opposed to the very bottom of the list of things I would ever want to do with my glasses

but that is the direction that all of these tech companies are going in rather than

something more more useful and less privacy invasive unfortunately so it's a shame yeah I really

just real quick I want to drill home what you were saying about like how the face blur isn't

enough like it's it takes a shockingly small amount of data to de-anonymize somebody and it always

cracks me up when it's something like location right like oh but we anonymize the location and how

many other people in the world spend eight hours a night at this location and then eight hours

a day at that location like that alone tells you who I am and then this one with like the whole

but we blur faces hi hello I don't think that matters for some people for audio listeners I'm

showing off my arm tattoos like even if you blurred my face it's I don't it's pretty obvious you know

and so yeah um I I could see I'm thinking back in my own history I could see a few small scenarios

where like having a camera strapped my face would be super useful but that was like three times

a year at my old job just for me like I don't think most people really needed that much so yeah

and certainly you know that could be a separate product that like what if I just have a little

camera that clips on to my glasses if I want to record something right I don't need it constantly

yeah constantly on and recording this is a very niche use case I think for a lot of people

yeah super crazy um but on that note uh we do have some site updates before we launch into

our next story we are going to talk a little bit later about proton mail I know that story just

came out the other day but first here's what's going on at privacy guides and for those of you who

may not know privacy guides is a nonprofit which shares data privacy related information and we

facilitate a community over on our forum and on matrix where people can ask questions and get

advice about staying private online and preserving their digital rights so first up big news our

smartphone privacy and security course that we have been talking about for months now we've been

releasing videos a little by little it is finally 100% available in full no membership required

you can go over to youtube I believe it's on peer tube now if it's not it will be very very soon

we have for those of you who may not be aware of this we basically built a three-part

smartphone course about how to make your smartphone more private and more secure and there are

there's a beginner intermediate and advanced level and there is also an iPhone and an Android

version so um yeah whichever one you use and you know you can watch them all and you can decide maybe

some of the stuff in the advanced level doesn't apply to me maybe some of it does um if nothing

else it lets you know what your options are out there and our official recommendations at this point

in time about how to make your your smartphone as private and secure as possible and again that is

out now so go ahead and check that out and then some big exciting news uh myself and Jonah next

week will be in Austin Texas we are at an unofficial South by Southwest party being hosted by EFF

Austin uh we will be doing a little workshop about how to improve the privacy and security of your

phone so and um if if anyone's in the area and you have never tried graphing and you're like kind

of worried about it we will actually have a little demo device that has graphing on it so that

people can play around with it and kind of see like oh this is just like a normal Android like

there's nothing to be scared of I can use it just like an Android um so we'll have that little

demo device but also we'll just be answering questions and you know offering our advice about how

to harden your phone and uh full disclosure I am on the board of EFF Austin so yeah we will be

there for anyone who's in the area yeah come stop by if you're in Austin it'll be super fun I

think um and we'll share a link to the to the event information meetup stuff in the in the sources

of the show so uh yeah if you're in the area definitely check it out um it should be fun uh

and also I will say um since it will be taking place next Friday um we will be hosting this show

in person there so that'll be fun for for people who watch this as well um in other news we have

a bunch of big stuff that we announced on our website this week the biggest thing that we launched

was a new section related to privacy activism uh so if you go to privacy got privacy guides.org

slash activism right now you can find all of these resources um our staff writer M has been

working super hard on getting all of these up and it has a ton of useful advice um not for like

just activists in particular but activists for privacy people who want to advocate for data privacy

in their local communities or um in terms of legislation or in terms of uh anywhere else that you

might want to uh be an activist for privacy rights um and so all of these tools are meant to

empower the kind of digital rights community that we are in and the first tool that we released in

this section is the privacy activist toolbox uh which it looks like Nate is scrolling through

now here on the screen um essentially this toolbox is a list of resources um and articles that give

you advice on how to be the most effective privacy activist you can be and how to effectively

and clearly and sustainably advocate for privacy and digital rights um and so if that is

interesting to you if you've been in the privacy community for a while in your wondering how to

best make a difference yourself um definitely check out these articles they're extremely extensive

and just a wonderful resource we've gotten a ton of positive feedback from people in this space

and elsewhere who have been reading these and learning new things or sharing these with other

privacy activists and privacy related organizations in this space um the activism section in general

is something that we hope to continue expanding we have a few things on the roadmap and hopefully we

can share a bit more information about that soon um but for now i think that all of these tips

will prove to be super helpful for for some of you out there and if any of that sounds

interesting to you definitely go to privacyguides.org slash activism and check out that resource

um other site changes we've done a few very minor things um the most notable one was that we

removed mention of um like zero knowledge encryption or zero access encryption from our site because

those terms are not very clear and we found them to be confusing so we're kind of transitioning

to being more descriptive um zero access encryption is kind of a marketing term that gets thrown

around a lot and zero knowledge encryption is not really technically accurate um it doesn't make

a lot of sense outside of like zero knowledge proofs which are totally different things so

hopefully some of our resources around um encrypted tools that we recommend etc are more

clear and we hope to use better terminology uh to describe that stuff going forward that's not

just marketing jargon that's a big thing that we want to try to eliminate from all of our resources

as much as possible so that was a big change um related to our news section our volunteer journalist

Brea has been publishing a ton of articles lately so you can go to privacyguides.org slash news

and check those out there are a lot of stories that we don't get a chance to discuss here on the show

but um are so important nonetheless and that is the best way to uh stay up to date with those in

addition to our community forum uh some of the articles include a full length article on how to

game privately um which might be interesting to to the gamers out there as well as more news

briefs like samson tv's halting data collection in texas a spyware maker going to jail

tiktok refusing to add and to end encrypted direct messages and a lot more um so again that's at

privacyguides.org slash news if you want to stay up to date on all those topics all of the stuff

that we do at privacy guides is made possible by our supporters uh so you can sign up for a membership

or donate at privacyguides.org or if you want to promote privacy in your own life and you want to

support us as well you can buy some swag from shop.privacyguides.org um i think that does it

for all the updates from us this week uh so let's talk about uh chat gpt and the pentagon

