If you're a journalist who covers law enforcement, don't let their claims about slick and effective technology go unchallenged.

https://www.eff.org/document/selling-safety-journalists-guide-covering-police-technology

Meta thinks now is a great time to launch facial recognition surveillance tech in their creepy glasses because EFF will be too distracted by fascism to notice.

We noticed.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/seven-billion-reasons-facebook-abandon-its-face-recognition-plans

@izby Thank you for the update. It is my understanding that this stuff rolls out slowly and unevenly.

@LearnToLivePrivate Because it is literally my job to protect everyone, not just Americans.

@nbailey I spend a lot of time fighting mandatory backdoors.

Russia fully blocks WhatsApp and encourages Russians to use home-grown surveillance-compliant Max: https://thehill.com/policy/international/5736203-russia-blocks-whatsapp-meta/

A hacktivist has scraped more than half-a-million payment records from a provider of consumer-grade stalkerware apps, because stalkerware makers don't give a shit about the security of their products.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/09/hacktivist-scrapes-over-500000-stalkerware-customers-payment-records/

I've spent the last year learning Spanish just so I could understand Bad Bunny lyrics.

Trying to explain compartmentalization to activists, but the biggest stumbling block is that most people become activists by accident, so their activism is deeply enmeshed with all of their existing accounts, platforms, and devices.

Hey, remember that time I said that pointing out that AI is giving bad data to ICE is missing the point because ICE doesn't actually care if the data is good? Check out how right I am.

https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-ice-dhs-mobile-fortify-face-recognition-verify-identity/

Sometimes I get a really good quote in.

“Pointing out that AI is prone to giving ICE bad information is missing the entire point of ICE,” EFF’s Eva Galperin told Rolling Stone. “They don’t care if the information they have is good.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/ice-ai-mistakes-1235507183/

Notepad++ publishes a blog post saying they caught a probably-Chinese state actor hijacking their product in an attack against highly-selective targets that began last June: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-update/

Why do your organizing over Signal? So that you don't do your organizing on an app that hasn't been tested or reviewed, run by a guy who doesn't tell his users about data breaches and security problems.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/stopice-hacked-names-locations-over-100k-users-were-sent-fbi-ice-hsi-1775307

@tychotithonus I am not looking for solid numbers. I am looking for a general vibe. I am also not looking for suggestions. If I had been looking for suggestions, I would have asked for them.

@nemo Because I don't want to do a questionnaire.

How many people here would be interested if I did a digital security/privacy advice blog somewhere?

If you are outside of Minnesota and you are looking for ways to help right now, here is a guide:

https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how-to-help-if-you-are-outside-minnesota/

@C0rn3lius We are cool and normal people.

It's Friday night and I'm outlining a 12-minute talk about the Opium Wars because, as you are aware, I know how to party.