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1000 results for “bert_hubert”
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Eindelijk wat serieuze aandacht voor de idiote #chatcontrole-plannen bij Eenvandaag.
De @EUCommission wil al onze chatberichten scannen nog voor ze verzonden zijn. '
China verbleekt erbij en het is bovendien in strijd met ons grondwettelijk briefgeheim.
Mylene Tabernal van @voltnederland en #DefenceForChildren is voor deze plannen.
Bert Hubert @bert_hubert is tegen, net als de @Piratenpartij, die aandacht kreeg in het #nosjournaal.
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Eindelijk wat serieuze aandacht voor de idiote #chatcontrole-plannen bij Eenvandaag.
De @EUCommission wil al onze chatberichten scannen nog voor ze verzonden zijn. '
China verbleekt erbij en het is bovendien in strijd met ons grondwettelijk briefgeheim.
Mylene Tabernal van @voltnederland en #DefenceForChildren is voor deze plannen.
Bert Hubert @bert_hubert is tegen, net als de @Piratenpartij, die aandacht kreeg in het #nosjournaal.
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Eindelijk wat serieuze aandacht voor de idiote #chatcontrole-plannen bij Eenvandaag.
De @EUCommission wil al onze chatberichten scannen nog voor ze verzonden zijn. '
China verbleekt erbij en het is bovendien in strijd met ons grondwettelijk briefgeheim.
Mylene Tabernal van @voltnederland en #DefenceForChildren is voor deze plannen.
Bert Hubert @bert_hubert is tegen, net als de @Piratenpartij, die aandacht kreeg in het #nosjournaal.
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Wat voor vertrouwen zou ik nog moeten hebben in onze democratie als een aangenomen #tweedekamer motie over #chatcontrole tot 3 keer toe door het #demissionair kabinet naast zich neergelegd wordt én de tweede kamer de betrokken ministers niet middels een motie van wantrouwen naar huis stuurt?
Het gaat immers om #grondrechten #burgerrechten
Om moe van te worden
#CynischeZondag -
Wat voor vertrouwen zou ik nog moeten hebben in onze democratie als een aangenomen #tweedekamer motie over #chatcontrole tot 3 keer toe door het #demissionair kabinet naast zich neergelegd wordt én de tweede kamer de betrokken ministers niet middels een motie van wantrouwen naar huis stuurt?
Het gaat immers om #grondrechten #burgerrechten
Om moe van te worden
#CynischeZondag -
Wat voor vertrouwen zou ik nog moeten hebben in onze democratie als een aangenomen #tweedekamer motie over #chatcontrole tot 3 keer toe door het #demissionair kabinet naast zich neergelegd wordt én de tweede kamer de betrokken ministers niet middels een motie van wantrouwen naar huis stuurt?
Het gaat immers om #grondrechten #burgerrechten
Om moe van te worden
#CynischeZondag -
Wat voor vertrouwen zou ik nog moeten hebben in onze democratie als een aangenomen #tweedekamer motie over #chatcontrole tot 3 keer toe door het #demissionair kabinet naast zich neergelegd wordt én de tweede kamer de betrokken ministers niet middels een motie van wantrouwen naar huis stuurt?
Het gaat immers om #grondrechten #burgerrechten
Om moe van te worden
#CynischeZondag -
Digital Commons EDIC launched, but is it the wrong Commons?
The Digital Commons EDIC was launched on 11 December 2025 in The Hague. I had previously praised the project for (hopefully) building a home for open social networks (in German). After the Bundestag’s budget committee had approved the federal budget for 2026, allocating a core budget of just €1.36 billion to the Ministry of Digital Affairs, I updated that post, noting that the German contribution to the EU Consortium for Digital Commons Infrastructure will be a meagre €240,000 in 2026. After the launch, it is time for another update.
At the celebration, the three initiators France, Germany and the Netherlands presented their national open office suites LaSuite, OpenDesk and MijnBureau. And of course, there were keynotes, including by Thibaut Kleiner, Director of Future Networks at DG CONNECT, representing the European Commission, by Art de Blaauw, the Technical Director of the Dutch government, and by Bert Hubert, entrepreneur, software developer and technical advisor at various government departments, representing his own tech smartness.
Since Hubert, in contrast to the others, was so nice to publish his presentation, he will be the lens through which I look at the launch.
I agree with nearly everything Hubert writes. His analysis of how bad things are, of Europe’s utter dependence on US and Chinese services. That governments need to become leaders in IT.
Requirements for a successful digital commons
I also agree with his six requirements for a successful digital commons, which are his central argument. I just don’t think they are sufficient. The first three of which are widely agreed on in the community: the commons needs to be Free Software and open standards, open implementations and gatekeepers with open governance.
The other three, Hubert writes “are often neglected and I hope that we can have a role here [as an EDIC]”: the commons product needs to also be provided as a service, with actual marketing and sales and it needs to be ‘good without excuses.’ On the latter point, I have to admit that I also tend to believe that what is good will prevail. But rationally, I agree with Hubert. Nobody will move away from a dominant platform because the alternative is European or Free Software. Particularly not, when they are told that it’s good but a bit tricky to install or the user interface is slightly clunky and so on.
What is a commons?
But then we come to “the tricky business of defining what a digital commons is.” Hubert starts out on a good track. If you have a digital commons, he argues, you have digital sovereignty, but not the other way round. With a European Amazon owned by Deutsche Telekom there is ‘sovereignty’ but as little commons as before.
I’m also totally with him in his critique of the “false digital commons”, i.e. services that are free to use and that people consider infrastructure for running their life, e.g. Google Docs, Youtube, Discord or ChatGPT.
Plan of a mediaeval manor, used in Hubert’s presentation, originally from Wikipedia, in the public domain.But then the account takes a wrong turn, precisely when asking: “What are these digital commons? Well, we heard this morning from the minister that it was this field where everyone could let their sheep graze and stuff.”
That you don’t have to ask permission doesn’t make it a commons
This single sentence evokes the idea of Garrett Hardin’s pseudo-commons – the one with the tragedy, introduced in a widely cited article in Science in December 1968 (The Tragedy of the Commons). And he continues: “I think they also had fights over that and who could put on their sheep there first. So it’s not that easy.” Here we see Elinor Ostrom appearing at the horizon: The idea that the commons cannot be a piece of land onto which isolated individuals put animals without talking to each other until it’s overused.
Hubert mentions Mastodon as an example for a digital commons – “Because everyone can always join in. … These are things that are quite clearly where you can say, yeah, this is digital and it is a commons. Because everyone can use it, everyone can take part. … You did not have to ask permission from anyone.”
Particularly this latter sentence is the signature formula of the Silicon Valley-adjacent hyper-individualised copyright lawyers behind Creative Commons. By using any combination of the CC license building blocks, an author signals to users that they are free to perform acts which by copyright law default are reserved to him. Once they see these signals on a work, users do not need to ask additional permission from the author or from CC or anyone else.
I will return to this, but first back to Hubert’s confusion. “But if you want to say, what is a digital commons, you have a far harder time. There are very academic definitions that do not quite help us.” Here I strongly disagree. Ostrom’s seminal 1990 book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action is very worth reading and quite helpful for disentangling the issues at hand.
Hubert is seemingly unaware of Ostrom’s work, yet his intuition guides him to the insight that “we should also in many cases have governance like the Wikipedia has governance that people spend a lot of time on. OpenStreetMap has whole conferences to decide what to do.”
Public parks and streets are not commons either
Now we are no longer talking about the consumptive freedom of everybody allowed to use Wikipedia or OSM or a free-for-all pasture – ‘without having to ask permission’ – but about a collective who jointly creates and maintains a resource and spends a lot of time on making rules for itself for doing so sustainably.
The commons is not a ‘thing’. It is also not a label or a license attached to a thing that makes it a commons. Nor are public parks, streets and sidewalks commons, as US law scholars on both West and East Coast will regularly claim. This seems to be the result of the historic enclosure of the commons which led to them being dissolved into either private property, i.e. they disappeared, or – public property, in which case all that remained was a name.
When you search for ‘commons’ on OSM in UK, US or Ireland, you will find parks, nature reserves, settlements, buildings that conserve the name ‘commons.’ Yet the name does not make them a commons.
Cambridge Common bordering on several parts of Harvard University (OSM).These typically provide free access to all citizens who don’t have to ask permission. Not because they are a commons, but because they are owned and maintained by a national trust or by the state and run by the street and park authorities.
In contrast, a commons is a social formation, a community of commoners who sustainably make use of a joint resource. No community of commoners, no commons.
Hardin’s fallacy: Consumptive freedom without communication
The real tragedy is that even 26 years after Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in economics for refuting Hardin’s BS science, the word ‘commons’ still triggers if not the word, at least the idea of a tragedy. Even in good people like Hubert.
There is a video recording of Elinor Ostrom being amused about the naivety of Hardin’s approach: No data! Only an armchair thought experiment: Just imagine a pasture open to anyone. Where people didn’t talk to each other and just put on as many animals as they could! That became like a religion. The presumption is that people are helpless. They need either government to tell them what to do or to privatise the resource.
The idea that people could collectively self-organise did not even occur to Hardin. His tragedy of the commons consist in the fact that he does not talk about a commons at all, but about a free access regime.
Let’s remember that Hardin was a Malthusian ‘human ecologist’ preoccupied with the issue of overpopulation. He wasn’t concerned about people putting cows on meadows but about people putting more people into the world. And this respect he proclaimed: “Freedom to Breed Is Intolerable” (Hardin 1968).
In a natural setting, ‘parents who bred too exuberantly’ would have their offspring decimated by natural selection which would leave only the strongest to survive. Yet the welfare state grants security and healthcare to all.
