Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom

Congress now has two site-blocking bills, and one of them would force VPNs and encrypted DNS providers to block websites for Americans. Plus: ShinyHunters hacked the FBI and someone stole 3 million Pentagon personnel records, Chat Control 2.0 stalled in the EU (for now), and Meta's Muse AI agent is already off to an a*muse*ing start to privacy and security.

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A hacker emailed Revolut pretending to be a government agency, and Revolut handed over customers' passports, IDs, and financial details. Plus: the global age-verification wave forcing even more ID collection (EU, California, Microsoft), OpenAI's rogue AI agents and why I've hit a breaking point with these companies, and the usual run of data breaches, threats, and open-source updates. Correction: it's really DMARC that stops the spoofing, misspoke! Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC together.

In this episode:

• Highlight, The hidden cost of handing over your ID: the Revolut impersonation breach, IDScan's confirmed 150M+ license leak, and the Florida DMV/ShinyHunters breach
• The global age-verification wave: the EU's under-15 proposal, EDRi's critique of the eID wallet, California's new laws (the good and the bad), and Microsoft's new Windows age APIs
• OpenAI's rogue agents: the German-wiki hijack, 10+ more undisclosed sites, and why Henry's patience with AI companies has run out
• Defense Bulletin: breaches (AdaptHealth, Berlin, Trezor, Surfshark, Mathspace, Veradigm), threats (Pixel modem zero-day, Chrome, Nightmare Eclipse's exploit spree, a new Android VPN leak, LG TVs), and FOSS+ (Tor, Tails, CalyxOS, GrapheneOS RCS, Control D on Tailscale, Homebrew 7.0, and more)

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An ID-verification company, IDScan.net, appears to have leaked scans of 153 million driver's licenses, then sold on a dark-web market called Nexus. This week I break down why this breach is the perfect example of everything wrong with ID uploads, plus Chrome officially pulling uBlock Origin and AdGuard from the Web Store, California's age-verification bill carving out a Linux exemption, and Florida and Texas stepping back from Flock license-plate readers, plus the usual data breaches, threats, and open-source updates.

In this episode:

• Highlight: 153M driver's licenses leaked via IDScan.net, sold on Nexus, FBI investigating, plus what to actually do (freeze your credit, minimize ID uploads)
• Chrome officially removes uBlock Origin & AdGuard. Manifest V2 is dead in big-tech browsers (and what still supports it)
• California's age-verification bill passes with a Linux / open-source exemption, plus EFF's push against AB 1709
• Florida & Texas step back from Flock and license-plate readers
• Data breaches: McKesson (ShinyHunters), Aesto Health (9.5M), Carhartt (12.9M), Manchester Airports Group, Novocure, Hasbro
• Threats: critical Elementor Pro, All-in-One WP Migration, GiveWP, Plex, Gitea, malicious Chrome extensions, and a "free movies" box you should avoid
• FOSS+: Firefox 155, Tails 7.12, Mullvad DNS shutting down (switch to Quad9 before Nov 2), Brave email aliases, LibreOffice 26.8, Organic Maps, CalyxOS on the Fairphone 6, and EFF's doxxing-safety guides

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Four positive VPN stories in one week: Mullvad's new multihop modes, Obscura shipping on Windows, Apple quietly patching the iCloud Private Relay leak, and Firefox's free VPN rolling out to Android. Then it gets darker: Flock built an AI tool that turns license plates into names, addresses, and relatives. Meta settled for billions over harms to kids. Plus X sent cease-and-desists that took Nitter and XCancel offline, and the usual data breaches, threats, and FOSS+ updates.

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Three cracks opened up in Apple's privacy story this week: iCloud Private Relay leaking real IP addresses through DNS prefetching, WebTransport, and passkeys; Hide My Email exposing real addresses in bounce logs; and an unprecedented wave of spyware notifications going out to targeted users. Also this week: 737 fake VPN extensions sitting in the Chrome Web Store, Edge phasing out Manifest V2, a judge giving Google one week to fix its anticompetitive Play Store flow, and France's top court blocking the under-15 social media ban on free expression grounds.

