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selling_safety.pdf

Public Knowledge promotes freedom of expression, an open internet, and access to affordable communications tools and creative works. We work to shape policy.

Concerns about online safety expose a deeper problem about who controls the digital world children grow up in.

Guest post by Jonathan W. Y. Gray. How do researchers, journalists, and artists work with archived pages from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine? What kinds of tools, methods, and approaches do th...

selling_safety.pdf

Wisconsin’s S.B. 130 / A.B. 105 is a spectacularly bad idea. It’s an age-verification bill that effectively bans VPN access to certain websites for Wisconsinites and censors lawful speech. We wrote

Recent reporting by Nieman Lab describes how some major news organizations—including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reddit—are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Ar…

Vulnerabilities with high to critical severity ratings affecting popular Visual Studio Code (VSCode) extensions collectively downloaded more than 128 million times could be exploited to steal local files and execute code remotely.

Amazon has announced it has cancelled its previous plans to partner with Flock for its Community Requests feature. The announcement comes amid backlash for Amazon’s Search Party for Dogs feature that “alerts nearby participating outdoor Ring cameras to help look for your lost dog.” Amazon played an ad for it during the Super Bowl, prompting the widespread privacy concerns. Their announced Flock partnership wasn’t related to Search Party, however. The Community Requests feature that allows police to send out requests to Ring owners so they can voluntarily send videos to the police. Amazon says that the sharing is completely optional and Ring users are in full control over their data being shared: > You have complete control over whether to respond to a Community Request and what you share. Every Community Request is publicly posted and searchable for complete transparency and auditability. While it’s great that the sharing is optional for users, everyone that the camera is pointed at didn’t consent to be filmed and have footage of them sent to law enforcement. It’s worth noting that, while Ring supports _optional_ end-to-end encryption, non-encrypted data could be accessed by Ring itself and end up in the hands of law enforcement or attackers that manage to infiltrate Ring’s infrastructure. Ring state that they won’t give out user data unless required by law: > Ring does not disclose user information in response to government demands (i.e., legally valid and binding requests for information from law enforcement agencies such as search warrants, subpoenas and court orders) unless we're required to comply and it is properly served on us. Ring’s stated reason for cancelling the partnership has nothing to do with the privacy backlash, though. They claim the partnership “would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.” According to them, “no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.“ With massive security flaws found in Flock Safety cameras allowing attackers to completely take them over and massive abuses caused by the company, you have to wonder why Amazon even wanted to partner with such an incompetent operation. Despite announcing a cancellation, Ring still holds that the massive surveillance apparatus they’ve enabled is a good thing. > When a shooting occurred near Brown University in December 2025, every second mattered. The Providence Police Department turned to their community for help, putting out a Community Request. Within hours, 7 neighbors responded, sharing 168 videos that captured critical moments from the incident. One video identified a new key witness, helping lead police to identify the suspect's vehicle and solve the case. With a shooter at large, the community faced uncertainty about their safety. Neighbors who chose to share footage played a crucial role in neutralizing the threat and restoring safety to their community. Despite the cancelled partnership with Flock, Ring’s original Community Requests feature still exists via their partnership with Axon, a similar company to Flock that provides surveillance tech to police.

Incognito Mode or Private Browsing mode is a feature that every browser has, but what if that was a lie and your activity in private mode could still be tracked? In this video we break down the issues with private browsing mode and what you can do instead to get true privacy! #### Sources 0:02 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_browsing 1:00 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/ 1:09 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/04/15/google-confirms-secret-chrome-tracking-how-to-stop-it/ 1:55 https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/ 2:18 https://brave.com/glossary/bounce-tracking/ 2:32 https://www.privacyguides.org/en/browser-extensions/ 3:03 https://www.apple.com/safari/ 3:48 https://www.upwave.com/reality-household-device-sharing/ 3:59 https://www.firefox.com/en-US/features/private-browsing/ 4:42 https://www.privacyguides.org/en/about/donate/ 4:53 https://donate.magicgrants.org/privacyguides 5:53 https://brave.com 6:34 https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers/ 6:55 https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/ 7:14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_50cBtSjyQ

<p>EPIC has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and State Attorneys General urging them to quickly investigate and prevent Meta’s plan to add facial recognition and surveillance capabilities...

Andy Yen, founder & CEO of Proton, explains what it's like for a European company to take on Big Tech. From leaving CERN as a particle physicist to building one of the world's most trusted privacy companies. He breaks down VPN industry lies, how Apple a...

19 civil society organisations have called on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to formally investigate data protection breaches and accessibility issues arising as a result of the Home…

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Criticize the government online? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) might ask Google to cough up your name. By abusing an investigative tool called "administrative subpoenas," DHS has been

Flock contracts have quietly spread to cities across the country. But Flock ALPR (Automated License Plate Readers) erode civil liberties from the moment they're installed. While officials claim these

Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad offered a vision of our streets that should leave every person unsettled about the company’s goals for disintegrating our privacy in public.In the ad, disguised as a

Is je hond kwijt? Als het aan Amazon ligt, kun je je viervoeter straks vinden dankzij de slimme deurbel van je buren. ‘Dystopisch’, vinden velen de functie in de VS. Een campagne tijdens de Super Bowl...

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC), the country's data protection authority, has opened a formal investigation into X over the use of the platform's Grok artificial intelligence tool to generate non-consensual sexual images of real people, including children.

A hobby coding experiment reportedly exposed live camera feeds, microphones, and floor plans from thousands of robot vacuums worldwide.