“In a welfare state, how shall we deal with the family, the religion, the race, or the class (or indeed any distinguishable and cohesive group) that adopts over-breeding as a policy to secure its own aggrandizement? To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.” (Hardin 1968)
What Hardin had in mind looks pretty much like what Trump is currently doing: dismantle the welfare state and let natural selection run its course. When the poor have been decimated or driven out of the country and immigrants are kept out, what remains is a WASP ethno-nationalist state of the rich. To top it off, Trump is even planning to celebrate his ‘achievements’ with Hunger Games (Forbes 19.12.2025).
The most widely cited sentence from Hardin’s infamous article is: “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” Yet even he himself nearly thirty years later – in an interview that nobody knows – had to acknowledge that he was wrong. Or at least not careful enough. If he were doing it over again, he says, he would write: “In a crowded world, an unmanaged commons cannot possibly work.” He still cannot get the idea out of his mind that a commons is a free-for-all:
“I pointed out that if the world is not crowded, a commons may in fact be the best method of distribution. For example, when the pioneers spread out across the United States, the most efficient way was to treat all the game in the wild as a commons, an unmanaged commons (‘Just fire away’) because for a long time they couldn’t do any real damage.” (Hardin 1997)
By adding the attribute ‘unmanaged’ he did admit that he did not write about a commons at all because an unmanaged commons is an oxymoron. Again: a commons is not a thing that can be managed or unmanaged, instead it is precisely a form of collective management, of time-consuming communication. Hardin’s fallacy is to only perceive an individual’s consumptive use exercised without permission. Like in most cases of CC license use.
The real commons, revitalised by Ostrom
There is a long history of scholarship on actually existing commons and their enclosure. Who ever has read Karl Marx, Das Kapital, will remember that the ‘original accumulation’ of capital1 is based on two dynamics: the enclosure of the commons, leading to large masses of people forcefully torn from the land and thrown onto the labour market as ‘free’ proletarians, and colonisation of the Global South, the looting of its wealth and the enslavement of its people (Cf. Grassmuck 2013).
Max Weber in Economy and Society (1922) under the heading ‘Types of communitisation and socialisation’ describes the formation of a system as ‘closure to the outside’ through the original drawing of boundaries. This can be the members of a tribe or village jointly clearing forst or cultivating moorland areas, the association of fishing interests in a particular body of water, the closure of participation in the fields, pastures and other common land of a village to outsiders or an association of engineers that seeks to enforce a monopoly on certain positions for its members. These constitute a group-monopolisation of social and economic opportunities and thus the creation of ‘property’ in collective ownership. In a second step, according to Weber, the ‘closure to the inside’, a differentiation that he calls ‘appropriation’ of the monopolised shares by individuals, then creates private property.
It seems that Hardin’s tragic 1969 article essentially cut off that tradition of research by proclaiming – without data – that every commons inevitably leads to overuse. He gave the ‘commons’ a bad name.
To the point where Ostrom found it necessary to drop the word entirely and replace it with ‘common pool resources’ in order to save the idea. She spent most of her life’s work refuting Hardin’s article by conducting rigorous empirical studies on water management systems, fisheries, alpine high pastures, forestries and other natural resources in many countries that are managed as a commons and often have been for centuries. This is obviously only possible when 1) there is a clearly delineated community 2) who makes rules for themselves. These are unsurprisingly two of the eight design principles for sustainable commons into which Ostrom condensed the conclusions of her research into. I will return them in my own conclusions.
Ostrom, the only ever female economist to win a Nobel Prize, revitalised the idea that the commons is not only a tragic thing from the Middle Ages but a very present and practical but mostly overlooked social formation with much potential to help us find alternative solutions to many of today’s problems.
Her commons clearly resonate with contemporary research and have inspired fresh work on commons communities and practices.
Yochai Benkler has coined the concept of Commons-Based Peer-Production as a third way of resource management emerging in the digitally networked environment next to top-down managed firms and price-signal driven markets (Benkler 2002; 2016).
Philosopher Rahel Jaeggi analyses commons practices as counter-model to the alienation of capitalist wage labour by enabling communal production, participation and control, where individuals act in connection rather than isolation (Jaeggi 2018; Fraser & Jaeggi 2020).
Both Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation) and Silke Helfrich have created large bodies of original work as well as libraries of resources on the commons.
Closer to home, i.e. the DC EDIC, Sophie Bloemen and David Hammerstein, in A Commons Approach to European Knowledge Policy (2015), recount the tragedy that “[f]or decades, the commons has been dismissed as a failed system”, a misconception steming from a Hardin’s infamous 1968 “essay.”
“While this understanding of the commons is widespread, a commons is, in truth, something richer and deeper. It is not just the resource alone, but a social system – one that arises through the interactions of people who devise their own locally appropriate, mutually agreeable rules for managing resources that matter to them. Value creation and stewardship in a commons occur through the active participation of a community of people. Or as the historian Peter Linebaugh has put it, ‘There is no commons without commoning.’” (ibid.)
The digital commons
Ostrom also ventured into grappling with information resources and digital objects. Those are not scarce in that they can be copied and shared endlessly without being diminished. If a GNU/Linux distro and Wikipedia can be used freely by millions without taking anything away from others – and without having to ask permission –, why should we have governance, as Hubert noted?
The GNU GPL grants maximum freedoms of use to software works but famously, in its copleft provision, requires reciprocity for productive use: if you create and publish a derivative work under this license you must do so under the same terms. Or as the preamble of the first verion reads: “To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.”
A more general Definition of ‘Open’ also requires distribution of derivatives of the licensed work to be under the same terms of the original licensed work. Among the CC variants, only the Share-Alike building block achives the same effect.
So why this condition to reciprocate? The first answer: to prevent free-riding by making valuable modifications of the work of thousands of contributors and selling them as a closed proprietary product. This free-riding might frustrate the volunteers who maintain and develop Free Software and write Wikipedia articles. As I have argued elsewhere (Grassmuck 2011), the scarce resource that needs to be protected is the willingness to contribute.
It clearly points to something larger than an issue of individual users and individual producers. It implies a community of producers regulating their internal relations. And such a community, e.g. Wikimedians, can, of course, decide to change the terms of these relations, e.g. when Wikimedians voted to change the license from GNU FDL to CC-BY-SA in 2009.
What needs to be protected by the community of commoners is not the final product, but the community of producers itself. A commons needs governance, that people, as Hubert had remarked, spend a lot of time on.
The Digital Commons EDIC
And the DC EDIC will undoubtedly also spend a lot of time on it. A “European Digital Infrastructure Consortium“ (EDIC) is an EU instrument that enables Member States to jointly develop, establish and operate cross-border digital infrastructures with its own governance and legal personality.
Will the Consortium of states itself become infrastructure provider with a commons governance between them or will they rather facilitate the creation of an infrastructure commons by actors like the IT industry, academia and civil society? State actors, as Hubert noted, don’t typically build and operate digital infrastructure themselves, they prefer to procure it as a service. Funding programmes, calls and tenders are typical instruments of states to get the tech they want.
And from experience they know that dealing with hackers isn’t easy. Therefore a design feature for these kind of arrangements has proven itself: As a state, don’t talk to hackers directly, find friendly techies to do it for you.
An example is the Next Generation Internet EU funding programme, for which the European Commission commissioned the NLnet Foundation, which goes back to the guys who in the early 1980s originally brought the Internet to Europe, to handle the selection and management of projects.
Similarly, applicants to the German Prototype Fund are met by an organisation set up by the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany who have created something that is not intended by the normal funding activities of the German Ministry for Research: low-threshold support for individual developers or small groups allowing them to work on a software prototype for six months. The Prototype Fund has simplified the application procedures to the max and guides applicants through it. An additional interface between Ministry and hackers is the German Aerospace Center (DLR) that acts as project management agency. Therefore the EDIC is well-advised to set up a similar interface towards the hackers who it enables to develop cool stuff on different layers of the Internet stack.
Whatever the EDIC builds, it needs to adhere to Hubert’s six requirements for a successful digital commons. It needs to be Free Software and open standards, apply state of the art usability and advertise its goodies.
It also needs to go back to Ostrom’s eight design principles for collective self-governance: 1) Clearly defined boundaries delineate who is in and who is out of the obligation to support the common resource, while extracting units of the digital good remains free for all. 2) The congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions points to the limited ability of commoners to contribute to developing and maintaining the common digital resource, including moderation of social networks. Upholding this congruence requires a commons of care: the community at large needs to ensure the wellbeing of those who create the basis of their joint online environment, e.g. the fediverse, and prevent burn-out. 3) Collective-choice arrangements refer to the internal democracy of the commons, allowing individuals affected by the operational rules to participate in modifying these rules. 4) The conditions of the commons need to be monitored, 5) there need to be graduated sanctions against those who violate the agreed rules and 6) conflict-resolution mechanisms to settle disputes. 7) The recognition of rights to organise by external governmental authorities is ensured, as the commoners in this case are governments. And finally, as a European consortium, 8) all the above mechanisms need to be organised in multiple layers of nested and federated enterprises, i.e. the European layer has to have corresponding structures on the national and local level.
Never before has the commons been addressed at such a high level of policy making. Let’s hope the EDIC will be guided by the right vision of a commons and spill over into inspiring forms of commoning in other areas as well.
Notes
1‘Ursprüngliche Akkumulation’, unfortunately regularly mistranslated to ‘primitive accumulation.’
#Allmende #Commons #Europe #FreeCulture #freeSoftware #Internet #publicPolicy -
Ist 1234 ein gutes Passwort?