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In this episode:

• Highlight: Three Apple flaws worth acting on today: Private Relay's IP leaks, the Hide My Email exposure, the macOS screen-sharing bug, and the spyware alert wave
• 737 fake VPN extensions impersonating Proton, Nord, Surfshark and Cloudflare in the Chrome Web Store, with 500+ still live after cleanup
• A judge gives Google one week to fix its anticompetitive Play Store flow after Epic
• France's top court blocks the under-15 social media ban, citing freedom of expression and privacy
• Data Breaches: CareCloud (3.7M patients), a LiteLLM supply chain attack leaking terabytes of credentials, 3.6M Azure records, RingCentral (1.6M), Sakura Internet, Clarity Check's exposed face database, the French tax authority, SafePal, Trezor, and Pokémon Center
• Threats: the Evooo1Bot Linux router botnet, Comcast adding motion sensing to millions of routers, Google buying bankrupt Spirit Airlines' customer data to train AI, DDoS attacks on Threema, and a Copilot prompt-injection disclosure
• FOSS+: Tor Browser 15.0.20, Waterfox 6.7 "Supernova," a native ad blocker in Firefox for iOS, Startpage arriving in Firefox, Brave 1.93's GPU fingerprinting protections, Proton Mail Categories, Proton's AI Paper Trail tool, Ente's post-quantum work, Linux kernel 7.2, the Fairphone Gen 6 Plus landing in the US, SimpleX's equity crowdfunding, and Pine64 halting Linux device production

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Signal just shipped its largest set of updates in years: A second phone can finally be a linked device, automatic key verification is rolling out alongside safety numbers, and there are commits hinting at registration without a phone number. I also cover Google hosting rival app stores in the Play Store after its Epic loss, a fake Wi-Fi network on a Delta flight, a Reuters poll showing most Americans want tighter social media oversight, and Meta joining the list of companies whose AI agents ran their own attacks.

🔎 EasyOptOuts is the easy, affordable, and effective way to automatically remove your data from people search sites: https://easyoptouts.com
Thanks to the EasyOptOuts team for sponsoring Surveillance Report!

In this episode:

• Highlight: Signal's largest updates in years: linked phones and tablets, automatic key verification, and speculative phone-number-free registration
• Following its Epic loss, Google starts hosting rival app stores inside the Play Store, and charges $15,000 to be there
• Delta investigates a fake Wi-Fi hotspot on a flight carrying DEF CON attendees
• Three in five Americans favor stronger oversight of social media, and why the regulation on the table targets you instead of the companies
  Meta's AI model hacked a company during a misconfigured test, and why this is a negligence story, not an AI story
• Data Breaches: Ceva Logistics rippling into Steam hardware customers, Framework via Metabase, LexisNexis, Levi Strauss, a Swiss government SharePoint breach, IVPN's Bitcoin payment server, and Suisun City shutting down City Hall
• Threats: surveillance tech linking your phone to your license plate, a new unpatched Windows Defender privilege escalation, North Carolina Ports, why the passkey attack is mostly a nothingburger, and Chrome's device-bound session credentials
• FOSS+: Bitwarden's annual audit, Session's Pro beta and protocol v2, Stingle Photos returning, Cape's Trail of Bits audit of disappearing call logs, addy.io's label and plan updates, the Pixel 11 lineup, and Linux desktop use hitting 22%

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OpenAI's rogue AI agent turned out to have hacked more than Hugging Face, and the more details come out, the less impressive it seems. Then Anthropic came forward with its own disclosure: three companies accessed during testing, two of which had no idea. Plus Iran-linked hackers burrowing into dozens of US water and energy systems, an activist facing a felony for wiping his GrapheneOS phone at the border with a duress password, and thousands of private Claude chats and Artifacts turning up indexed on Google. An AI-heavy week, with the usual data breaches, threats, and FOSS+ updates.

