Nick Fealey

[Reclaim The Net @ReclaimTheNetHQ]

Texas Just Leaked 3 Million Driver’s Licenses and Passports

The same government now demanding digital ID to enter websites just proved it can’t guard the identity documents it already holds.

https://t.co/PS1fAgPWur

[Derek Ross @derekmross]

The UK already requires age verification to access adult sites via the Online Safety Act. When those rules hit, VPN signups surged 1,800%, 5M extra ID checks/day, and a vendor leak exposed 70,000 @discord users' photo IDs. Now the UK is expanding this to all social media. See the trajectory? Yikes.

[Naomi Brockwell priv/acc @naomibrockwell]

Everything on the internet will require an ID check soon.
And the government will monitor everything you do, pretending they don't need a warrant because you "voluntarily" gave your data and identity information away.

[Andy Boenau @Boenau]

19% of people aged 20-24 don’t have a driver’s license.
30-40% of people over 85 don’t have a driver’s license.

Planning and designing places that force everyone to be dependent on cars is cruel.

🖼️ Everywhere, USA

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

‼️🚨 BREAKING: Sony PlayStation's age-verification partner Yoti is reporting GrapheneOS users to authorities for using GrapheneOS, due to "past security concerns."

[Jonathan Berk @berkie1]

Montreal, Edmonton, Cambridge, Portland, Missoula, Buffalo, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin, Kansas City, Vancouver and Toronto are just some of the hundreds of North American cities that have eliminated arbitrary, minimum parking requirements.

[Jonathan Berk @berkie1]

Many Massachusetts neighborhoods would be illegal to build today.

This tree-lined street in Swampscott would require 20,000sf lots to build a home today. 7 of the 12 homes sit on lots under 8,500sf & none exceed 12,000sf.

That’s how disconnected zoning has become from reality.

[Reclaim The Net @ReclaimTheNetHQ]

California backtracked and exempted Linux from its age-tracking mandate in AB 1856.

But it then expanded the surveillance to your web browser and the entire open web.

Your age bracket (set once at OS setup) now follows you from site to site.

The Linux "win" is a distraction.

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Discord to push for mandatory age verification for all users.

If successful, people may have to upload a government-issued ID, complete a facial scan, and pass identity checks before they can create or access an account.

Discord previously suffered a data breach that reportedly exposed tens of thousands of uploaded ID documents.

[Together @Togetherdec]

DIGITAL ID: "Mexico passed law requiring all 127 million cell phone users to register their SIM to a biometric government ID by June 30"

Those supporting "social media bans" here should be aware they are normalising ID verification to get online & even use a phone

Protect internet freedom #together

[Tuta @TutaPrivacy]

Don’t call it age verification. Call it centralised personal data collection. And understand that it serves surveillance, not safety for children.

[Mark R. Brown, AICP, CNU @CompletedStreet]

The Federal government declared roadway fatalities a national emergency and provided hundreds of millions in grants, yet other countries seem to do safe streets far better.

[PeterSweden @PeterSweden7]

If your country requires digital ID verification to use social media, then you don't live in a free country anymore.

If your country want to regulate or ban VPNs, you don't live in a free country anymore.

[Zet Lorento @ZetLorento]

This week:

🇺🇸 Utah’s anti VPN law took effect

🔵 Bluesky began age verification

🤖 Chrome started auto downloading AI models without explicit consent

🇪🇺 The EU openly discussed restricting/banning VPNs

Do you see the direction this is going? More control.

More information:

[Reclaim The Net @ReclaimTheNetHQ]

The FCC wants to require ID verification for every phone activation in America, including prepaid phones.

Those are the phones journalists, abuse survivors, and whistleblowers depend on to stay anonymous. The excuse is robocalls.

The result is a national identity check on one of the last semi-anonymous communication tools we have.

https://t.co/7ILbco1qpd

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

Stop Killing Games has joined a big coalition pushing back against new age verification laws that claim to be for our safety.

Big companies can afford the costly ID checks and rules, while small teams, fan fixes for private game servers, and community projects usually cannot.

These are exactly what keep old games alive after the makers stop supporting them. One example is the free browser game Urban Dead, which ran for nearly 20 years until its solo developer shut it down in 2025 because UK rules made it too hard to continue.

Stop Killing Games signed an open letter with groups like Mozilla and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The letter says that while protecting kids online matters, these wide age checks create new gatekeepers, collect private data, and shrink the open web.

Some of that the rules could make private servers and even some Linux systems illegal in places like California.

Games we own should stay playable

[HOSTIS @hostis_black]

You build a VPN tunnel so your location is nobody's business. As of yesterday in Utah, your location is the platform's business by law, regardless of the tunnel.

The bill is Senate Bill 73. Governor Cox signed it on March 19. It took effect May 6.

The law effectively bans the VPN by making the website liable for the age of every user physically located in Utah, regardless of the tunnel they routed through, and then forbids the website from explaining how a VPN works.

This is liability for what the platform cannot see. A speech ban on naming a legal tool.

The only compliant move is to ID every visitor on Earth, in case one of them happens to be in Provo. Or block every known VPN IP address and pray the list is complete.

NordVPN says comprehensive blocking of VPN traffic is technically impossible. The EFF says no platform can win this whack-a-mole. Utah's legislature does not care, because compliance was never the point.

The point was making encrypted tunnels expensive to deploy and illegal to discuss. The point was driving commercial VPN providers out of the American market until the only people left with private connections are the ones who can stand up their own WireGuard server.

Children is the cover, of course. A legislature punished platforms for what they cannot detect, gagged them from naming a tool that has been legal since the day it was invented, and stamped "child safety" on the file.

This is the first state. The UK House of Lords already voted 207 to 159 to ban VPNs for minors. France's digital affairs minister has named VPNs as her next target. The fence moves next session, next state, next chamber. Each version will be sold as safety. Each version will be a muzzle.

[Andy Boenau @Boenau]

Put speed tables in as fast as you can!

"the percentage of people driving 10 miles per hour or higher than the speed limit has dropped by 75%"

[Tuta @TutaPrivacy]

🚨 The UK says it wants to "protect children online"

Yet, forcing EVERYONE to verify their age won't stop harm - but put all of us under surveillance.

Today, we've signed an open letter together with @mullvadnet @torproject @mozilla & others to stop #AgeVerification in the UK 💪

Read the complete letter: https://t.co/jf3NVURtDH

[Framework @FrameworkPuter]

One week after opening pre-orders, these are still selling extremely fast. We're now into Batch 10, which is our last August batch. We're going to do everything we can to scale manufacturing capacity to build these faster too!