Natalia Krapiva 👩🏻‍💻🕊

Senior Tech-Legal Counsel @accessnow, former @BrooklynDA, @hrcberkeley, @UNHumanRights, @ICTYnews, @ManhattanDA. Tech | Law | Spyware | Eastern Europe

[Natalia Krapiva 👩🏻‍💻🕊 @natynettle]

⚖️ My new op-ed for @just_security + @AtlanticCouncil about the opportunities & dangers of discovery in U.S. spyware litigation 🙌

Here is what lawyers, judges, activists, tech companies, researchers, funders & policymakers who work on #spyware need to know... 🧵 1/

[Natalia Krapiva 👩🏻‍💻🕊 @natynettle]

https://t.co/XliVJdR6m0

[Natalia Krapiva 👩🏻‍💻🕊 @natynettle]

Spoke to @wireditalia about the lack of justice for the victims of Paragon’s spyware 1 year after @WhatsApp notifications.

[WORLD LIBERTY CONGRESS @WLCongress]

Congratulations Bota! This huge victory is a powerful reminder that justice can prevail against intimidation, abuse of power, and transnational repression.

The World Liberty Congress stands with all those who refuse to be silenced by authoritarian regimes that seek to extend their reach beyond their borders. Every challenge to political persecution strengthens the global movement for freedom and democratic accountability.

#TransnationalRepression #HumanRights

[Meduza in English @meduza_en]

Russia's internet regulator is allegedly launching DDoS attacks on VPN services, going beyond its longstanding practice of blocking their IP addresses. One of Russia's largest tools for bypassing censorship has been nearly non-functional since late May. https://t.co/K3zrqlCC1I

[OC Media @OCMediaorg]

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has spent 15 minutes highlighting the changes Armenians returning from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries would notice upon arriving in Armenia, pointing to developments implemented under his government.

[Freedom House @freedomhouse]

Sergey Tikhanovski spoke at @OsloFF about his imprisonment in Belarus and the reality facing those who remain behind bars.

More than 800 political prisoners remain jailed in Belarus. Freedom House will continue to stand with Belarus’s democratic forces as we call for the release of all political prisoners and an end to the Lukashenka regime’s repression. Watch Tikhanovski’s remarks: https://t.co/2radXSCgQ7 #FreeThemAll

[The Anti-Corruption Foundation @ACF_int]

Right now, the MAX messenger (created by the Kremlin for censorship and user surveillance) has been removed from the App Store. This is great news.

We call on big tech not to cooperate with the Kremlin and not to assist them in carrying out censorship.

[Vas Panagiotopoulos @criticalvas]

According to the German civil liberties organisation @freiheitsrechte, journalist Trung Khoa Lê and the organisation have filed a complaint with authorities in 🇩🇪Berlin over an alleged attempt to infect the reporter's phone with Predator spyware in 2023.

https://t.co/jtUrGOqXXa

[Mullvad.net @mullvadnet]

So-called age verification for social media is spreading across the world, framed as an effort to create a safer internet for children. In reality, age verification lays the foundation for a fully controlled internet.

The age verification rush must be slowed down, and politicians need to recognize the consequences of different types of legislation and systems.

Age verification is the wrong approach to fix “the social media problem”
The big tech social media companies are bad. Their business model is bad; it is based on mass surveillance and manipulation, and they cooperate with governments in mapping entire populations. But age verification is fundamentally the wrong approach to preventing children from using big tech social media platforms. Introducing age verification is based on coercion; the state forces social media companies to verify their users’ identities. But the big tech social media platforms already know which of their users are children. Their business model depends on knowing this. They know how old users are, and they know exactly what type of person they are. As age verification is based on coercion, politicians could instead force platforms to stop doing the things politicians consider harmful to children, or force them to block children (again, they know who they are) from using their services. But instead, politicians seek to massively invade everyone’s privacy and undermine democratic rights on a global scale. In other words, the latter is the real objective – they do not want to protect children; they want to impose control.

Slippery slope of age verification
It is undeniable that age verification threatens freedom of expression, risks increasing mass surveillance, and is likely to lead to censorship. It will not only shrink the online world and reduce young people’s right to privacy (for example, if VPN services were to be restricted); but also risks becoming a significant step toward a controlled internet for everyone.

Most age verification is identity verification
Most countries are now considering introducing age verification systems, meaning that everyone would have to identify themselves either to the service/website they want to use or to a third party capable of linking them to their activity on that service or website. This is not age verification but identity verification, and the consequence is therefore that freedom of information is restricted (you can no longer visit regulated websites anonymously) and that you can no longer post anonymously on social media. This is a major problem in countries like the UK and Germany where the police conduct raids on people’s homes for posting content on social media that the authorities dislike. Or in the United States, where authorities are trying to pressure tech companies into revealing the identities behind accounts protesting ICE. Social media identity verification removes important tools for activists in countries where criticizing those in power is dangerous.