Nate what do you got for us here? yes okay so for those who missed the memo um which i wouldn't blame

you because there's so much freaking news going on right now it's hard to stay on top of it all um

like i actually forgot part one of this story until i was reading the article and refresh my memory um

so the pentagon used to have a contract with anthropic who makes the AI clawed uh which i've

heard good things about as far as AI goes i guess it's pretty good at what it does um but anthropic

had some stipulations in their contract specifically that you could not use clawed for master

valence on americans and you cannot use it in autonomous weapons and uh the government tried to

pressure clawed into dropping those stipulations and doing whatever they wanted and um

i will admit i'm not fully versed in the nuance of this story so i apologize if any of my opinions

are a little wrong here but um to their credit anthropic stuck with their guns and said no pun

intended uh stuck with their guns and said no we're not gonna do that and the government dropped

them and said we're not doing business with you anymore um went on to declare them a supply

chain risk that's a whole nother thing that we're not going to get into but um open AI

as they do swooped right in and said hey we'll do business with you um i mean i don't know how

else to put it so sam alman the CEO of open AI um basically he's clarifying the terms of this

deal now because he recognizes that that was not a good look to just come in um here's what he says

we were genuinely trying to deescalate things and avoid a much worse outcome but i think it just

a looked opportunistic and sloppy you can take that at face value if you want or not you can probably

tell how i feel from my tone but that's neither here nor there um but either way he's he's uh

clarifying that they are still holding to the terms that open AI cannot be used

for master valence uh noticeably i don't think this article said anything about the autonomous

weapons but um yeah and and i think that's kind of the again that's that's kind of like the the

bare bones of the story um we don't know a lot more and we know that i mean AI and i'm sure a lot

of our our veteran viewers know this but like AI is so much more than llm's right and there's a lot

of people who don't even like the term AI because it's been around for a long time like

AI research goes all the way back to like the 60s i think which is pretty crazy when you think about

it but i mean even before it was called AI we've had targeted ads we've had machine learning we've

had algorithms determining all kinds of i mean for years algorithms have been determining whether

they're not you get approved for a loan your insurance rates and it's just this is like

the next step um i've had to explain that to a few people is that like it it seems on the

out from the outside it seems like chat gpt just came out of nowhere right in 2022 i think it was

but i mean it's it's kind of been building towards that behind the scenes it's just that was like

the next leap forward at least publicly and visibly so yeah AI is being used by the military which

again probably not a shocker to our veteran listeners but it's it's being used for again it's more

than just llm's and chat bots it's being used to identify targets it's being used to calculate how

sure are we that this is a target where do we think this person is going to be next all that kind

of stuff and so i i think i'm not gonna lie this has actually been on my mind for a long time um

back on surveillance report henry used to tell a famous story from edward snowden where

it was a i believe it was the boston marathon bombings it's like him and one of his co-workers were

in a bar and they saw the news about the boston marathon bombings and i think it was his co-worker

was like how much you want to bet that guys in our system like we flagged him we knew he was a threat

and we did nothing and when they went back to work the next day sure enough they looked him up and

it's like oh he was he was in the system yes absolutely and i think that has long been a criticism

that i personally have heard from intelligence people um not that i know any but i've just like

i've seen it around in articles and stuff is they're so inundated with data that they cannot

sort through it to make sense of it um which to me it tells me you should stop collecting so much data

but i think that's one of the most obvious uses of ai is to sort through that data which raises

a lot of concerns that the article did actually address here that ai is known for getting it wrong

or hallucinating like it says right here ai large language models can make mistakes or even make

things up known as hallucinating which fun fact that was actually my first experience with ai

back in the day i was like well let me try this out and see if it's any good and so what i used

it for was uh this was back when i used to recommend threema over on the new oil and i was writing a

review and so i was like okay give me the pros and cons of threema and one of the pros it was like

it has a password manager built in and i'm like can you cite your source for that and of course it

couldn't and it just went oh you're right i'm sorry it doesn't have a password manager and i'm just

like where did that even come from so yeah ai like that's that's one of the that's one of the big

concerns with ai in this content i mean aside from just the privacy in general is is i mean i

think that's there's so many issues with privacy in general right like um like concerns about

privacy in general like aside from the fact that it's just a given human right i think it was also

Edward Snowden or somebody said that like you never have to justify why you deserve a right someone

else has to justify why they need to infringe on it um but in addition to that i i think uh something

that that should be said is that and again we know this thanks to snowden in 2013 and all that but

a lot of the time the loophole for spying on american citizens is that once data leaves the

country's borders it becomes uh subject to surveillance so um last year i went to europe right suddenly

you can spy on me because if i you know had to call my wife back home that data's crossing borders

or even on a much more innocuous note he would talk about how data centers like gmail for example

completely unbeknownst to you they might move a server like copy the data somewhere else temporarily

to like do maintenance on that physical server right and that data might go to

canada mexico whatever or even just sending an email you know the the internet

as far as i understand like it tries to optimize and take the fastest route to something

which let's say hypothetically for some reason the fastest route from i don't know

Texas to california is jammed up it might again bounce over to a server in mexico and then bounce

back over to california to to use the fastest route and now again your data is open for interception

so it's um yeah there's just so so many privacy concerns with a i and um the fact that they

the fact that this is even a a discussion or a question from the military of like what can

we use it for master valence on americans why just yeah i don't know that's i think that's kind

of all my thoughts on that one yeah i i would definitely i know you said we wouldn't talk too much

about this but i would want to highlight the the idea that the us government was going to flag

anthropic as a national security threat for um for making these demands i think it is very

concerning that the us government was so insistent originally that like the ability to spy on

us citizens domestically was like a hard line that they needed to have not roped enough in this

application especially because this is in agreement um between AI companies in the military um

certainly not the people you would want uh surveilling on your own citizens but um yeah i mean

there's problems with AI everywhere i think jordan brings up a good point here that like even if

there are sift grids against us citizens that eventually get added on all of this technology which

we already know is extremely unreliable is going to be used in military operations around the world

and all of this AI stuff like like you mentioned that's the it's come out very recently i mean

none of this stuff is like super well tested by any means um it's all just a lot of tech companies

really trying to jam this product into as many possible segments as they can and of course

that would include the government in the military and it's it's all about getting a return on this

massive massive investment that they've all made into AI development and it just it it's

it's becoming an actively dangerous situation i think we can see from from the story here

and i totally agree with you that it really makes no sense that um this AI use and all of the data

collection that they're doing will make a real difference in terms of like stopping

terrorist threats or plots or like affecting people's everyday lives um and this is an argument

that i mean people have known about and people have been making for literal decades even before like

the internet and computers were commonplace or used by everyone um it it it reminds me of like

all of the reports that came out following 9-11 in the us about how certain government agencies

had intelligence that indicated this might be happening whether or not that was passed along to the

