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Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom

Weekly news for digital freedom. Surveillance Report covers privacy, security, surveillance technology, and digital rights news to keep you safer online from the latest threats. Hosted by Henry Fisher, founder of Techlore, a leading digital rights media organization for over 10 years. Each episode cuts through the noise with carefully selected stories, context, historical perspective, and analysis - empowering you to defend your rights with actionable steps. Topics include: data breaches,

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All Episodes

39:04

Congress Comes For VPNs, Plus FBI & Pentagon Hacks,...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/10/04

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.Go Incognito v2 is launching Monday! I'm running a pre-launch 25% discount + a 'Day Zero' badge, just use code V2LAUNCH:

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36:17

No Hack Needed: How Revolut Leaked Your Passport,...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/09/17

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

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29:19

153 Million Driver's Licenses For Sale, Plus Chrome...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/09/05

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,

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35:55

Apple Fixed A Leak Without Telling Anyone, Plus More...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/08/29

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.🔎 EasyOptOuts is

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40:37

Apple's Private Relay Is Leaking Your IP, Plus Fake...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/08/21

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

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40:08

Signal's Biggest Update In Years, Plus Rival App...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/08/13

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

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32:13

OpenAI's Hacking Story Got Worse, Plus Iran In US...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/08/01

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

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41:44

France Banned Social Media For Under-15s, Plus A...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/07/24

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.comThanks to the EasyOptOuts team for sponsoring Surveillance

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37:38

EU Passes Chat Control Anyway, Plus Microsoft's...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/07/16

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

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27:52

Apple Quietly Downgrades Hide My Email, Plus Chrome...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/06/24

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.comThanks 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

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35:53

Meta Hid Face-Recognition Code on 50M Phones, The...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/06/12

Meta quietly embedded unreleased facial-recognition code, internally called "nametag" onto more than 50 million phones through its Meta AI app, then deleted it the day after Wired exposed it. This week I also get into Microsoft repos weaponized a second time to push credential-stealing malware to AI users, the UK's ultimatum to scan every device (and Signal's response), the FCC's push to kill burner phones...plus the usual breaches, threats, and a stacked week of FOSS+ updates.🗺️ The

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38:33

Dashlane Confirms Hackers Stole Password Vaults,...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/06/04

Dashlane has confirmed hackers stole around 20 encrypted password vaults, and the company is being unusually quiet about how it happened. Plus the Pentagon admits US troops were tracked using commercial location data, Europe accelerates its move away from US tech, and hackers hijacked celebrity Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta's AI support chatbot.🔎 EasyOptOuts is the easy, affordable, and effective way to automatically remove your data from people search sites:

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32:41

A Rare Age Verification Win, AI Cameras On School...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/05/28

A rare and genuine win against age verification with California following Colorado in exempting Linux and other open source operating systems from its Digital Age Assurance Act, directly because of community pressure. Plus AI cameras on tens of thousands of school buses being quietly repurposed for police access, a bipartisan amendment that could end nationwide automatic license plate reader programs, the open source supply chain under unprecedented attack, and a Trump Mobile data leak.In

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41:57

A Brutal Week for Microsoft Security, Signal...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/05/20

A brutal week for Microsoft with seven vulnerability stories, an actively exploited Exchange zero-day, the MiniPlasma exploit (rooted in a six-year-old Project Zero report Microsoft sat on), and Pwn2Own Berlin zero-days. Plus the Shai-Hulud npm supply chain attack hitting 600+ packages, Signal threatening to pull out of Canada over Bill C-22, Meta rolling out AI-powered age detection, and some quiet changes at Bitwarden that have long-time users uneasy.🔎 EasyOptOuts is the easy,

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37:07

Linux's Rough Run, ICE's 20M Palantir Database &...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/05/14

Linux gets hit with a third major vulnerability in as many weeks, a Palantir-built database of 20 million people, and Android delivers both bad news (a new VPN leak Google has refused to patch) and good news (intrusion logging for high-risk users). Plus encrypted RCS finally arrives in iOS 26.5, Instagram quietly kills its end-to-end encrypted DMs, and the usual roundup of data breaches, threats, and FOSS+ updates in your weekly Surveillance Report.🧡 SUPPORT TECHLOREBecome a Techlorian and

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32:31

CopyFail Explained, Utah's New VPN Law, and Microsoft...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/05/08

This week's Surveillance Report covers the most severe Linux threat in years sending researchers and admins scrambling, Apple patching the bug police were using to extract deleted Signal messages from iPhones, Utah's new law regulating VPNs taking effect, and Microsoft Edge inexplicably storing your passwords in plaintext memory.🧡 SUPPORT TECHLOREBecome a Techlorian and keep this show growing: ★ Support this podcast ★ 🔗 SOURCES & LINKSView all sources here:

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54:35

VPNs Could Make You an NSA Target, North Korea's...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/04/10

The government told you to use a VPN, but are you actually making yourself a target for NSA surveillance in the process? This week's highlight story digs into a letter from six US lawmakers pressing intelligence officials to answer whether Americans using commercial VPNs risk losing their legal protections and being treated as foreign nationals under Section 702 of FISA.Also this week: North Korea's methodical, weeks-long social engineering attack that briefly hijacked the Axios open-source

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49:05

Two iOS Exploits, Google's Android Lockdown &...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/03/31

This week's Surveillance Report covers two sophisticated zero-click iOS exploit frameworks: Coruna and DarkSword hit hundreds of millions of iPhones in the span of a single week. Google finally revealed their controversial Android sideloading "advanced flow," and it involves a 24-hour wait, developer mode unlock, and a wall of warning screens just to install an APK. Meanwhile, Instagram has quietly killed end-to-end encryption in DMs, Colorado is pushing OS-level age verification that would even

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40:22

Password Manager Vaults Aren't Private, Google...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/03/02

Password managers CAN see your vault (new research reveals attack vectors), Google threatens the open Android ecosystem, Apple rolls out age verification globally, 147 million installs of Android mental health apps with security flaws, Samsung's innovative privacy display, and a massive week of breaches and updates.NO SR NEXT WEEK - Back in two weeks!🧡 SUPPORT TECHLOREBecome a Techlorian and keep this show growing: https://techlore.tech/support🔗 SOURCES & LINKSView all sources here:

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49:56

3 Mac Attacks Explained, Discord Age Verification...

Surveillance Report: Weekly News For Digital Freedom ·

2026/02/20

No operating system is safe, and this week, Mac users got hit from three directions at once. We cover the attacks, Discord's messy age verification expansion, hidden hotel cameras in China, and everything else threatening your digital rights.🧡 SUPPORT TECHLOREBecome a Techlorian and keep this show growing: https://techlore.tech/support🔗 SOURCES & LINKSView all sources here:

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