«Ist
1234ein gutes Passwort? Oder soll ich doch lieberMb2.r5oHf-0twählen?» Diese Frage stellen sich viele täglich. Hier ein paar Erklärungen und Antworten. Auch, dass eigentlich1234gar nicht soo schlecht ist…Inhalt
Toggle- Die Probe aufs Exempel
- Wovor soll ein Passwort schützen?
- Was macht ein gutes Passwort aus?
- Was kann der Angreifer?
- Was kann der Verteidiger?
- Das schutzlose Passwort
- Wenn ich aber das Passwort gar nicht weitergebe, dann bin ich doch sicher? Wieso brauche ich dann trotzdem ein langes Passwort?
- Zusammenfassung
- Weitere Informationen
- Updates
- Aktuelles zu Sicherheit
Die Probe aufs Exempel
An einem gemütlichen Abend fragte ich einige Bekannte, welche Passwörter sie denn ausprobieren würden, wenn sie mein Konto knacken wollten. Hier ein paar repräsentative Antworten:
Uiuiui, das ist aber bei dir ja ganz besonders schwer, sicher nichts Einfaches.
Ich würde es mal mit deinem Geburtsdatum, den Namen deiner Lieben oder deren Geburtsdaten versuchen.
Was lernen wir daraus?
- Schon ein Eindruck von Sicherheit wirkt abschreckend. (Gilt nicht nur in der IT-Sicherheit.)
- Je mehr jemand über dich weiss, desto einfacher ist es, deine schwachen (schlechten) Passwörter zu erraten.
- Wähle nichts, was für jemand anderen erratbar ist.
Wovor soll ein Passwort schützen?
Wenn Daten und weitere Ressourcen eines Systems vor Unbefugten geschützt werden sollen, sind Passwörter eines der Mittel, unbefugten Zugriff zu vermeiden. Das ist der Aspekt, der den Anwender auch direkt betrifft.
Daneben muss natürlich auch das System selbst sicher sein, z.B. man soll nicht als Folge eines Programmierfehler Zugriff erhalten, ohne überhaupt je nach einem Passwort gefragt zu werden. Hier ist hauptsächlich der Systemverantwortliche gefordert.
In vielen Systemen gibt es noch zusätzliche Barrieren vor oder hinter den oben genannten. Zu den bekanntesten zählt die Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung.
Was macht ein gutes Passwort aus?
Ein gutes Passwort soll vor allem eins: Unbefugte davor hindern, die Daten und Rechner dahinter zu missbrauchen. Ob das erfolgreich ist, hängt zuerst einmal von drei Faktoren: Dem Angreifer, dem Verteidiger und dem Passwort.
Was kann der Angreifer?
Ein Angreifer hat folgende Möglichkeiten, Passwortkandidaten zu bekommen:
- Direkt vom User z.B. durch Shoulder Surfing[1]Shoulder Surfing: Jemandem (über die Schulter) beim Eingeben des Passworts zuschauen, Phishing oder durch Keylogger als Hardware oder Software.
- Beim unverschlüsselten Übermitteln über einen Kanal, insbesondere eine unverschlüsselte HTTP-Verbindung (also ohne HTTPS) oder über eine unverschlüsselte Mail.
- Von einem anderen Konto übernehmen, wenn
- der User dasselbe Passwort (oder ein abgewandeltes) bei mehreren Onlinekonten verwendet und
- das Passwort bei einem dieser Onlinekonten erbeutet wurde.
Am einfachsten ist es für den Angreifer, wenn das Passwort beim Diensteanbieter unverschlüsselt gespeichert ist. Dazu aber mehr weiter unten.
- Erraten mit Lexikon und Regeln. Das Basis-Lexikon kann ein echtes Wörterbuch sein oder eine Liste von beliebten Passwörtern. Diese werden dann aber nicht nur direkt verwendet, sondern mit Ersetzungsregeln bearbeitet:
ldurchIoder1ersetzen; hinten ein1oder!anhängen, Namen und Abkürzungen der Diensteanbieter ersetzen (blueoderÂblim Passwort eines Bluewin-Kontos durchgreenodergrersetzen, wenn das Passwort bei einem Green.ch-Konto versucht werden soll).Wenn Ihnen jemand eine Ersetzungsregel empfohlen hat, dann kennen die Angreifer diese Regel schon lange. (Und auch die meisten Regeln, die Sie sich ein Mensch merken kann, sind schon computerisiert.)
- Erraten ohne Anhaltspunkt („Brute Force“). Alle Zeichenkombinationen von
aaaaaaaaaaüberMb2.r5oHf-0tbisZZZZZZZZZauszuprobieren ist um so schwieriger, je mehr verschiedene Zeichen darin vorkommen und je weniger Zeichen davon nach irgendwelchen Regeln erzeugt wurden.
Was kann der Verteidiger?
Grundsätzlich unterscheidet sich ein Angreifer, der ein Passwort aus seiner Liste ausprobiert, erst einmal nicht von einem Benutzer, der sein Passwort falsch eingibt. Es gibt einige Merkmale, die es einfacher machen, diese kommen aber mit ihren eigenen Risiken.
Damit bleibt dem Diensteanbieter, unserem Verteidiger gegen den Angriff, vor allem Eines: Den Angreifer verlangsamen. Eine Regel, wie sie bei Bancomatkarten üblich ist, dass die Karte gesperrt wird, sobald das Passwort drei Mal falsch eingegeben wird, ist im Internet fatal: Viele Konten wären dauernd gesperrt.
Der Mittelweg: Wenn von einer bestimmten IP-Adresse aus mehrere falsche Versuche erfolgen, werden weitere Loginversuche von dieser Adresse aus für mehrere Minuten gesperrt.
Aber schon alleine die Einschränkung, dass ein Passwortknackversuch über das Netzwerk gehen muss, verlangsamt einen Angreifer massiv. Damit sind meist nur noch wenige Dutzend bis ein paar Tausende Versuche pro Sekunde möglich. Das mag im Vergleich zu Lo und Leducs Versuch, alle 20 Sekunden eine neue „079“-Telefonnummer auszuprobieren, nach sehr viel anmuten, ist es aber nicht: Selbst wer „nur“ ein Passwort aus 8 zufälligen Kleinbuchstaben verwendet, hat bereits 268 Versuche vor sich, rund 200 Milliarden. Bei tausend Versuchen pro Sekunde dauert das schon über 6 Jahre. Ein neuntes Zeichen bringt das auf 172 Jahre, die Mischung von Gross- und Kleinbuchstaben auf rund 17’000 Jahre; wer sich dabei noch grosszügig aus den Sonderzeichen bedient, der bringt die Angriffszeit auf einige Jahrmillionen. Genug, um auch den hartnäckigsten Angreifer zur Verzweiflung zu treiben. Wo liegt also das Problem?
Das schutzlose Passwort
Das Problem ist insbesondere dann eines, wenn gar kein Verteidiger da ist, wenn also der Angreifer
- schon das richtige Passwort kennt,
- das Passwort nur mit wenigen Tausend Versuchen erraten kann oder
- ein verschlüsseltes Passwort von einem anderen Diensteanbieter erschlichen werden konnte.
Wenn der Angreifer also das korrekte Passwort oder ein sehr ähnliches kennt, nützten Passwortchecks nichts. Auch ein Zwang zu langen Passwörtern oder Sonderzeichen in der Mitte macht keinen Unterschied. Deshalb:
Regel #1: Passwort mit niemandem teilen. Auch nicht mit einem anderen Diensteanbieter.
Regel #2: Dann braucht man keine weiteren Regeln.
D.h., für jedes Konto ein unabhängiges Passwort erzeugen oder auf Passwörter verzichten:
- Unabhängige Passwörter kann man sich nur wenige merken, ohne Rückgriff auf technische Mittel läuft da nichts. Deshalb ist ein Passwortmanager unverzichtbar. Wenn mit dem Browser oder Betriebssystem schon einer kommt, dann ist das häufig der beste Weg, weil man ihn so auch nutzt.
Mein Passwortmanager hat in den letzten Jahren weit über 1000 Passwörter gesammelt. Da sind viele Zugangsdaten dabei, die man einmal angelegt hat und vielleicht nie wieder braucht, z.B. beim einmaligen Onlineshopping beim lokalen Schuh- oder Kleiderladen. Wahrscheinlich beschäftigt der keinen IT-Security-Experten. Wenn wir diesem Laden um die Ecke dasselbe Passwort verraten, mit welchem wir uns auch bei unserem Emailkonto anmelden[2]Warnung: Viele glauben, ihre Emails seien gar nicht wichtig und das Passwort dafür auch nicht. Das ist ein grober Fehlschluss. Mit Zugriff zum Emailkonto kann man über die „Passwort zurücksetzen“-Funktion vieler Anbieter die Kontrolle über diese weiteren Konten erlangen. Und auch die sogenannten „Sicherheitsfragen“ halten keinen dedizierten Angreifer auf. oder das wir bei der Arbeit verwenden, gefährden wir auch diese und weitere Daten. - Ohne Passwort kann man sich bei einigen wenigen Diensten mittels Benutzerzertifikat anmelden, beispielsweise mittels einer Smartcard oder speziellem USB-Stick. Der Ansatz ist sehr gut, allerdings für Otto Normalverbraucher aufgrund seiner fehlenden Verbreitung irrelevant.
- „Anmelden mit Facebook, Google, …“ hilft ebenfalls, auf Passwörter zu verzichten. Diese Methode ist nicht sicherer als der Passwortmanager (im Gegenteil), untergräbt aber die Privatsphäre noch weiter. Deshalb empfehle ich dies nur im Ausnahmefall.