FBI like before this happened where people aware i think the general consensus there was like

you know nothing was as definitive it wasn't completely reasonable for like anyone to expect

that that event was going to happen ahead of time but certainly like these people were

were in the systems and that data didn't lead to anything actionable happening and it's similar to

the to the case you talked about um where where the perpetrator was in their systems and was

already flagged and that didn't lead to anything being stopped because all of this data collection

it isn't leading to to any positive outcomes here it's um they're they're using national security

i think as um a front for what they really want to do with all of this data but much like um a lot

of security protections that we have like like the tsa for example this is just a matter of security

theater in in a lot of cases that isn't actually doing the things that it sets out to do um you

know that they have plenty of other reasons to want this data and i think national security or

stopping threats or stopping terrorists or protecting children or whatever excuse you want to

you want to come up with these days um all of that is it's just an easy way to to put a bow on

things and describe it without having to really get into the details but if you did get into these

details you would see that all of this stuff the AI stuff that we're that we're introducing into

the military all of the data collection that we're doing on us citizens and people all around the

world really um all of this stuff is just completely unnecessary and it's um it's bad it's bad for

citizens of the US it's bad for for everyone else in the world and it's becoming actively dangerous

um and i think more people need to be concerned about all of that

yeah i mean we we could make a whole podcast like not even just an episode we could make a whole

series out of all the problems with AI but um one of uh one of the things also that Jordan said

that i thought was pretty as AI is pretty biased based on its training data like that's historically

been a big problem especially in like a policing context is a lot of people have accused it of like

if you like one thing i've learned is if you go looking for a problem you will find one

generally speaking whatever you go looking for you find and so if if um police for example

feed it uh feed AI like all these uh these arrest records right and let's say they all happen in

east side of town then these this AI is going to be like oh all the crime is in the east side of

town more cops are going to go to the east side of town they're going to find more crime because there's

more cops meanwhile the west side of town is where all the white collar crime is happening um but you

know it's it's just it's such a it's such an imperfect thing and there have been so far there have

not been any studies that have shown that all this master valence actually stops crime or or has

any meaningful impact on lowering crime rates and one of the big things that concerns me with

relying so much on AI for everything is if you guys have never seen the movie brazil i highly

recommend it the endings a little bleak i'm just gonna warn you um but it's basically this very

absurdist uh sci-fi movie where this guy gets wrongfully arrested and his neighbor witnesses the

arrest and he's like i don't think they got the right guy like i've lived next to this guy for 20

years or whatever he's never been an issue and so he basically goes off on a quest to try and deal

with the bureaucracy of like you arrested the wrong guy and he keeps running into people who are

basically just like well that's what the computer said like that's what my paperwork says that's

that's just like no but that's what it says and like that's one of the big concerns that i have with

all this AI stuff and all this letting the machines do the thinking for us shout out to the dude

fans in the room is that like we're entering this world where it's like when the AI gets it wrong

what happens they're just gonna be like well that's what the computer said yes but the computer's

wrong yeah but that's what the computer said and it's like oh my god dude so yeah it's it's

a very scary time we're entering into yes um we are going to get into uh some questions from

live speakers in a bit but before we do that um we have an article here from 404 media

the headline is proton mail helped FBI on mask anonymous stop cop city protestor a court record

reviewed by 404 media shows privacy focused email provider proton mail handed over payment data

related to a stop copsy email account to the Swiss government which handed it to the FBI um

so i'll read the beginning of this article quick privacy focused email provider proton mail

provided Swiss authorities with the payment data that the FBI then used to determine who was

allegedly behind an anonymous account affiliated with the stop cop city movement in Atlanta according

to a court record reviewed by 404 media uh the records that they reviewed provide insight into

the sort of data that proton mail which prides itself on both its end and encryption and that is

only governed by Swiss privacy law can and does provide the third parties um so pretty much

this this entire story um i kind of disagree with with the headline a bit although obviously

FBI involvement was here it is important i think to draw this distinction um between like

uh a foreign government asking proton for this information versus um the the Swiss courts

asking proton for this information um because in this case uh the FBI did go through those channels

and the Swiss courts demanded that proton hand this data over and i think that this is a big

difference from a lot of like big tech companies for example which will um comply with court orders

from from other countries where they're uh like they might not necessarily fall under their

jurisdiction but they will comply with them anyways rather than like demanding everything go

through the US in a lot of big tech cases and so there is i do think you have to draw this distinction

because um you know it the the Swiss courts do limit a bit um as far as like what what information

can be requested but obviously we've seen a number of times that they have been um willing to

demand the data of activists in in this case um who aren't necessarily uh doing anything legal i

don't know exactly what um these people are being accused of um but i do know that

charges against a lot of the people in this case according to foreign media in this article

actually they say that they've been dropped so it's not clear um like who's involved or like what

level of certainty the FBI even had in the first place as to like what crimes the person behind this

email uh supposedly committed at the end of the day um kind of similar to the the big story with

proton um revealing the IP address of a french activist um a little while ago um it

the the issue isn't necessarily the fact that they're handing over

information although it's certainly not great that they have this information to hand over in

the first place because um we can we can look at court cases uh from signal for example where the

amount of information that they have and do handover is extremely extremely limited whereas it

seems like a lot of uh data that proton has is is not protected as you would expect um

but i think it really just highlights the importance of um understanding

what data you have is protected and isn't protected when you use any service including proton

um because the encryption that is used in a lot of cases and certainly in the case of proton

which is an email provider which is already not a great technology for for protecting this sort of

metadata um the the encryption that's used even in end to end encrypted products varies widely um so we

could we could think about signal again just for a simpler example um compared to WhatsApp um they

actually use very similar encryption technologies WhatsApp um has famously used to the signal protocol

to encrypt those messages for a while but unlike signal which is put in a lot of effort to

minimizing the amount of metadata that that's collected and logged by the company um WhatsApp and

and their parent company meta are collecting and storing all sorts of information about like

who's registered on their service when they're using the app who they're communicating with they

have all of that information and and that places places you at risk even though WhatsApp is

end to end encrypted um and similarly here uh at the end of the day like I don't think it's

reasonable to expect proton to um like not comply with court orders of course I don't know um maybe

maybe you saw this name in consignment but I don't know if I saw in this article whether um proton

like fought back against this court order or to what extent um and so I'd be interested to know about

that but I will say at the end of the day um looking at the I think especially after the french

activist thing um proton has made a bit of this more clear and it is pretty clear in the privacy

policy like what information they have and I think that people just need to go into situations

like this assuming that any data that they give to a third party service provider could potentially

be um either leaked in a data breach or handed over in a case like this and need to plan accordingly

because the only protection um that you can really rely on is strong encryption of all of the data

you want to protect um you can't rely on privacy policies you can't rely on companies you know

avoiding court orders if if they have the data um it will eventually be leaked whether whether

it's the company giving it away or whether it's it's uh a hack which seems inevitable I mean

