Sheikh Crypto

Outta Mali. On a journey to explore new dimensions of life. BTC, Crypto, Africa

[Nick Almond @DrNickA]

I get rugged by this. It’s the only app that I trust. But she absolutely should. The spiralling embarrassment of being a U.K. citizen is palpable now and it will take legitimate technologies leaving us in the dark ages to demonstrate how regressive and foolish these policies are.

[Bloomberg @business]

Signal President Meredith Whittaker threatens again to pull the encrypted messaging app out of the UK

She tells @MishalHusain why Keir Starmer's approach to phone screening could usher in "mass surveillance" https://t.co/TKxYzfhu7O

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

He must swallow his pride and accept a deal worse than the pre-war status quo https://t.co/K1VgNQvPrz

[Bloomberg @business]

Kenya picks a Chinese firm for a $2.9 billion upgrade of its biggest airport https://t.co/9KiC6wVG8K

[Nixintel @nixintel]

I'm appalled but not surprised by the UK government's announcement today.

The measures they propose will amount to permanent, automated monitoring of UK citizens' phones without a warrant or any recourse or protection from state overreach.

Once implemented, these powers will be hard to unravel but easy to extend. Western democracies used to recoil from the way the USSR and DDR used to surveil their citizens but this is every bit as sinister.

Will there be technical ways to subvert it? Probably, but we shouldn't have to.

The bigger issue is that UK and European citizens clearly lack sufficient legal protections from the overreach of their own governments and the technocratic class who seem to increasingly regard internet freedom and digital privacy as a problem to be solved.

Local elections, jury trials, and now internet privacy are liberties that the government has tried to do away with because they are an administrative inconvenience for technocratic government.

I am encouraged by the ideas of @prestonjbyrne and his legislative proposals to improve and secure the basic rights of UK citizens. Give him a follow.

[Citizen TV Kenya @citizentvkenya]

Digital Addiction:

Robertta Bobbie: The problem I have with this is that you don’t realize that you are addicted to your phone. We don’t even call it addiction. It really affects you as a human being, especially when it comes to your social qualities. It is a big deal because you don’t notice until you are released to the world again. #CitizenDayBreak

[Signal @signalapp]

Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all.

https://t.co/VdWe9uhi8p

[BSCN @BSCNews]

Cypherpunk doubles down on Zcash after the crash

zcash:native crashed today, and the company built around it crashed with it. After a critical counterfeiting flaw surfaced in Zcash's shielded pool, the token sank more than 40% and dragged Nasdaq-listed treasury firm @cypherpunk down as much as 40% with it.

Cypherpunk's response: "Please stop the FUD." Cypherpunk is sticking to its target of owning 5% of all ZEC, pointing to quantum recoverability landing in weeks and formal verification by year end as proof Zcash is hardening, not breaking.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

BREAKING - A Swiss Tribunal recognises the legitimate right to peacefully oppose the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

One again: justice for Palestine starts at home. It only takes people caring and applying Intl Law. And persevering.

[Sky News @SkyNews]

"The fact the British government takes that position and then continues to lend support to an open genocide being waged by an indicted war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu tells you everything you need to know about this."

＠DropSiteNews co-founder ＠jeremyscahill on the Home Office decision to bar Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker from entering the UK.

🌍 https://t.co/rB90NphURH

[christine dawson @christineart]

@SangitaMyska @roller18202802 @Hamza_a96 Omar El Akkad prophesied such a turn: “One Day”!!

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Now that Gaza lies in ruins—shattered, like a beloved face after a long brutality—Israel moves with a terrible confidence to the next act: The act of leaving every soul there not merely wounded, but permanently disabled. Injured, sick, hungry, homeless, without work, without hope. This is not war’s collateral damage. This is design.

As my friend Gideon Levy writes—and he knows, he knows—this is the prelude to expulsion. Think of it: a society without teachers, without doctors, without social workers, without engineers, without clerks. That is not a society. That is a holding pen. A slow erasure. And when nothing functions—no school, no hospital, no office, no heart—then it becomes ‘easy,’ they tell themselves, to scatter the people to the four corners of the earth. Like seeds from a broken pod, except no soil will take them.

We must name this. Not with rage alone, though rage is honest. But with the cold, clear tears of recognition: they are making life impossible so that departure becomes the only ‘choice.’ And the world watches, adjusts its spectacles, and calls for restraint. Restraint! There is no restraint in a slow drowning.

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Presidents of nations committing genocide: welcome.

Vocal opponents of genocide: banned.

My piece for @ScotNational on the UK government's disgraceful decision to refuse Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker entry to the UK.
https://t.co/ewBSqXIaU0

[Oxford Union @OxfordUnion]

A statement from the President, Arwa Elrayess:

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

A video of a Dutch policeman throwing a heavily pregnant woman to the ground has caused outrage. The woman says police attacked her at a migration centre where authorities had detained her Palestinian husband.

[Larry Madowo @LarryMadowo]

"Why do Americans think that their lives are more important than the lives of Kenyans?"

My CNN report on the public opposition to an Ebola isolation facility for Americans in Kenya

[Adil Haque @AdHaque110]

In Gaza, all men of military age were deemed legitimate targets.

“And military age is really open to interpretation,” said Jonathan.

“It could be from 16 to 60 or even younger...Most of the people that my unit killed were not armed.”

[BSCN @BSCNews]

Peirce defends crypto privacy tools against the surveillance push

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce (@HesterPeirce), head of the regulator's Crypto Task Force, defended privacy-enhancing technologies Wednesday at Georgetown Law, arguing that financial privacy is increasingly undervalued in US regulation. She warned against treating cryptographic privacy tools as primarily linked to criminal activity.

"Empowering government to be able to identify, pursue, and punish the bad guys is important to the security of the nation and its people, but so too is empowering people to protect information about their lives, including their financial lives," Peirce said. She added that privacy technologies should not be viewed as "an opportunity for the government to watch more of what its citizens do."

Peirce encouraged developers to engage with the SEC's Crypto Task Force on tools that could support KYC and AML compliance without compromising user privacy. Monero (monero:native), Zcash (zcash:native), and other privacy projects sit at the center of the ongoing debate.

[Murtaza Hussain @MazMHussain]

An agreement in which Iran charges environmental and service fees for ships that pass the strait instead of tolls while also taking responsibility for clearing mines instead of outsourcing it to the U.S. or NATO would indicate that rather than trying to generate revenue from the waterway the deal is attended to affirm Iranian political influence over the strait such that access can be used as leverage to ensure sanctions remain lifted and a new war does not resume.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

The Huawei MateBook Fold is wild, but thanks to export controls and sanctions, you can't buy it in the U.S.