Gegen diesen Missbrauch eines bekannten Passwortes wird auch Zwei-Faktor-Authentisierung (2FA) als zusätzlicher Mechanismus eingesetzt. Er ist dort fast die einzige Methode, die Schutz bringt. Allerdings kann sie auch lästig sein. Da sind die Diensteanbieter gefragt, sie möglichst benutzerfreundlich umzusetzen.
Wenn ich aber das Passwort gar nicht weitergebe, dann bin ich doch sicher? Wieso brauche ich dann trotzdem ein langes Passwort?
Eigentlich ja. Leider kann der Diensteanbieter aber nicht wissen, ob Sie sich an die obigen Regeln halten. Deshalb versucht er das Ausprobieren von Passwörtern gegen eine Offline-Datenbank möglichst wenig erfolgreich zu machen. Leider helfen die meisten Passwortkriterien kaum weiter. Auch die Pflicht, das Passwort alle 3 Monate zu ändern, bringt kaum zusätzlichen Schutz, wenn man auf seine Passwörter aufpasst. (Und auch wenn man nicht auf seine Passwörter aufpasst, bringt es weniger als oft erwartet.)
Zusammenfassung
Aktuell sind die besten Möglichkeiten für einen Angreifer an Passwörter zu kommen, Phishing und das Herunterladen von ungenügend gesicherten Passwortdatenbanken von Dienstleistern. Gegen beides schützen komplizierte Passwörter nicht. Jeder Einzelne sollte also darauf achten, seine Passwörter mit niemandem zu teilen. Wirklich niemand! Dazu benötigt man einen Passwortmanager, der häufig schon im Betriebssystem oder Browser eingebaut ist. Komplizierte Passwörter dienen hauptsächlich dazu, Nutzer vor Schaden zu schützen, die sich nicht an die Regel halten. Aber sie geben trotzdem mehr Schutz.
1234ist also gar nicht so schlecht. Es darf aber – wie jedes andere Passwort auch – nur für ein Konto verwendet werden. Und ich bin sicher, da war jemand anders früher und Sie müssen sich ein neues aussuchen…Aber für wirklich kritische Ressourcen sollten Sie
12345verwenden. Oder00000000.Es sind aber auch die Dienste- und Shopanbieter gefragt, die
- Ihre Daten und Passwörter gut schützen sollen,
- bei vermuteten Angriffen kompetent reagieren sollen und dabei ehrlich kommunizieren sollen,
- bei unübliche Aktivitäten und administrativen Aktionen zusätzliche Identifikation verlangen, die aber die Privatsphäre der Nutzer nicht tangieren sollte (also wenn möglich Vermeidung von „Sicherheitsfragen“ oder der Pflicht, eine Telefonnummer einzugeben) und
- zusätzliche Schutzmassnahmen wie 2FA oder passwortlose Mechanismen einsetzen sollten.
Jeder kann seinen Beitrag dazu leisten, die Welt ein kleines bisschen sicherer zu gestalten. Gehen wir das gemeinsam an!Weitere Informationen
- Cory Doctorow: „Hackers can steal your 2FA email account by getting you to sign up for another website“, Boingboing, 2017-06-22.
Wie man Zwei-Faktor-Authentisierung aushebeln kann. - Lorrie Cranor: „Time to rethink mandatory password changes„, Federal Trade Commission, 2016-03-02.
Passwortänderungen alle X Monate bringen kaum einen Sicherheitsgewinn. Im Gegenteil. - Dan Goodin: „Anatomy of a hack: Even your ‚complicated‘ password is easy to crack„, Wired, 2013-05-28.
Erläuterungen, wie professionelle Passwortknacker vorgehen. - Troy Hunt: „Data breach disclosure 101: How to succeed after you’ve failed„, 2017-03-23.
Was man als Firma tun soll, nachdem man gehackt wurde. - Stefan Sichermann: „IT-Experten küren
Mb2.r5oHf-0tzum sichersten Passwort der Welt„, Der Postillon, 2014-04-15.
Ein paar Körnchen Wahrheit zu Passwörtern. Und viel Futter für die Lachmuskeln. - Marcel Waldvogel und Jürgen Kollek: „SIEGE: Service-Independent Enterprise-GradE protection against password scans„, DFN-Mitteilungen 87, 2014-11-30.
Was man aus Passwortfehlversuchen lernen kann. Und dass Zusammenhalt der Verteidiger wichtig ist. - Marcel Waldvogel und Thomas Zink: „Einfache Zwei-Faktor-Authentisierung„, digma 3/2018, 2018-09-30.
2FA mit X.509-Nutzerzertifikaten. Und wie man trotz Offenheit Sicherheit erreicht.
Updates
2018-09-29: Facebook-Accountpanne hinzugefügt.
Aktuelles zu Sicherheit
- Ransomware-sicheres Backup2025-09-20 Cyberangriffe können verheerend sein. Doch ein letztes Sicherheitsnetz ist nicht so schwierig zu bauen. Hier die Hintergründe, was es beim Aufbau… Ransomware-sicheres Backup weiterlesen
- Löst die e-ID die Probleme von Jugendschutz und Privatsphäre?2025-09-08 Heute gehen wir der Frage nach, ob eine e-ID unsere gesellschaftlichen Probleme im Internet lösen kann. Und wie wir zu einer… Löst die e-ID die Probleme von Jugendschutz und Privatsphäre? weiterlesen
- 📻 E-ID: Kollidiert Altersverifikation mit dem Recht auf Anonymität?2025-09-05 Die e-ID ist aktuell auch im rund um Altersverifikation in Diskussion. In einem Interview mit Radio SRF versuchte ich, einige Punkte… 📻 E-ID: Kollidiert Altersverifikation mit dem Recht auf Anonymität? weiterlesen
- Ja zur E-ID2025-08-28 Ich setze mich bekanntermassen sehr für IT-Sicherheit und Privatsphäre ein. Und genau deshalb finde ich die E-ID in ihrer jetzt geplanten… Ja zur E-ID weiterlesen
- CH-Journi-Starterpack fürs Fediverse2025-08-02 Im gestrigen Artikel rund ums Fediverse – das offene, föderierte soziale Netzwerk – hatte ich euch ein Starterpack versprochen. Hier ist… CH-Journi-Starterpack fürs Fediverse weiterlesen
- Föderalismus auch bei sozialen Netzen2025-08-01 Föderalismus liegt uns im Blut. Unsere gesamte Gesellschaft ist föderal aufgebaut. Aber – wieso lassen wir uns dann bei sogenannten «sozialen»,… Föderalismus auch bei sozialen Netzen weiterlesen
- Unterschreiben gegen mehr Überwachung2025-07-17 Der Bundesrat will auf dem Verordnungsweg den Überwachungsstaat massiv ausbauen und die Schweizer IT-Wirtschaft im Vergleich zu ausländischen Anbieter schlechter stellen.… Unterschreiben gegen mehr Überwachung weiterlesen
- Sichere VoIP-Telefone: Nein, danke‽2025-06-29 Zumindest war dies das erste, was ich dachte, als ich hörte, dass der weltgrösste Hersteller von Schreibtischtelefonen mit Internetanbindung, Yealink, es… Sichere VoIP-Telefone: Nein, danke‽ weiterlesen
- Diceware: Sicher & deutsch2025-06-12 Diceware ist, laut Wikipedia, «eine einfache Methode, sichere und leicht erinnerbare Passwörter und Passphrasen mithilfe eines Würfels zu erzeugen». Auf der… Diceware: Sicher & deutsch weiterlesen
- Nextcloud: Automatischer Upload auf Android verstehen2025-06-05 Ich hatte das Gefühl, dass der automatische Upload auf Android unzuverlässig sei, konnte das aber nicht richtig festmachen. Jetzt weiss ich… Nextcloud: Automatischer Upload auf Android verstehen weiterlesen
- VÜPF: Staatliche Überwachungsfantasien im Realitätscheck2025-06-02 Die Revision der «Verordnung über die Überwachung des Post- und Fernmeldeverkehrs» (VÜPF) schreckte die Schweiz spät auf. Am Wochenende publizierte die… VÜPF: Staatliche Überwachungsfantasien im Realitätscheck weiterlesen
- Phishing-Trend Schweizerdeutsch2025-06-01 Spam und Phishingversuche auf Schweizerdeutsch scheinen beliebter zu werden. Wieso nutzen Spammer denn diese Nischensprache? Schauen wir in dieser kleinen Weiterbildung… Phishing-Trend Schweizerdeutsch weiterlesen
- Persönliche Daten für Facebook-KI2025-05-19 Meta – Zuckerbergs Imperium hinter Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads etc. – hat angekündigt, ab 27. Mai die persönlichen Daten seiner Nutzer:innen… Persönliche Daten für Facebook-KI weiterlesen
- In den Klauen der Cloud2025-05-01 Bert Hubert, niederländischer Internetpionier und Hansdampf-in-allen-Gassen, hat einen grossartigen Artikel geschrieben, in dem er die Verwirrung rund um «in die Cloud… In den Klauen der Cloud weiterlesen
- Können KI-Systeme Artikel klauen?2024-12-05 Vor ein paar Wochen hat die NZZ einen Artikel veröffentlicht, in dem Petra Gössi das NZZ-Team erschreckte, weil via KI-Chatbot angeblich… Können KI-Systeme Artikel klauen? weiterlesen
- Was Prozessoren und die Frequenzwand mit der Cloud zu tun haben2024-10-12 Seit bald 20 Jahren werden die CPU-Kerne für Computer nicht mehr schneller. Trotzdem werden neue Prozessoren verkauft. Und der Trend geht in… Was Prozessoren und die Frequenzwand mit der Cloud zu tun haben weiterlesen
- Facebook: Moderation für Geschäftsinteressenmaximierung, nicht für das Soziale im Netz2024-10-10 Hatte mich nach wahrscheinlich mehr als einem Jahr mal wieder bei Facebook eingeloggt. Das erste, was mir entgegenkam: Offensichtlicher Spam, der… Facebook: Moderation für Geschäftsinteressenmaximierung, nicht für das Soziale im Netz weiterlesen
- Was verraten KI-Chatbots?2024-09-27 «Täderlät» die KI? Vor ein paar Wochen fragte mich jemand besorgt, ob man denn gar nichts in Chatbot-Fenster eingeben könne, was… Was verraten KI-Chatbots? weiterlesen
- Sicherheit versteckt sich gerne2024-09-13 Wieso sieht man einer Firma nicht von aussen an, wie gut ihre IT-Sicherheit ist? Einige Überlegungen aus Erfahrung.