Nate you publish like a data breach roundup every single week right with all sorts of companies

that are that are hacked all the time I think it's it's more than most people would expect um and yeah

you can find that on our website if you want to go back in time and see all of these happening but um

yeah you you have to rely on encryption and you have to really take a look at what these

companies are encrypting because proton is taking a lot of data that they do not encrypt at the end

of the day and you need to plan around that yeah it's um yeah real real quick fun story on the

the data breach note uh I started doing that back many many moons ago I use I started my own

just solo podcast and when I ended up teaming up with Henry at surveillance report that was like my

one stipulation is like I want to bring the data breach section and that's kind of why I started

doing it here as well is because like you said I think people don't realize how frighteningly

common data breaches are and that was kind of like my thing is like I wanted people to realize like

if for no other reason take your privacy seriously then the fact that this happens literally every day

um but yeah it's I think the the reason I always like to share these stories um about proton sharing

data is not to beat up on proton necessarily but um I mean for one I I already know there's

gonna be a lot of people out there spreading conspiracy theories about how proton's a honeypot

this just proves it and but it's it's like you're saying like email so many um I think this is

actually in one of our upcoming videos here that should be coming out soon um so many of the

technologies that run the internet were invented literally in like the 1960s when there were 10

people online and they were all like college kids and there was no need for security because nobody

was doing banking transactions nobody was doing sensitive military plans nobody was sharing like

intimate communication it was all just literally like research that was all gonna be made public

at some point anyways right and like maybe a few notes here and there about like you know hey did

you get the document or whatever but it so security was really kind of an afterthought and unfortunately

as the internet grew and scaled we kind of just kept bolting afterthoughts onto this this stuff

and that's how we end up with things like encrypted email which you know proton is great

too does great but both of them and mailbox and like all of these they're really just applying

band aids to technologies that were never really designed to be secure and that's why we like

things that things like signal that were kind of like what if we went into the ground floor

and tried to be as secure as possible but even then those have use cases like I always push back

on that I a personal pet peeve of mine I hate when people are like oh well you shouldn't

use encrypted email because it emails didn't ever design to be secure use signal instead and

it's like great the day my bank agrees to send me a signal message I will be in agreement with

you but we're just not there like unfortunately again we still have all these legacy technologies

that are floating around because they just are and I think I think these stories are unfortunate

because proton like every company is going to try to market why you should use them right

and I think for especially for the target audience of people like proton it's very difficult to

explain to people in a nutshell why they need something like proton or PGP or anything it's very

difficult to explain to them why Gmail and Yahoo are not secure and also to explain nuance right

it's it's it's a very fine line to thread especially when you're talking to the masses and

I think there's definitely places where proton could do better like I think with that French activist

one proton did actually change some of the wording on their website because it it it was it wasn't

technically wrong but I could see how somebody could get the wrong impression and I don't know

stuff I'm trying to put my thoughts in order here it's frustrating because I don't think proton

necessarily did anything wrong here but I could see how how people could be lulled into a false

sense of security and I do want to point out somebody pointed pointed out here in the chats they

said like no end-to-end encrypted data was given away the account owner simply had bad op-sec it's

this person like I I will admit I pay for my proton account with a card I use a privacy.com card

which is linked to my name like if if I was the person in this scenario for whatever reason

the FBI could request data from proton proton they hears their card info they could trace that

back to privacy.com who could trace it back to me I know that's not fully anonymous but also I'm

not an activist if I was doing like serious heavy activism work I would probably take some more

steps I don't really want to victim blame here but I guess I'm proton pointed that out too they

said like we do accept cash we do accept cryptocurrency they don't accept Manero I'm going to always

call on that but it's yeah it's like it's it's important to know the limitations of a tool and

again like I mentioned this earlier in the show there's difference between privacy and anonymity right

proton is not promising you anonymity at least not by default you're gonna have to jump through

several hoops to do that so I think it's just really important to keep in mind the the limitations

of these tools and I just remembered you said is from what I understand proton did not push back

on this order because they were informed that apparently this person I don't know if charges were

dropped the article said that charges hadn't been filed what exactly did they say 404 media is not

publishing the person's name because they don't appear to have been charged with a crime according

to searches of court databases so maybe they haven't been charged with a crime yet but apparently

proton was informed that the person in this situation was violent that they had already shot at one

officer that they had explosives on them I don't know how true that is that's that's protons

justification and you are welcome to have your own opinions on whether or not that's that was

justification enough but it is um yeah it's proton does push back sometimes they kind of do it on a

case by case basis which I don't know how I feel about that but they try to get as much of the

facts of the case as they can before deciding whether or not they want to push back on a a

a core order but yeah it's um I don't know I think for me the big thing again is I just I hate seeing

people confuse privacy with anonymity and get really upset and be like oh proton shouldn't have

complied like proton even said this I don't know if it was in here but um there was like a

reddit thread where proton issued an official statement which was very professional is I was

impressed by it and they did mention basically that like look nobody can operate above the law

like there's not a country in the world where we're not subject to somebody's laws and they choose

to be under swiss laws they feel that swiss laws are very thorough and very set a very high bar um

but yeah I mean ultimately at the end of the day I personally would be more worried by a company

who ignores the law because they're gonna get shut down eventually like they just they can't

keep operating outside the law so yeah yeah I I agree it's a very fine line for them to be

treading here um at the end of the day like the headline is accurate they did help the authorities

and you might not expect that from a company that um market itself so heavily around privacy

and a lot of people in in the privacy community especially um I even saw a comment here from

our team member Jordan uh saying they could make it more obvious the data isn't encrypted

which I think is is certainly true but at the same time um I think you have a really good point about

uh like proton needing to market this product towards an extremely broad audience who does not

care about about these problems and who isn't like going to be affected by by by court orders because

the demographic that proton is targeting is primarily businesses and people who are switching

away from like the Google workspace suite of things and it is just objectively true that like

switching from Google to proton is a huge benefit for those people um no no matter what they do

really um it's always going to be an improvement in their privacy and security and

a lot of these people are not going to be

concerned about like the nitty-gritty details of some of this stuff and also two protons credit um