Restrictions on app store or operating system level
Some countries are looking to impose identity verification at the app store level or even within the operating system itself. This is an exciting experiment, since this is possible to circumvent using open-source operating systems. Some countries are already looking to include open-source systems. Since open-source systems cannot be controlled, politicians would ultimately need to ban devices that are not controlled by the state. The end point: telescreens like those in Orwell’s 1984, devices that both monitor you and broadcast only the information approved by the state.

The Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) alternative and the EU
The EU has presented its own age verification app as “completely anonymous”. The idea is to use Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography to break the link between the age credential issuer (EU governments) and the regulated services/sites. Currently, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is currently designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model. Even if fully developed ZKP technology could be implemented in the future, it would remain an optional extra feature that countries may choose to disable and that the EU could remove at any time.

Read more on our site.
https://t.co/wTVKHMS1zg

[Natalia Krapiva 👩🏻‍💻🕊 @natynettle]

@KareemRifai Also suicide rates

[Mullvad.net @mullvadnet]

The EU age verification app is presented as “completely anonymous”. But the risk is that member states (the countries are supposed to create their own versions of the open-source EU app) use it to introduce identity verification that makes it impossible to post anonymously on social media.

The idea behind “completely anonymous” is to use Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography to break the link between the age credential issuer (EU governments) and the regulated services/sites. Currently, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model. Even if fully developed ZKP technology could be implemented in the future, it would remain an optional extra feature that countries may choose to disable and that the EU could remove at any time.

This means that the EU could decide at any time that ZKP may no longer be used, and in one stroke the app would fall back to its default mode, meaning that every post on social media carries an ID tag. By that point, an infrastructure will already have been rolled out; people will have gotten used to it, and it will be harder to roll it back.

More details on https://t.co/wTVKHMS1zg

[Alexandra Prokopenko @amenka]

Putin's instructions following the April 23 government meeting draw a line in the bureaucratic conflict over internet shutdowns. The government and the FSB have been jointly tasked with maintaining the operation of critical services — healthcare, the Gosuslugi portal, payment systems — "during periods of restricted internet functioning." The phrasing is telling: not "in the event of an emergency," but "during a period" — shutdowns are codified as a normal operating condition, not an exception. The FSB's authority to impose them goes unchallenged anywhere in the text.
Putin did not resolve the conflict — he institutionalized it. Bortnikov (FSB) and Mishustin (Prime Minister) are named jointly responsible, which leaves the FSB in a stronger position while giving the government a formal instrument to push back whenever shutdowns cause excessive collateral damage.

[John O’Brennan @JohnOBrennan2]

Ireland cannot pretend to operate a “values based” foreign policy if we continue to protect a Russian oligarch owned company which sends its products to Russia to slaughter Ukrainian civilians.

Only 0.6% of the alumina goes to other EU states, according to Irish Times.

[Montrey @Montrey82631182]

29.04.2014: In Luhansk, pro-Russian, masked men – including members of the Russian FSB and the GRU – storm public buildings by force. Their aim is to overthrow the Ukrainian government.

[IllimarLepikvonWirén @iLepikVonWiren]

A russian influence campaign hijacked hundreds of Bluesky accounts, many belonging to influential Americans, to spread propaganda, researchers said, in a striking disinformation tactic that weaponized authentic identities rather than relying on fake accounts.

https://t.co/BWjUunSky3

[Hannah Neumann @HNeumannMEP]

Transnational Repression is when states reach across border to silence dissent. This can take many forms and might look like a series of unrelated incidents until you find the common thread.

The @Europarl_EN votes on my report to #StopTransnationalRepression on 16 June!

[bot blocker | блокировщик ботов @antibot4navalny]

🧵 Introducing a brand new bot / troll network targeting Armenians abroad (and at home?)

Critical to Pashinyan, the network endorses his key opponents and pro-Russia parties, giving no clear preference to either of them.

Now you can see their replies highlighted in the wild.

[Meduza in English @meduza_en]

Apple removed 1,213 apps from the App Store in 2025 at the request of the Russian government.
https://t.co/2zV0jHmFln

[Reuters @Reuters]

Russia pounded Kyiv and surrounding areas with hundreds of drones and missiles, including the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, in one of the heaviest bombardments of the city since the start of the war https://t.co/8RMwjvfXYA