- Chatkontrolle: Schöner als Fiktion2024-09-12 Wir kennen «1984» nicht, weil es eine technische, objektive Abhandlung war. Wir erinnern uns, weil es eine packende, düstere, verstörende Erzählung… Chatkontrolle: Schöner als Fiktion weiterlesen
- Chatkontrolle, die Schweiz und unsere Freiheit2024-09-10 In der EU wird seit vergangenem Mittwoch wieder über die sogenannte «Chatkontrolle» verhandelt. Worum geht es da? Und welche Auswirkungen hat… Chatkontrolle, die Schweiz und unsere Freiheit weiterlesen
- Cloudspeicher sind nicht (immer) für die Ewigkeit2024-09-09 Wieder streicht ein Cloudspeicher seine Segel. Was wir daraus lernen sollten.
- IT sind nicht nur Kosten2024-08-06 Oft wird die ganze IT-Abteilung aus Sicht der Geschäftsführung nur als Kostenfaktor angesehen. Wer das so sieht, macht es sich zu… IT sind nicht nur Kosten weiterlesen
- CrowdStrike, die Dritte2024-08-05 In den 1½ Wochen seit Publikation der ersten beiden Teile hat sich einiges getan. Microsoft liess es sich nicht nehmen, die… CrowdStrike, die Dritte weiterlesen
-
Destroying Autocracy – July 31, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item
Drew Lyton
Great stuff that ties in nicely with what we are advocating here on Battalion.
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, Techno Feudalism, and other douchebaggery
TechCrunch reports:
Proton releases a new app for two-factor authentication
Flights grounded as Russia’s largest airline Aeroflot hacked and systems ‘destroyed’
The Kyiv Independent reports:
The Register reports:
Europe’s AI crackdown starts this week and Big Tech isn’t happy
Italy says Meta may be violating law with AI in WhatsApp
Edge case: Opera claims Microsoft still playing dirty with defaults
US Navy won’t torpedo hurricane forecast satellite feed after all
Open Future opines:
A Step Forward, But Not Far Enough: the EU’s AI Transparency Template
The European Commission reports:
The Cradle reports:
Netherlands labels Israel ‘threat to national security’ for first time
They are a threat to every nation on Earth’s national security, as are all pariah surveillance states.
The European Commission announces:
Commission proposes partial suspension of Israel’s association to Horizon Europe
Unfortunately, the German and Italian pseudo-fascists blocked it.
EuroNews reports:
EU fails to agree Israeli suspension from research fund over Gaza
Ars Technica reports:
Google confirms it will sign the EU AI Code of Practice
Bleeping Computer reports:
Internet Archive is now a US federal depository library
CISA open-sources Thorium platform for malware, forensic analysis
W3C announces:
Vision for W3C is a W3C Statement
Media Revolution announces:
The Media Revolution countdown campaign is LIVE!
IMHO, this ties in with the Open Media Network idea featured in our Techno Anarchist Manifesto.
Murena shares:
What is a VPN (virtual private network)?
Nextcloud reports:
The Nextcloud Include initiative: How Nextcloud supports diversity in open source
Cory Doctorow has:
You can’t fight enshittification (But we can.)
In addition to the tactics in the Techno Anarchist Manifesto, we have to fight in the political realm as well.
Neutral
Bert Hubert looks at:
Europe’s Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis
The Guardian reports:
Why did thousands of adult titles just disappear from the biggest PC gaming marketplaces?
The Evil Empire (AKA Autocracy) Strikes Back
Breach Media reports:
Mark Carney’s AI agenda is a gift to Big Tech
Canada is 1,010 times better than the U.S. but it ain’t perfect.
404 Media reports:
UK Users Need to Post Selfie or Photo ID to View Reddit’s r/IsraelCrimes, r/UkraineWarFootage
The United Kuntsdumb is now only 1.46 times better than the United States of Assholes and getting worse by the minute.
The MIT Technology Review reports:
What you may have missed about Trump’s AI Action Plan
TechDirt reports:
Trump Threatens To Withold Billions From States That Try To Make Broadband Affordable To Poor People
Pariah States
So-called newspaper, The Washington Times reports:
Hackers breach intelligence website used by CIA
BleepingComputer reports:
French telecom giant Orange discloses cyberattack
Microsoft: Russian hackers use ISP access to hack embassies in AiTM attacks
DarkReading reports:
Russia’s Secret Blizzard APT Gains Embassy Access via ISPs
The Register reports:
Silk Typhoon spun a web of patents for offensive cyber tools, report says
Big Media
404 Media reports:
Patreon reports:
Substack sent a push alert promoting a Nazi blog
I am sorry, but if you are on SubStack at this point you are either an uninformed amoral moron or a c^nt. Thankfully, you can still avoid being reincarnated as a cockroach by moving to Ghost or Buttondown.
ArsTechnica reports:
Substack’s “Nazi problem” won’t go away after push notification apology
The Columbia Journalism Review reports:
Traffic Apocalypse: Google’s AI Overviews are killing click-throughs to news sites.
Big Tech
The Register reports:
‘Impossible hill to climb’: US clouds crush European competition on their home turf
Publishers cry foul over W3C crusade to rid web of third-party cookies
Ars Technica reports:
Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says
TechCrunch reports:
Zuckerberg signals Meta won’t open source all of its ‘superintelligence’ AI models
BTW, their current ones are in no way opensource.
Bikepacking shares:
Terror
The Guardian reports:
Far-right extremists using games platforms to radicalise teenagers, report warns
Cybersecurity/Privacy
TechPolicy asks:
Is There Any Way Forward for Privacy Legislation in the United States?
BleepingComputer reports:
Post SMTP plugin flaw exposes 200K WordPress sites to hijacking attacks
DarkReading shows us:
How to Spot Malicious AI Agents Before They Strike
ChatGPT, GenAI Tools Open to ‘Man in the Prompt’ Browser Attack
Tuta reports:
Switzerland plans surveillance worse than U.S.
BitDefender reports:
French submarine secrets surface after cyber attack
Platformer reports:
Trust and safety workers on why they’re not speaking out
And here’s the previous post he referenced.
404 Media reports:
Tea App Turns Off DMs After Exposing Messages About Abortions, Cheating
FYI, Platformer and 404 Media are on Ghost and thus part of the Open Media Network.
RSS
The wonderful Citation Needed reports:
Curate your own newspaper with RSS
Fediverse
Connected Places has:
For Better has:
Mastodon Defence Command: The Scam Wave
Fedify announces:
Implementing custom collection dispatchers
QCB asks:
So Your Black Ass Still Wants to Get on Mastodon
ActivityPub for WordPress announces:
Slightly Federated Social Media
Connected Places has:
Blacksky has:
Infrastructure for Interdependence: Building technology in service of collective power
Blacksky is what Bluesky would be if it wasn’t created and run by tech bros.
404 Media reports:
This Company Wants to Bring End-to-End Encrypted Messages to Bluesky’s AT Protocol
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#ActivityPub #AI #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #Nextcloud #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #TechnoAnarchism #TechnoFeudalism #WordPress
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Destroying Autocracy – May 22, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item(s)
Hamish Campbell writes:
We need to keep highlighting an old but still urgent tension: the intersection of technology and social change. In this too often unspoken divide, one side leans heavily on practical, technical problem-solving. They want working code, functioning systems, and tangible results, not abstract debates. To them, critiques about capitalism shaping code sound like distractions from the “real work.”
The other side insists that technical problems are social problems. They argue that all code is written by people, shaped by culture, power, and history. Ignoring the social dynamics behind technology guarantees we repeat the same failures.
The Open Media Network isn’t just about media, it’s about building the social soil
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, TechnoFeudalism, and other douchebaggery
The European Council of the European Union reports:
Wired reports:
/e/OS Is Better Than Android. You Should Try It
You really should. I love it on my Fairphone.
Tuta shows us:
Best private Google alternatives: The ultimate list to De-Google your life in 2025.