like between their privacy policy and their blog and um some pages on their website about transparency

for the people who are concerned about all of this stuff you can find all of this information um

pretty excessively on on their site and in their resources you do have to look for it

which uh you can certainly argue is unfortunate but also um you can see that as a legitimate decision

for them for them to make because it it doesn't probably make a lot of sense to overwhelm

the type of person or business that's switching from Google and Microsoft to proton

with with all of this stuff that isn't going to impact them um it's it's a very hard problem to

solve and i think that for people who are in this situation um making it more clear that you need

to be using tools like um signal or simple x or other messengers that are designed from the

beginning to be secure rather than like like you said 60s technologies that have had a ton of stuff

just bolted on over time um like that is the actual solution here and i think that like more tools

that are designed to be as private as possible by default without having to worry about this makes

a lot more sense than than proton like trying to describe every possible case where your data could

could be leaked or shared like this um so yeah it's it's kind of unfortunate but

i i'd agree that i don't really know what else proton can do in a situation like this um

it's it's it's very challenging and they they've created this challenge for themselves because

they chose to like make an email service but that is what they're doing at the end of the day and

uh there isn't a great way to handle this unfortunately yeah i agree i mean it's i i think we

hit a certain point where it becomes um it becomes kind of a personal opinion thing in the sense that

like for example um this person here on youtube said that i i think that doesn't justify the move

they've made um and i i could see that argument where like again if you're saying like they

shouldn't have handed over any data period no matter what i completely disagree because they will

if you go with a bulletproof provider who does that eventually they will be shut down

and now even if you didn't do anything wrong your data is sitting in an evidence locker alongside

everybody else um we've seen that happen time and time again but i can see the argument of like

well they still they should push back on every core order by default and i i can see that argument

i don't know if i necessarily agree with that for the record but um like i definitely see where

you're coming from so that's what i mean when i say like we kind of get to a point where it becomes

personal preference like should they have pushed back harder should they push back every time

because there's also a part of me that says well if they cooperate let's say they cooperate on

objectively awful cases like we know this person was genuinely a terrorist in the wrong

we know this person is trafficking seasam we know this person is doing awful awful things

then i feel like that kind of improves protons position when um if they get a BS request that's like

oh we just don't like that this journalist wrote mean things about us okay

crimey river go home we're not turning over the data so i don't know it's just it's it's personal

a preference but yeah it's that same person just said there's a reason i've always avoided email

kind of backing up what you were saying it's it's less uh but uh you know we we need to focus on

things whenever possible again i mentioned that my bank is never going to send me a signal message

at least not anytime soon and i wish they would but um yeah trying to avoid email when you can

trying not to i don't know just just trying to move to those more more private or more secure

from the ground up alternatives where possible it's kind of the only solution but it has its

limitations for sure so um but i think that was all of our stories this week um i was

poking around protons website let me close these tabs um those were all the questions

so uh it's time to start taking viewer questions actually um if you've been holding on to any

questions about any of the stories we've talked about go ahead and start leaving them in either

the forum thread or the comment section of the live stream and we're actually going to go ahead

go ahead and start with the forum thread which last night checked only got one question um yes

that is correct so we have a question from anonymous 571 uh first of all big thanks for the work

that we do thank you you said in the past i used a single gmail address which was not your main

email address for all sorts of random account signups for things like discord amazon netflix news

websites one-off trials etc you said i've used this email address for many many years needless to say

it's a bit of a cluster younger me thought that i was being smart not having these accounts fill up

my main email address with spam uh cut forward to today and being more privacy privacy and security

aware you got a ironically a proton subscription with a custom domain you've been updating all your

old accounts to either proton or simple login aliases and aliases on your custom domain got me

thinking however is this merely updating my email with a unique alias a waste of time should i

rather be creating completely new accounts for all these websites the thinking is that they likely

keep version history of my email address so i could still be linked or profiled based on previous

email addresses a data breach could also expose the email history so it doesn't help in that

respect either updating my email with a unique alias on all these websites is one thing but creating

new accounts and closing the old ones gives me goosebumps just thinking about it um i have some

complicated thoughts on this one uh well i i complicated in the sense that i feel like it's very

nuanced um you know it's always nuanced right so i don't know do you do you want to go first

Jonah you want me to i mean yeah i could i could give a few thoughts on this we might be thinking

about the the same thing here but i do think um certainly it's a good thing to

switch to switch to proton start using simple login aliases for all your accounts because it

is super important to use a different email for every site that you use for the same reason

pretty much that you use a different password for every site that you use which is that you know

especially you don't you don't even necessarily have to be concerned about the website

itself tracking you although that is definitely a concern with some websites but um as we talked about

previously in the show data breaches are super common and um these these sites will like when

these data breaches are out um if you if your email is shared between data breaches that does create a

a pattern um that can be used to track you across these sites and create a profile of like the

kind of sites that you're using and these data breaches are super common so you don't want to have

any information between data breaches that can potentially be linked together that is a privacy

concern um as far as you know updating your email with accounts you've already used or deleting

accounts is starting over that is something that is going to really depend on what you think is

worth it um I think uh the person who has this question really weighed out um a lot of the reasons

why you might want to do that and also the reasons that you wouldn't want to do that especially like

um just the the effort involved in having to recreate all of these accounts and it really depends

on how you feel about that site I don't think for a lot of websites that you would sign up with

it's probably fairly unlikely that they are tracking like email history for example and if we're

talking about like a big tech company or a data company like amazon or facebook I would think

that that is more more likely but if you're talking about like a general e-commerce shop or a random

form or whatever um it's probably unlikely that they're storing that historical data forever and

so changing that might be fine but of course that is um a case where you would have to

trust that is happening and and you'll never know for sure so I think the way I would sum this up

is just like at the end of the day you have to decide whether the uh whether recreating all of these

accounts is worth it um for you but that's going to be an individual and maybe even a site-by-site

basis um which which I couldn't really tell you I don't know if you have more actionable advice

than that native if that's kind of what you're thinking but you definitely share your thoughts

yeah um very similar I will say um this isn't necessarily proof but in all the years that my brain

has become an encyclopedia for companies that have had data breaches um I've only ever seen one

that had a breach that exposed the email you signed up with um I can't remember who it was

but I remember it does stick out of my mind because I remember thinking like oh that's weird

we've never seen that before um so I mean I I find it kind of hard to believe that if this was a

common practice of companies keeping like a history of your email addresses that they would keep