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In this episode:

• Highlight: OpenAI's escaped agent, the Hugging Face breach, and Anthropic's own disclosure
• Iran-linked hackers disrupting US water and energy providers, 30+ Minnesota communities hit
• An activist charged with a felony after a GrapheneOS duress password wiped his phone at the border, plus what US v. Belmonte-Cardozo means for warrantless border searches
• Thousands of private Claude chats and Artifacts indexed by Google
• Data Breaches: CareCloud's ~350,000-person silence, Brinks Home, Origin (4.8M), OnTrac, Chick-fil-A, Analog Devices, KT's $39M fine
• Threats: Breyer on Chat Control 1.0's return, Google's age verification API on the Play Store, JetBrains TeamCity RCE, Mythos killing the Hawk PQC candidate, Mysk's silent macOS executable replacement
• FOSS+: Proton Pass autofill (now working on iCloud.com), Tails, Thunderbird 153 "Meadow," Firefox's Nova UI, Collabora Online, Wine 11.14

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France has become the first country in Europe to ban social media for children under 15. Meanwhile there's real good news elsewhere: the UK's incoming PM dropped digital ID entirely, and California's Senate killed its browser-level age mandate and exempted open source operating systems.

🔎 EasyOptOuts is the easy, affordable, and effective way to automatically remove your data from people search sites: https://easyoptouts.com
Thanks to the EasyOptOuts team for sponsoring Surveillance Report!

In this episode:

• HIGHLIGHT: France's under-15 social media ban, the UK dropping digital ID, and California scaling back its age-gating law
• A device dealers install in cars across the US that leaves them open to Bluetooth unlocking and disabling
• New stats showing the majority of Chat Control reports are false alarms, and that investigations are largely targeting minors themselves
• Courts forcing Apple and Google to open up: EU interoperability requirements upheld, and third-party app stores landing on Google Play
• Data Breaches: Suno (55M users), South Korea's diplomatic corps, Romania's entire land registry wiped, Ernst & Young, Estée Lauder, Chick-fil-A, and Coca-Cola's Fairlife
• Threats: wp2shell WordPress exploits, an Adobe Chrome extension exposing WhatsApp Web chats, a 7-Zip RCE, a critical Zoom account takeover, credit card data flowing to ICE, and period tracker Stardust sharing health data with an analytics firm
• FOSS+: Signal polls in DMs, Tor Browser 15.0.19, YubiKey 5.8, native containers in Firefox 153, Vivaldi 8.1, WhatsApp's first-party encrypted backups, Briar entering maintenance mode, the Mullvad donation controversy, and our Techlore Tools v2026.07 release

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This week's a double-week catch-up: the EU just greenlit Chat Control even after Parliament voted against it, Microsoft had a brutal stretch between a decade-old Secure Boot flaw and a Windows Defender zero-day, Texas's app-store age verification law cleared its Supreme Court hurdle while the KIDS Act moves through Congress, and LAPD just let its Flock license-plate contract expire. Plus a double-week Defense Bulletin with breaches, threats and open source news!

🗺️ The open-source answer to Google Timeline is finally here! Replay every route and light up every city you've visited on a map nobody else owns; self-host Dawarich free or grab the hosted version at https://dawarich.app/techlore/ with code TECHLORE for 20% off your first year.

This week's episode covers:

• Highlight: EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0 despite the vote against it
• Microsoft's brutal week: Secure Boot broken for a decade, a Windows Defender zero-day, and Windows share dropping below 60%
• The age-verification wave: SCOTUS lets Texas's app-store law stand, the KIDS Act clears the House
• The Flock resistance: LAPD lets its contract expire, National Week of Action against ALPRs coming August 16–22
• Defense Bulletin: breaches at KDDI, AssuranceAmerica, Accenture, Mount Royal University, Lidl, Xsolis, and DHS's HSIN platform
• FOSS+: GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, LineageOS, Brave containers, Organic Maps, Proton updates, Tuta migration, and more

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Apple is moving Hide My Email aliases to a new private.icloud.com subdomain, which makes it trivial for any app or website to spot a private email and block the signup.

🔎 EasyOptOuts is the easy, affordable, and effective way to automatically remove your data from people search sites: https://easyoptouts.com
Thanks to the EasyOptOuts team for sponsoring Surveillance Report!

In This Episode:

• Google preparing to use IP addresses for ad measurement across the EEA, UK & Switzerland (Aug 3)
• Chrome moving to fully block MV2, the last uBlock Origin workarounds are going away
• New surveillance laws in Canada + a UK push to ban social media for under-16s (with the age-verification nightmare that follows)
• The Arch Linux AUR malware saga...1,500+ packages, two waves
• Full Defense Bulletin: Texas (3M IDs), LastPass, FIFA's wide-open World Cup portal, and a stack of FOSS updates

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