Bert Hubert shares:
What we in the open world are messing up in trying to compete with big tech
Lionel Dricot has a:
The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:
CDT Advocates for Counter-Drone Authorities that Protect Civil Liberties
EuroNews reports:
EU to provide €5.5 million in emergency funds to help keep Radio Free Europe afloat
BleepingComputer reports:
European Union sanctions Stark Industries for enabling cyberattacks
US indicts leader of Qakbot botnet linked to ransomware attacks
TechCrunch reports:
Fortnite returns to the US App Store after a five-year gap
Signal says:
By Default, Signal Doesn’t Recall
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Micah Flee reports:
DDoSecrets publishes 410 GB of heap dumps, hacked from TeleMessage’s archive server
TeleMessage customers include DC Police, Andreessen Horowitz, JP Morgan, and hundreds more
Tech Policy reports:
Proposed Moratorium on US State AI Laws is Short-Sighted and Ill-Conceived
Pariah States
EuroNews reports:
Poland’s Tusk says Russian hackers attacked party websites ahead of presidential election
The Register reports:
Russia’s Fancy Bear swipes a paw at logistics, transport orgs’ email servers
The Kyiv Independent reports:
UK accuses Russian GRU of carrying out cyberattacks targeting logistics, technology organizations
BleepingComputer reports:
Russian hackers breach orgs to track aid routes to Ukraine
Chinese hackers breach US local governments using Cityworks zero-day
DarkReading reports:
Pandas Galore: Chinese Hackers Boost Attacks in Latin America
AP reports:
Microsoft says it provided AI to Israeli military for war but denies use to harm people in Gaza
Big Media
404 Media reports:
Viral AI-Generated Summer Guide Printed by Chicago Sun-Times Was Made by Magazine Giant Hearst
Calmatters reports:
Google follows Newsom in reducing support for California local news
Big Tech
Bloomberg reports:
Google Decided Against Offering Publishers Options in AI Search
MIT Technology Review reports:
By putting AI into everything, Google wants to make it invisible
The Guardian asks:
Can the term ‘cloud fascism’ help us understand – and resist – the hard right?
It can’t hurt, but if you want to take action that will resist it, read our Manifesto via the link in the navigation.
Runbox reports:
Outlook stores email in Microsoft Cloud – what you need to know
TechCrunch reports:
Judge pressures Apple to approve Fortnite or return to court
Grok says it’s ‘skeptical’ about Holocaust death toll, then blames ‘programming error’
404 Media reports:
‘Configuration Issue’ Allows Civitai Users to AI Generate Nonconsensual Porn Videos
Ars Technica reports:
Meta hypes AI friends as social media’s future, but users want real connections
Renée DiResta has:
We’re all trying to find the guy who did this
The Register reports:
‘Close to impossible’ for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers
Discouraging, but you can always do something locally.
Terror
404 Media reports:
Student Makes Tool That Identifies ‘Radicals’ on Reddit, Deploys AI Bots to Engage With Them
Cybersecurity/Privacy
404 Media reports:
Telegram Gave Authorities Data on More than 20,000 Users
Reuters reports:
So-called newspaper, The Washington Post reports:
Police secretly monitored New Orleans with facial recognition cameras
The Register reports:
CISA has a new No. 2 … but still no official top dog
On a more encouraging note, It reports:
FBI, Microsoft, international cops bust Lumma infostealer service
The Internet Society reports:
Encryption Under Threat: The UK’s Backdoor Mandate and Its Impact on Online Safety
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
Decentralisation as a shifting mental framework
Ben Wermuller says:
Let’s fund the open social web
IFTAS examines:
A New Social announces:
Ghost has:
Magic Pages has:
TechCrunch reports:
Open social web browser Surf makes it easier for anyone to build custom feeds
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
The Fediverse Report has:
Leaflet Lab announces:
We’re making a social publishing platform built on Bluesky
Kind of like Ghost with ActivityPub.
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#117 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProtocol #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Ghost #Mastodon #StopChina #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine
-
Destroying Autocracy – 27 February 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting democracy. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item
Nextcloud announces:
More and more of our digital lives are controlled by a handful of big tech firms and their CEOs – but there is a better way. A way that puts control back in your hands, fosters collaboration, and protects your digital freedom. And today, that is more important than ever.
With Nextcloud Hub 10, we double down on the vision that started it all: an integrated yet modular digital workspace, built for freedom, security, and teamwork. Instead of juggling multiple disconnected apps, Nextcloud Hub provides a unified platform – easier to manage, scale, and secure – while still offering deep customization. Choose from our core applications, extend them with 400+ integration-ready apps, and bring in the services you need.
Because the future isn’t about walled gardens – it’s about open collaboration. Whether you’re running Nextcloud at home, in a business, government, or local sports club, you stay in control. Our federation features connect Nextcloud servers worldwide, bringing millions together in a truly decentralized network.
Nextcloud Hub 10 – your unified, modular digital workspace
As mentioned in the Techno Anarchist Manifesto, using Nextcloud instead of Google, Microsoft, or Apple is a great way to fight Techno Feudalism.
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery
404 Media reports:
All 50 States Have Now Introduced Right to Repair Legislation
Ars Technica reports:
Judge: US gov’t violated privacy law by disclosing personal data to DOGE
BleepingComputer reports:
OpenAI bans ChatGPT accounts used by North Korean hackers
Tech Policy reports:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
Anti-Surveillance Mapmaker Refuses Flock Safety’s Cease and Desist Demand
TechCrunch reports:Cellebrite suspends Serbia as customer after claims police used firm’s tech to plant spyware
The Internet Review has:
Framework Brings Real Excitement Back to Personal Computers
They are a recommendation of mine in The Techno Anarchist Manifesto aka Let’s fuck up Techno Feudalism
The Register reports:
Signal will withdraw from Sweden if encryption-busting laws take effect
Microsoft names alleged credential-snatching ‘Azure Abuse Enterprise’ operators
Joan Westenberg shares:
How I’m Building a Trump-Proof Tech Stack Without Big Tech
For a more hardcore version, see the Techno Anarchist Manifesto above.
The Next Web reports:
DataSnipper CEO: Europe doesn’t have to follow the Silicon Valley playbook
404 Media shares:
Neutral
Open_Future published:
“Digital Public Infrastructure” at a Turning Point
Tech Policy shares:
Beyond Digital Rights: Towards a Fair Information Ecosystem?
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Bert Hubert says:
It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds
He’s right.
The Register reports:
Trump administration threatens tariffs for any nation that dares to tax Big Tech
Krebs on Security reports:Trump 2.0 Brings Cuts to Cyber, Consumer Protections
Pariah States
Krebs on Security reports:
Notorious Malware, Spam Host “Prospero” Moves to Kaspersky Lab
This should surprise no one.
BleepingComputer reports:
North Korean hackers linked to $1.5 billion ByBit crypto heist
Belgium probes if Chinese hackers breached its intelligence service
The Register reports:
China’s Silver Fox spoofs medical imaging apps to hijack patients’ computers
Xi know what you did last summer: China was all up in Republicans’ email, says bookVillain on Villain action here.
Big Media
The Guardian reports:
Ex-Washington Post editor Marty Baron rebukes Bezos: ‘betrayal of free expression’
Big Tech
The Electronic Frontier Foundation says:
Stop Censoring Abortion: Help EFF and Repro Uncensored end digital suppression
404 Media reports:
Instagram ‘Error’ Turned Reels Into Neverending Scroll of Murder, Gore, and Violence
Cybersecurity/Privacy
The Verge reports:
Google is replacing Gmail’s SMS authentication with QR codes
The Register reports:
How nice that state-of-the-art LLMs reveal their reasoning … for miscreants to exploit
Bleeping Computer reports:
New Auto-Color Linux backdoor targets North American govts, universities
GitVenom attacks abuse hundreds of GitHub repos to steal crypto
Microsoft names cybercriminals behind AI deepfake network
404 Media reports:
AT&T Hacker Tried to Sell Stolen Data to Foreign Government
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
TechCrunch reports:
Tumblr backs Tapestry, a timeline app for the open social web
I think apps like this and Surf are going to gain more traction than platform apps and clients in the long run.
Beej’s Bit Bucket takes a look at:
NodeBB is fully federated:
NodeBB v4.0.0 — Federate good times, come on!
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
Bluesky info has:
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
- Or follow Battalion on Bluesky.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#105 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProtocol #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #Mastodon #StopChina #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine
-
Destroying Autocracy – May 08, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item(s)
Hamish Campbell writes:
The world we live in is shaped, created by 40 years of entrenched pushing of #neoliberalism and #postmodernism, both of which have systematically dismantled radical change and challenge paths that used to exist.
To reclaim our path, we now need to reject the illusions of “common sense” fed to us by the #deathcult and reboot our social view from a place of clarity.
This is where the #hashtags come into use, acting as conceptual tools for navigating, understanding, and breaking free from the mess we’re in.
Decoding the Hashtags: A Roadmap for Social Change
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, TechnoFeudalism, and other douchebaggery
The Christian Science Monitor reports on:
Origins of Ukraine’s drone creativity
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Book on Soviet dissidents wins Pulitzer Prize
DarkReading reports:
Countries Begin NATO’s Locked Shields Cyber-Defense Exercise
Euronews reports:
‘We are less protected’ due to AI, says Cambridge Analytica whistleblower on protecting our data
Libre Office announces:
Germany committing to ODF and open document standards
Benjamin Hollon envisions:
The Guardian reports:
OpenAI reverses course and says non-profit arm will retain control of firm
TechCrunch reports:
FTC bans hidden fees for live events and short-term rentals, effective May 12
US DoJ wants Google to sell two of its ad products
MacRumors reports:
Apple Faces Developer Lawsuit After Defying App Store Injunction
404 Media reports:
GlobalX, Airline for Trump’s Deportations, Hacked
Tuta announces:
Bert Hubert has a European:
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Gizmodo reports:
With Its Destruction of Government Data Silos, DOGE Is Building a ‘Surveillance Weapon’
The Register reports:
India ready to greenlight Starlink – as long as it lets New Delhi censor, snoop
Fascist capitalism at its finest.