I find it hard to believe that if companies were doing that that we wouldn't have seen more of

those breaches by now with how common these breaches are um it's certainly possible obviously

but I I don't know that's the I've only ever seen one that did I do agree I would just add

on to that really quick that like in my experience hosting software or like thinking about open-source

software we're talking about the major platforms like WordPress or form software all the stuff that

like all these tiny sites would be using I've also never seen um really any situations where like

that is commonplace in software so I would imagine you'd only really see that from like a big

custom-made website maybe from a big tech company but it seems pretty unlikely I would agree just

from the software side of things as well I've never really seen features like that personally

anyways and also that that story that I referenced it was literally only the sign-up email so

if you signed up with Gmail and then you changed your email like 50 times it would only have

that Gmail and then your current email it was it was really I wish I could remember who that was

but anyways uh my only concern with this if if you want to make all new accounts I certainly

don't think that's a bad idea um I know there's a lot of people in the privacy community that actually

like just periodically nuke their accounts and start over um all the time I think we have a regular

in our forum who did that recently actually um but I I think um my concern would be especially

with some of the more mainstream platforms you mentioned like uh like discord and amazon I notice

it to becoming increasingly hard to make new accounts especially privately like a lot of them will

ding you for using VPNs um a lot of them will ding you if you're on like Linux or an uncommon browser

um so you run and and a lot of some of them even like Reddit oh my god I get more and more

pissed at Reddit with every passing day because Reddit now has this little user and it's totally

invisible there's subreddits you can go find and check it it's called like cqs or something

it's basically like a user score and if you're not active enough if you're not messaging enough

if you're not using the platform enough your score lowers and they think you're a scammer with

or a spammer bot whatever which I guess kind of makes sense because that is a thing if you if you're

like someone who spends too much time on Reddit which I have in the past that is a thing where like

people will literally make accounts and then sit on them dormant for like six months and then they'll

sell the account to somebody who will start spamming um because you know now they're not like a brand

new account and they don't look suspicious or you know they'll go out and they'll like get a whole

bunch of karma and then they'll sell the account to someone else so I kind of get why they do that

or you know people lurking that just like only send DMs or whatever but it's it's it makes it for us

straight I I shared the story a couple weeks ago I logged into I have an account where I've identified

myself as the new oil I used to be really active in like our slash privacy and I logged in for

something I don't even remember what but I logged in for something and on my homepage was our

slash privacy and it was a question that I was like oh I can leave an answer to that real quick

like I'm qualified to answer this this person seems like they're asking a good question so I went

in and I typed out my answer and when I hit post it was like oh your score is too low you can't

post in here and I'm just like all right whatever don't care because I haven't posted in like a year

so yeah it's just it's that would I guess what I'm going with that is that would be my main concern

is if it's something like you know dominoes and you're ordering pizza right they don't care as

long as the card goes through make a new account whatever if you want to but if it's something like

again like Reddit discord they're probably going to put up some blocks and like make it

probably more of a pain in the ass and it's worth in my opinion and especially some of them like

Gmail discord they might require a phone number and they're kind of strict about not allowing voice

over IP so at the end of the day it's probably going to be more worth than it's worth in my opinion

but it does depend on your threat model um yeah I guess that it really depends on your threat

model and how much work you willing to put in but I don't think you have to I think if you want to

it's not a bad idea but in some cases you might get diminishing returns the other thing I would say

is I certainly don't think you have to do this all right away unless you have a particularly

good reason to and kind of similarly to how we handle like opting out of a data broker

databases in the US like we typically recommend unless you have an immediate

concert right away of of some threat um against you just taking your time with it I think

you don't want to you definitely don't want to burn out like spending many hours straight just

constantly recreating all these accounts right um this is something you could do over the course of

I mean even even a few months if you if you want um just do just do a few accounts today

I find um like if you already use a password manager that is a really helpful way to like

find all of your accounts so you can um go through it basically like a list and update the email

on them at whatever pace you want if you aren't using a password manager yet uh definitely start

using one because that would be that's super helpful for just I mean not only like all of the

typical benefits of a password manager in terms of security but also just having a list of like

all the places you have an account in the first place that comes in handy very often and it's

a huge benefit of using a password manager like that um so yeah just going through things

taking your time um is is probably fine uh but yeah really really depends on your situation

you mean you don't have to be me the psychopath who uh changed all my passwords in one weekend

in one sitting I don't think you have to be I would say if that gets you going then good for you

yeah I wouldn't recommend it but I definitely did that it was not wise um all right so going through

the chat here um just to address a few of the chats back with the headline stories uh somebody

asked well graphino s have two flavors now or will they remain one flavor as far as we know

there's still just going to be one version of graphene um there's not going to be multiple versions per

device yeah and I believe it's been confirmed that you'll like you'll be able to install graphino s

from their website like usual on these devices which I would expect because graphino s place is

such an emphasis on um like you have to trust every single aspect of the installation process to know

that like your your phone is secure and so doing it from a trustworthy source that you can verify

from the very beginning is important for your security and I can't imagine graphino s would

would give that up um they've also said that I believe graphino s has confirmed um in one of their

social media posts it's so hard to find some of this information about graphino s because they

don't have the it's it's in a lot of sporadic social media posts rather than one place so

I don't have to post pull that but I believe I've seen that um it won't they're they're not

can be including any like motorola load wear in graphino s or anything like that um I think it

is still an open question as to whether motorola will pre-install it as we discussed earlier um and

if that will be called graphino s or if like motorola will be pre-installing maybe a fork of

graphino s that does have their security tools and maybe they won't call it graphino s maybe

they'll do it for different branding reasons so it's not considered to be a second flavor of

graphino s but maybe their their stock operating system will incorporate a lot of graphino s features

and you could maybe consider it um similar to graphino s in that regard I don't know if that will

happen or not it's very unclear what the final product will look like um but I think that

um we're pretty certain that there will always be just the standard

graphino s that we're all familiar with right now available across the board with this device

and with pixels as long as Google decides to support this um and that the experience

shouldn't change so you'll always have just the standard graphino s option no matter what

motorola decides to do with the stock stuff on there and

you know that just occurred to me this is totally off the cuff so maybe I'm being stupid here

I wonder if this will in a way pressure Google to to maybe maybe not full on reverse course but

maybe be a little kinder to to custom operating systems um like I can't imagine it's a huge huge

like I doubt like 50% of people to buy pixels do it to put like graphino on their phone or something

but I have to imagine there is a not insignificant portion of people and I wonder if this like

opening of competition because like graphino s really the only one that's like pixel only right

like calics people can go to the fair phone there's a couple of motor rollers uh lineage people

can choose every device ever made practically like but so I feel like now that graphene has

competent or like you know what I mean like now that there's other options I wonder if that will

kind of make Google like hesitate a little bit like oh maybe we should not be quite so aggressive

because we might actually drive some people away I don't know maybe maybe it's just me dreaming

but true and kind of relatedly I brought this up in some of the graphino s discussions on our

forum this week but I almost wonder if this partnership with Motorola can maybe

convince Google to change their policies around like Google play certification especially when

it comes to banking apps um I know people replied to me saying like you know under under the current

policies they'll never accept something like graphino s for a variety of reasons and that's

certainly true but Google's policies especially when it comes to like Google play certification

they're not like an inherent law of the universe that's written in stone right it's it's

Google's it's up to Google's whims to decide what they allow for Google play or not and maybe

maybe Motorola can be like in whisper in Google's ear through some back channels and get some

changes made to the like Google play policies and somehow get an exception or a rule change or

something for graphino s uh that would get that you know approved I don't know if that'll happen

it's I would agree it's probably extremely unlikely but it's probably the closest we've come to

it and if that's possible that would be that would be huge for graphino s because I know a huge

issue that people have is especially banking apps but other apps that unnecessarily use Google

plays like safety net API and other services that don't work on uncertified products like graphino s

um so that could be that could be a game changer if Google decides to allow like sandbox to

will play into that program seems unlikely but you know you never know I can always hope yeah for sure

um we had another question early on question for question time how do I choose a laptop any

suggestions definitely going to be a Linux distro um we do have a page about how to pick your laptop

hardware don't we um I can't remember up the top of my head um going to check it down from

Miller but I feel like we could have had an article about it I would say I don't know it really

depends on what you're looking for because there's so much there's such a wide variety of hardware

out there and thankfully you know Linux will run on like all of that um so you you have a lot of

options for me it'd be like very challenging I think to use any of the Intel and AMD stuff lately

just because like um power efficiency has turned out to be a really big big thing for me it's

nice to have like a laptop that last all day and um something like a sawi Linux on a Mac is

probably one of my favorite Linux experiences but there are definitely limitations to that so it's

not something I could recommend to everyone certainly um when it comes to other stuff I know

and looks like they just just pulled that up we do have a like a general guide on choosing hardware

and there is a picking a computer section so you could take a look at that um for some advice

there's a variety of things to look for um like a researching you know how easy it is to patch the

firmware on your computer from Linux because that is important for security reasons um or like

what kind of uh secure element they have for encryption typically all of these will come with

that built into the CPU so it's not a huge concern um but yeah definitely like whatever provider

or whatever manufacturer you decide you probably want to go with um I would research

uh their track record with non-OS stuff like like firmware updates for example that you might

want to have on Linux because some of a lot of that will come down to the specific manufacturer

but as far as specific brands of like what laptops you can choose I don't have um any specific

advice unfortunately that would be a good question like if you have a lot of specific requirements

or want to share more information about that I think if you ask on our form at discuss.privacyguides.net

um it can share a bit more about what exactly you're you're looking for what's important to you

and a laptop I think that the community would probably be able to come up with a lot of answers

for you that you could consider yeah that was kind of my thought while you were talking is like what

I feel like which Linux distro is going to determine a lot and your your threat model and everything

right and somebody else here um somebody else has price limit and then shared a link to Nova custom

which uh yeah Nova custom sent a Henry from Tecler he was telling me he's put the video out by now

but they sent him a laptop that had like 92 gigs of RAM or something and say this was way before

the RAM shortage and I was just like bro what are you gonna do with it when you're done you want to

give it to me but um yeah it really depends because like I'm like I'm a cubes user for example right

and so if I'm gonna buy a laptop it has to meet very specific requirements about the TPM and it has

to have an SSD and it has to have a certain amount of RAM and apparently also has to have a more

modern processor because older processors really slow it down um versus if you're gonna install

something like Ubuntu right like that'll run on anything um which we don't recommend Ubuntu

there are better distros out there but maybe you have a use case and and for some reason that's the

one you want to use so yeah I think um I'm glad you mentioned the forum like definitely if you

post in the forum and you're like hey um here's my threat model here's my budget here's kind of what

my values are I'm sure people will give you all kinds of every perspective you can imagine about

the pros and cons of everything out there so moving on from that question uh first name last name

in our chat asked if there's any statistics um we can share about the growth of the community

or anything like that I could pull up and take a look at some of this really quick uh unfortunately

some of our platforms that we were using for like just tracking the amount of page views and stuff

that we get um aren't fully working right now but uh overall like for the past year um

everything has been trending up by by quite a bit if I look at our form for example we typically

averaged around like 700,000 page views a month to pretty much over a million uh January 1.2

million but every every month um that's on the forum anyways and that excludes uh like known

crawlers and other traffic so that's very good uh we've also seen um the amount of people who

just log in every day and um post often that has gone up quite a bit um so yeah we don't have like a

ton of super detailed stats beyond that because uh we don't check a lot of that stuff but in terms of

uh page views um that's up and I could look at like uh the number of members um that we have uh

who sign up for either uh being a paid member in supporting our work or just uh signing up for a

newsletter to get updates from our website about either about the show or new articles or videos

that we publish um and all of that is is going up um you could see like the total number of people

who's signed up for for those notifications is up uh 17% from just last month so uh yeah everything

is on on an upswing and we hope to consider uh putting out even more content that people find

uh super useful in their privacy journeys uh and we hope that people will stick around because I

think uh we got a lot of good stuff going on on our forum in in our communities that make it um

just a great place to discuss all of this stuff and hang out without uh any kind of negativity

across the board which I think is a really great thing um the next comment actually came from

that same user they said you a big story this week was the LLM deanautomization um I did see that

passed around a couple times I was gonna tell you to go check out privacy guides.org slash news

which I do still recommend um but weirdly I did not see that story we did not write about it or maybe

it's queued up and it hasn't published yet because I swear I thought I saw free a post that one in

the news chat um I'm actually looking here at the oh no we haven't written about that one crazy

we need to write about that one um but uh yeah another I would say as far as I know we keep pushing

the forum but even if you're you don't want to sign up for it and you don't want to participate

the forum works with the RSS so I actually long before I came to work for privacy guides

I have the new section of the forum in my RSS feed just kind of as a safety net in case there's any

articles that don't show up in my usual news feed if somebody posts about it on the forum I