Signal chat app clone used by Signalgate’s Waltz was apparently an insecure mess
Unicorn Riot reports:
Pariah States
Micah Flee shares:
The Register reports:
Super spyware maker NSO must pay Meta $168M in WhatsApp court battle
From Russia with doubt: Go library’s Kremlin ties stoke fear
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Poland faces ‘unprecedented’ Russian interference ahead of presidential election, minister says
The Guardian reports:
Pro-Russian hackers claim to have targeted several UK websites
DarkReading reports:
‘Lemon Sandstorm’ Underscores Risks to Middle East Infrastructure
Big Media
The World Association of News Publisher reports:
Media outlets worldwide join call for AI companies to help protect news integrity
Yeah, right.
Big Tech
The Register reports:
Infosec guru Schneier worries corp AI will manipulate us
Futurism reports:
Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads
Cory Doctorow has:
Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again) (07 May 2025)
People wonder why I’m a misanthrope.
Tech Crunch reports:
NSO Group must pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for spyware campaign
Forbes reports:
200 Million X User Records Released — 2.8 Billion Twitter IDs Leaked
If you are on shitter at this point, you get what you deserve.
Terror
Tech Policy reports:
From Incels to Mercenaries: When Online Hate Becomes Real-World Violence
Cybersecurity/Privacy
404 Media reports:
The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked
Senator Demands Investigation into Trump Admin Signal Clone After 404 Media Investigation
The Register reports:
Altman’s eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America
RSA Conf wrap: AI and China on everything, everywhere, all at once
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has:
BleepingComputer reports:
Police takes down six DDoS-for-hire services, arrests admins
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
Tim Bray looks at:
Mastodon has:
Coxy has:
Reclaiming the web: Mastodon and the decentralised social movement
Ghost has:
NodeBB asks:
What would cross-posting between instances look like in ActivityPub?
Peertube has:
AlternativeTo reports:
Kagi adds PeerTube video search results, enhanced Assistant UI, and translation upgrades
The Social Web Foundation is:
Reflecting on Our First Year: The Social Web Foundation’s 2024 Annual Report
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#115 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProtocol #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #deathcult #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #hashtags #Mastodon #neoliberalism #NodeBB #Peertube #postmodernism #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine
-
Destroying Autocracy – May 08, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item(s)
Hamish Campbell writes:
The world we live in is shaped, created by 40 years of entrenched pushing of #neoliberalism and #postmodernism, both of which have systematically dismantled radical change and challenge paths that used to exist.
To reclaim our path, we now need to reject the illusions of “common sense” fed to us by the #deathcult and reboot our social view from a place of clarity.
This is where the #hashtags come into use, acting as conceptual tools for navigating, understanding, and breaking free from the mess we’re in.
Decoding the Hashtags: A Roadmap for Social Change
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, TechnoFeudalism, and other douchebaggery
The Christian Science Monitor reports on:
Origins of Ukraine’s drone creativity
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Book on Soviet dissidents wins Pulitzer Prize
DarkReading reports:
Countries Begin NATO’s Locked Shields Cyber-Defense Exercise
Euronews reports:
‘We are less protected’ due to AI, says Cambridge Analytica whistleblower on protecting our data
Libre Office announces:
Germany committing to ODF and open document standards
Benjamin Hollon envisions:
The Guardian reports:
OpenAI reverses course and says non-profit arm will retain control of firm
TechCrunch reports:
FTC bans hidden fees for live events and short-term rentals, effective May 12
US DoJ wants Google to sell two of its ad products
MacRumors reports:
Apple Faces Developer Lawsuit After Defying App Store Injunction
404 Media reports:
GlobalX, Airline for Trump’s Deportations, Hacked
Tuta announces:
Bert Hubert has a European:
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Gizmodo reports:
With Its Destruction of Government Data Silos, DOGE Is Building a ‘Surveillance Weapon’
The Register reports:
India ready to greenlight Starlink – as long as it lets New Delhi censor, snoop
Fascist capitalism at its finest.
Signal chat app clone used by Signalgate’s Waltz was apparently an insecure mess
Unicorn Riot reports:
Pariah States
Micah Flee shares:
The Register reports:
Super spyware maker NSO must pay Meta $168M in WhatsApp court battle
From Russia with doubt: Go library’s Kremlin ties stoke fear
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Poland faces ‘unprecedented’ Russian interference ahead of presidential election, minister says
The Guardian reports:
Pro-Russian hackers claim to have targeted several UK websites
DarkReading reports:
‘Lemon Sandstorm’ Underscores Risks to Middle East Infrastructure
Big Media
The World Association of News Publisher reports:
Media outlets worldwide join call for AI companies to help protect news integrity
Yeah, right.
Big Tech
The Register reports:
Infosec guru Schneier worries corp AI will manipulate us
Futurism reports:
Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads
Cory Doctorow has:
Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again) (07 May 2025)
People wonder why I’m a misanthrope.
Tech Crunch reports:
NSO Group must pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for spyware campaign
Forbes reports:
200 Million X User Records Released — 2.8 Billion Twitter IDs Leaked
If you are on shitter at this point, you get what you deserve.
Terror
Tech Policy reports:
From Incels to Mercenaries: When Online Hate Becomes Real-World Violence
Cybersecurity/Privacy
404 Media reports:
The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked
Senator Demands Investigation into Trump Admin Signal Clone After 404 Media Investigation
The Register reports:
Altman’s eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America
RSA Conf wrap: AI and China on everything, everywhere, all at once
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has:
BleepingComputer reports:
Police takes down six DDoS-for-hire services, arrests admins
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
Tim Bray looks at:
Mastodon has:
Coxy has:
Reclaiming the web: Mastodon and the decentralised social movement
Ghost has:
NodeBB asks:
What would cross-posting between instances look like in ActivityPub?
Peertube has:
AlternativeTo reports:
Kagi adds PeerTube video search results, enhanced Assistant UI, and translation upgrades
The Social Web Foundation is:
Reflecting on Our First Year: The Social Web Foundation’s 2024 Annual Report
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#115 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProtocol #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #deathcult #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #hashtags #Mastodon #neoliberalism #NodeBB #Peertube #postmodernism #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine
-
Destroying Autocracy – May 08, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item(s)
Hamish Campbell writes:
The world we live in is shaped, created by 40 years of entrenched pushing of #neoliberalism and #postmodernism, both of which have systematically dismantled radical change and challenge paths that used to exist.
To reclaim our path, we now need to reject the illusions of “common sense” fed to us by the #deathcult and reboot our social view from a place of clarity.
This is where the #hashtags come into use, acting as conceptual tools for navigating, understanding, and breaking free from the mess we’re in.
Decoding the Hashtags: A Roadmap for Social Change
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, TechnoFeudalism, and other douchebaggery
The Christian Science Monitor reports on:
Origins of Ukraine’s drone creativity
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Book on Soviet dissidents wins Pulitzer Prize
DarkReading reports:
Countries Begin NATO’s Locked Shields Cyber-Defense Exercise
Euronews reports:
‘We are less protected’ due to AI, says Cambridge Analytica whistleblower on protecting our data
Libre Office announces:
Germany committing to ODF and open document standards
Benjamin Hollon envisions:
The Guardian reports:
OpenAI reverses course and says non-profit arm will retain control of firm
TechCrunch reports:
FTC bans hidden fees for live events and short-term rentals, effective May 12
US DoJ wants Google to sell two of its ad products
MacRumors reports:
Apple Faces Developer Lawsuit After Defying App Store Injunction
404 Media reports:
GlobalX, Airline for Trump’s Deportations, Hacked
Tuta announces:
Bert Hubert has a European:
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Gizmodo reports:
With Its Destruction of Government Data Silos, DOGE Is Building a ‘Surveillance Weapon’
The Register reports:
India ready to greenlight Starlink – as long as it lets New Delhi censor, snoop
Fascist capitalism at its finest.
Signal chat app clone used by Signalgate’s Waltz was apparently an insecure mess
Unicorn Riot reports:
Pariah States
Micah Flee shares:
The Register reports:
Super spyware maker NSO must pay Meta $168M in WhatsApp court battle
From Russia with doubt: Go library’s Kremlin ties stoke fear
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Poland faces ‘unprecedented’ Russian interference ahead of presidential election, minister says
The Guardian reports:
Pro-Russian hackers claim to have targeted several UK websites
DarkReading reports:
‘Lemon Sandstorm’ Underscores Risks to Middle East Infrastructure
Big Media
The World Association of News Publisher reports:
Media outlets worldwide join call for AI companies to help protect news integrity
Yeah, right.
Big Tech
The Register reports:
Infosec guru Schneier worries corp AI will manipulate us
Futurism reports:
Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads
Cory Doctorow has:
Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again) (07 May 2025)
People wonder why I’m a misanthrope.
Tech Crunch reports:
NSO Group must pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for spyware campaign
Forbes reports:
200 Million X User Records Released — 2.8 Billion Twitter IDs Leaked
If you are on shitter at this point, you get what you deserve.
Terror
Tech Policy reports:
From Incels to Mercenaries: When Online Hate Becomes Real-World Violence
Cybersecurity/Privacy
404 Media reports:
The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked
Senator Demands Investigation into Trump Admin Signal Clone After 404 Media Investigation
The Register reports:
Altman’s eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America
RSA Conf wrap: AI and China on everything, everywhere, all at once
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has:
BleepingComputer reports:
Police takes down six DDoS-for-hire services, arrests admins
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
Tim Bray looks at:
Mastodon has:
Coxy has:
Reclaiming the web: Mastodon and the decentralised social movement
Ghost has:
NodeBB asks:
What would cross-posting between instances look like in ActivityPub?