I will get it in my my RSS feed and um I'll be able to uh to go ahead and see that so I think that

would probably got posted because I've I've seen it in a few different places um but I mean if

nobody did then you can go and post it and be that person so yeah um that was a big story

Jonas said earlier in the show like there's so many stories it's hard to kind of pick like

I'm not kidding every week we end up with like seven stories and we're like we have to trim this

down or this is gonna be like a 10-hour podcast so um it's really hard to yeah it's it's really

hard to pick which stories to prioritize and you know I'll be honest like even even me

sometimes when I'm editing the clips over the weekend I'm like man you know I kind of wish we

talked about this other story um so like it happens sometimes it's hard to prioritize them there's

a lot of stories out there so um definitely find reliable sources whether that's the forum whether

that's privacy guides dot org slash news um or a trusted outlet um we don't cover it all we try

to bring you we try to bring you the the big important ones um yeah and I think

I'll also say yeah this show like the stories that we can uh that we can discuss and have have

good things to add to and probably that people have questions about that we can answer on

the live stream um we're certainly aware that like we don't cover a ton of stories I know there's

other um shows that people might find similar to this one that really are more news focus and kind

of cover every single headline throughout the week and we explicitly haven't been doing that um

but we know that people want to stay up to date with that stuff so we are thinking about like

more ways that we can get um just headlines in front of people and get that content shared even

if we don't discuss it here on the show whether that's through like privacy guides dot org slash news

or from uh from other from other things that we are thinking about working on that we can

maybe see if people are interested in soon um so yeah yeah I was just gonna add on to that real quick

even back when I was at surveillance report where we regularly covered like 30 to 40 stories a

week there were still times that I was just like man we missed this story we should have covered

this story or so like it is so hard to to pick which stories are the most important ones that

people are gonna resonate with so going back to uh community statistics really quick uh Jordan

just shared that we just hit 9,000 subscribers on youtube so that's cool um over 1400 of those

subscribers are just in the last month so that's definitely growing quite a bit um so yeah and of

course we're constantly getting new followers whether it's on peer tube or massive on our other

social media platforms too so all of those uh numbers are up as well and continue to grow so I'm

very happy that more people are becoming interested in all of the topics that we're that we're talking

about here because I think it's important yeah for sure we got a quick question from twitter

do you guys see mixnet and data type traffic like the uh mulvad data type traffic up

up viewscation tools becoming popular now that countries are coming for VPNs more and more

and then follow up do you think these tools should be in more threat models um I don't know much about

mixnet um I know data I think I think data was designed I mean it's it's in the name data was

designed more to combat like AI traffic correlation as opposed to like censorship um I

would personally I would like to see something like that become more common

just with the rise of AI you know earlier we talked about how historically

defense contractors had a struggle with having too much data and not knowing how to parse through

and for better or worse I think that is coming to an end with AI um which is why I

try I brought out like the the danger of trusting AI implicitly that you know AI just says well

here's all this traffic correlation so he's guilty and if nobody's double checking that things are

gonna get real bad real quick I mean yeah but um I I think I think if the last I heard the the

UK was very heavily favoring uh regulating VPNs and I think if that happens we're definitely

gonna see a spike in censorship obfuscation and resistance tools for sure um but that's just my

two cents no for sure the tricky thing with all of this with all the tools like that is that

they typically are easy to detect like just from your ISP standpoint so well

similar to a VPN like it's um challenging to see what you're doing with those connections

and even more challenging um with something like tour or other mix nets because there isn't a single

VPN provider that legal authorities can go after um hiding what you're doing hiding just the fact that

you're trying to maintain your privacy and trying to protect your security and your data on the

internet hiding the fact that you want to do all of that in general from your ISP is a very challenging

thing to do and again similar to like what I talked about in earlier in the show I think it's

just incredibly important to remember that like this isn't only a technical issue that can be solved

with something like mix nets it's really a case where people need to demand from um like their

governments and from politicians that like the right to maintain your security online in the right

to maintain your privacy when you're browsing the web and avoid trackers and all of this stuff

that is something that needs to be enshrined in law and upheld by these institutions um it's not

something that like technical people are going to be able to just thwart forever if if the

governments are really going after this super hard um and so like it's very challenging I think

in a lot of places and if you're in a particularly oppressive regime you don't have a lot of options

and you kind of just have to go with what works but we're seeing um all of these laws like age

verification and other privacy invasive things um proposed VPN bands etc uh happening in countries

that are supposedly um very democratic it should give you a lot of control and these are wildly

unpopular ideas especially when people fully understand what these laws are asking for and

I think people need to recognize that like you actually do have a lot of power if you don't want

these laws to be passed and you need to demand more heavily of of your own government that

this sort of law is completely unacceptable um that is the solution that we have to do in a

in a democracy at the end of the day um and more people need to take up the mantle on that

yeah I don't have much to add to that um I did one quick follow up I think this is probably our

our last question here but first name last name um that asked the laptop question earlier they

said they were thinking about cubes yeah somebody else um mentioned the HSI score cubes does have

it should be fairly easy to find if you um I think if you just go to their documentation it's like

one of the first topics they have a really good documentation for cubes um they have a list of

all the different laptops they've tested where they're not they're compatible which ones are like

they'll even tell you which components like like um you know the the graphics card drivers don't

work but the CPU work like it gets pretty granular and um you can look up whatever specific laptop

you're thinking about getting or desktop or whatever and uh they'll tell you if it's compatible

they'll also tell you if it's been tested or not like yes one of our team members bought this and

confirmed it it works yes it works but there's caveats or like no it doesn't work or like it should

work but we haven't tested it it's really good um so I would definitely start there for sure

so not a question but anonymous 285 said that M's new activism project is gonna be a read for

the weekend absolutely I think this is an incredible resource especially if you are interested in

some of the stuff I was just talking about being an activist or an advocate for privacy rights

um in your area or starting like a local organization um like like EFF Austin for example or we're

gonna be next week um but doing organizing groups like that I think a lot of the resources that

um uh has published at privacyguides.org slash activism are um super useful and even if like

you're not sure if you are a privacy activist or you're not super into that I think a lot of it

is very good advice if you are uh interested in any of these topics that it's definitely worth

to read so yeah totally check it out yep yeah I saw that comment too uh thank you we're super

excited about it back here as I'm sure you guys can tell so um but I think that's all we've got

actually um so I guess we'll go ahead and call it here all right all of the updates from this

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thank you all for watching and we will see you next week live from austin texas very exciting

see you everyone

you