Peertube has:
AlternativeTo reports:
Kagi adds PeerTube video search results, enhanced Assistant UI, and translation upgrades
The Social Web Foundation is:
Reflecting on Our First Year: The Social Web Foundation’s 2024 Annual Report
Bem Werdmuller shares:
TechCrunch reports:
Instagram Threads is getting video ads
Sigh.
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
The Fediverse Report has:
Bluesky has:
Finally some (small) progress on decentratiztion.
Arxiv features:
Self-moderation in the decentralized era: decoding blocking behavior on Bluesky
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#115 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProtocol #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #deathcult #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #hashtags #Mastodon #neoliberalism #NodeBB #Peertube #postmodernism #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #Threads
-
Destroying Autocracy – May 08, 2025
Welcome to this week’s “Destroying Autocracy”.
It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting it. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.
DA comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.
FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists. Fuck ’em.
Featured Item(s)
Hamish Campbell writes:
The world we live in is shaped, created by 40 years of entrenched pushing of #neoliberalism and #postmodernism, both of which have systematically dismantled radical change and challenge paths that used to exist.
To reclaim our path, we now need to reject the illusions of “common sense” fed to us by the #deathcult and reboot our social view from a place of clarity.
This is where the #hashtags come into use, acting as conceptual tools for navigating, understanding, and breaking free from the mess we’re in.
Decoding the Hashtags: A Roadmap for Social Change
We start and end with good news to make the middle bearable.
The response to Russia’s War Crimes, TechnoFeudalism, and other douchebaggery
The Christian Science Monitor reports on:
Origins of Ukraine’s drone creativity
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Book on Soviet dissidents wins Pulitzer Prize
DarkReading reports:
Countries Begin NATO’s Locked Shields Cyber-Defense Exercise
Euronews reports:
‘We are less protected’ due to AI, says Cambridge Analytica whistleblower on protecting our data
Libre Office announces:
Germany committing to ODF and open document standards
Benjamin Hollon envisions:
The Guardian reports:
OpenAI reverses course and says non-profit arm will retain control of firm
TechCrunch reports:
FTC bans hidden fees for live events and short-term rentals, effective May 12
US DoJ wants Google to sell two of its ad products
MacRumors reports:
Apple Faces Developer Lawsuit After Defying App Store Injunction
404 Media reports:
GlobalX, Airline for Trump’s Deportations, Hacked
Tuta announces:
Bert Hubert has a European:
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Gizmodo reports:
With Its Destruction of Government Data Silos, DOGE Is Building a ‘Surveillance Weapon’
The Register reports:
India ready to greenlight Starlink – as long as it lets New Delhi censor, snoop
Fascist capitalism at its finest.
Signal chat app clone used by Signalgate’s Waltz was apparently an insecure mess
Unicorn Riot reports:
Pariah States
Micah Flee shares:
The Register reports:
Super spyware maker NSO must pay Meta $168M in WhatsApp court battle
From Russia with doubt: Go library’s Kremlin ties stoke fear
The Kyiv Independent reports:
Poland faces ‘unprecedented’ Russian interference ahead of presidential election, minister says
The Guardian reports:
Pro-Russian hackers claim to have targeted several UK websites
DarkReading reports:
‘Lemon Sandstorm’ Underscores Risks to Middle East Infrastructure
Big Media
The World Association of News Publisher reports:
Media outlets worldwide join call for AI companies to help protect news integrity
Yeah, right.
Platformer shares:
Big Tech
The Register reports:
Infosec guru Schneier worries corp AI will manipulate us
Futurism reports:
Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads
404 Media reports:
Well, Well, Well: Meta to Add Facial Recognition To Glasses After All
Cory Doctorow has:
Mark Zuckerberg announces mind-control ray (again) (07 May 2025)
People wonder why I’m a misanthrope.
Tech Crunch reports:
NSO Group must pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for spyware campaign
Forbes reports:
200 Million X User Records Released — 2.8 Billion Twitter IDs Leaked
If you are on shitter at this point, you get what you deserve.
Terror
Tech Policy reports:
From Incels to Mercenaries: When Online Hate Becomes Real-World Violence
Cybersecurity/Privacy
404 Media reports:
The Signal Clone the Trump Admin Uses Was Hacked
Senator Demands Investigation into Trump Admin Signal Clone After 404 Media Investigation
The Register reports:
Altman’s eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America
RSA Conf wrap: AI and China on everything, everywhere, all at once
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has:
BleepingComputer reports:
Police takes down six DDoS-for-hire services, arrests admins
Germany takes down eXch cryptocurrency exchange, seizes servers
Fediverse
The Fediverse Report has:
Tim Bray looks at:
Mastodon has:
Coxy has:
Reclaiming the web: Mastodon and the decentralised social movement
Ghost has:
NodeBB asks:
What would cross-posting between instances look like in ActivityPub?
Peertube has:
AlternativeTo reports:
Kagi adds PeerTube video search results, enhanced Assistant UI, and translation upgrades
The Social Web Foundation is:
Reflecting on Our First Year: The Social Web Foundation’s 2024 Annual Report
Bem Werdmuller shares:
Bonfire has:
Slow Software for a Burning World
TechCrunch reports:
Instagram Threads is getting video ads
Sigh.
Other Slightly Federated Social Media
The Fediverse Report has:
Bluesky has:
Finally some (small) progress on decentratiztion.
Arxiv features:
Self-moderation in the decentralized era: decoding blocking behavior on Bluesky
CTAs (aka show us some free love)
- That’s it for this week. Please share this edition of Destroying Autocracy.
- Follow me on the Fediverse. Or this site via the button in the footer. Or via RSS.
Keep fighting!
Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse#115 #ActivityPub #AI #ATProtocol #Autocracy #BigJournalism #BigTech #Bluesky #deathcult #Democracy #Fascism #Fediverse #hashtags #Mastodon #neoliberalism #NodeBB #Peertube #postmodernism #StopChina #StopIran #StopIsrael #StopRedAmerica #StopRussia #SupportUkraine #Threads
-
UPDATE: Gevonden! Dank @mfr ! https://www.tenderned.nl/aankondigingen/overzicht/408819 Vrienden, ik ben over een uur op radio 1 om het te hebben over dit stomme nieuws over de NS. Heeft iemand deze aanbesteding al gevonden op tenderned of elders? #durftevragen https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/02/10/ns-besteedt-ict-deels-uit-aan-amerikaanse-leverancier-a4919022?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=clipboard&utm_campaign=share&utm_term=share-modal&gift_token=4919022~1771309991~xaUY7O7bRbydGeZo43Zzfw~5N6e6iuu1vgN1oNhbHr9yp5lE_QEURlciN3MUjW3HcA
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So I didn't know, but Europe already has a backup of PubMed, the database of biomedical research publications. The US PubMed broke down over the weekend. And here is our alternative: https://europepmc.org/ #pubmed #pmc
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#duif op de AIVD website: https://www.aivd.nl/onderwerpen/ambtsbericht
-
Via via verneem ik dat de Sociale Verzekeringsbank, die ontkenden naar Azure te gaan migreren, nu hun Azure-migratie hebben stopgezet. Ik heb het dashboard geupdate, met daarbij ook wat nieuws over de (electriciteits)netbeheerders: #SVB https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/dashboard-amerikaanse-afhankelijkheden/
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Voor de droeftoeters die me vertelden dat dit niet waar is, hier livebeeld van https://werkenbijdesvb.nl/softwareontwikkeling/ #svb #azure "Bij de SVB gaan we over naar Microsoft Azure. Dat betekent dat we het fundament vernieuwen waarop AL onze applicaties draaien én waarop nieuwe software wordt ontwikkeld."
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Als je nieuws over spionage wilde begraven greep men ook in 1980 al naar een dag met een boel ander nieuws. https://repository.overheid.nl/frbr/sgd/19791980/0000172613/1/pdf/SGD_19791980_0006680.pdf #Khan #Urenco
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De #AIVD en #MIVD mogen met hun nog steeds wat nieuwe cyberwet meer en meer kabels tappen. In het nieuwe jaarverslag van toezichthouder #TIB lezen we dat al dat tappen nog steeds (te) weinig oplevert, terwijl de privacy-inbreuk al maar oploopt: https://www.tib-ivd.nl/actueel/nieuws/2026/04/14/jaarverslag-tib-2025
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Het hele fijne gesprek over het mogelijke Nationaal Agentschap Disruptieve Innovatie #NADI met BNR: https://www.bnr.nl/gemist?date=10-09-2025&time=13-12-10
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Rond 13:10 op BNR om te praten over #NADI: het voorgestelde Nationaal Agentschap Digitale Innovatie. Eerder schreef ik hierover: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/nederlands-agentschap-disruptieve-innovatie/
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Zal me een sessie worden zeg bij #ECP zo. Cloudgebruik en 'soevereiniteit'. Georganiseerd door: 'Microsoft'
https://ecp.nl/jaarfestival/ -
Ik ben zo op het #ECP congres in Den Haag, voornamelijk om met mensen te praten. Dus weet me te vinden als we iets te bespreken hebben!
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"Als je de #btw laat doen door Amerikanen graaf je je eigen Digitale Straat van Hormuz: het houdt op als Trump je niet aardig meer vindt"
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Een klassiek besluit van de regering: we gaan toch gewoon naar Amerika met de #btw! Mogelijk gemaakt door een berg analyses waarom dat best veilig zou zijn. Tot zover de droom dat dit kabinet werk zou maken van digitale soevereiniteit. Dat was sneller voorbij dan gedacht! https://berthub.eu/tkconv/document.html?nummer=2026D12169