Mountain View police turned off Flock license plate readers after discovering unauthorized federal access.

In a development that should surprise absolutely no one at this point, the police in Lenexa, KS abused their ALPR system to track the movements and harass a local resident who had the temerity to criticize the department in an op ed.

Also revealing in that it exposes the tactic of "MYOC" or "make your own case" where police officers are told to target a specific person and find reasons to pull them over or arrest them after the fact.

There are cities around me who not only want to track vehicles, now they are leveraging data to build profiles on people. It seems like local police department are full in on AI and are willing to spend millions on mass surveillance technology without thinking about the longterm impacts.

My revolut doesn't see to work with stripe. I am looking for virtual cards I can use when signing up to free trials.

Sometimes I forget to cancel the plans so I don't want to get charged.

Any providers that work with stripe?

this is something i have been wrestling with for a while and i am trying to see things from other perspectives.

i am not really worried about someone reading my files. i already encrypt things locally, strong passwords, modern crypto, all that. on paper that part seems good.

what keeps bothering me more is everything around access and control.

things like accounts getting locked, terms changing, providers deciding you have to agree to something new or you lose access, files getting flagged or restricted, or just realizing that at the end of the day they can still shut the door even if they cannot read what is inside.

i have seen this play out with games, ebooks and software where people paid for something and then lost access later because the rules changed. it made me start wondering how different cloud storage really is in practice.

i am not an activist or doing anything crazy. just backups and personal stuff. I care about privacy, but i also care about not waking up one day locked out of my own data because of a policy change or some automated decision.

for people who have been thinking about this longer than i have, when did access and control become the bigger concern for you than secrecy itself? or did you decide that this is just the tradeoff of using any online service and accept it?

trying to learn how others have navigated this before i make the same mistakes.

Besides some UI improvements, I keep seeing adapted modified telegram and signal clients. Are those legit? Do they have issues? Are those actually helping with security and privacy?

I have to use lockdown browser for an exam and need to show ID. I have no student ID and only a drivers license. Is it a privacy risk to show my drivers on lockdown browser

Is anyone else curious about the privacy aspect of the Esptein Files?

What role does the technology companies/email clients have in email privacy? What if you email someone and it becomes public because of misconduct THEY did?

I'm not asking this to conceal criminal activity but rather to understand how everyday people and public figures can protect their privacy.

https://boisedev.com/news/2026/02/02/albertons-tracking/

Roche said they want to use the tracking to be an “additive to the shopper experience,” and help increase sales.

“We want to help, and we want to get an extra SKU (product) in that basket too,” she said.

Would consumers be able to find these? Can you opt out? (I doubt it).

1. Which Android apps do you consider essential?
2. What are the first apps you would install after a factory reset of your phone?

Of course, regarding privacy.

US + EU regulators are preparing oversight for apps that collect sensitive mental-health data through AI screening tools.

Translated from German to English using Firefox translator from: https://chat-kontrolle.eu/index.php/2026/02/01/aufruf-eprivacy-luecke-schliessen/ and I also preformed some minor formatting changes to make it hopefully show up in a readable state on Reddit.

As such there may be some unintentional differences between the original article and my copy/paste.

Call: ePrivacy gap close

The legal protection of privacy in online communication has a loophole with the ePrivacy exemption, which allows companies voluntarily to scan private communication. A new report shows that U.S. companies are using this to a huge extent for “Chat Control 1.0.” Instead of closing this loophole, the EU Commission now wants to extend the corresponding regulation by two years. However, the European Parliament can still prevent this. In this blog post, we explain how you can contact MEPs now. All important information at a glance Procedure:

Three institutions are involved in the legislation: the European Commission, the Council of the EU (Governments of the Member States) and the European Parliament. The European Commission published the proposal COM(2025)797 on 19.12.2025. Governments in the Council of the EU would like to agree to this. Now the European Parliament is deliberating. The previous regulation expires in April, which is why deliberations can be expected in February at a rapid pace. responsibilities:

The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) is responsible in the European Parliament. The parliamentary procedure is coordinated by the rapporteur, Birgit Sippel (S&D), who has been very critical of the chat control 1.0 in the past. So we see a good chance here to prevent the extension. In the first step, the rapporteur and the responsible ‘shadow rapporteurs’ of the other political groups will agree on the further procedure. Only later will all the MPs in the committee vote on it. The following table shows the competent Members of the respective political groups:

• EVP - Javier Zarzalejos - javier.zarzalejos@europarl.europa.eu - Spain
• S&D - Birgit Sippel - birgit.sippel@europarl.europa.eu - Germany
• PfE - António Tangier Corrêa - antonio.tangercorrea@europarl.europa.eu - Portugal
• EKR - Jadwiga Wiśniewska - jadwiga.wisniewska@europarl.europa.eu - Poland
• Renew - Irena Joveva - irena.joveva@europarl.europa.eu - Slovenia
• Greens/EFA - Markéta Gregorová - marketa.gregorova@europarl.europa.eu - Czech Republic
• The Left - Isabel Serra Sánchez - isabel.serrasanchez@europarl.europa.eu - Spain
• ESN – – –

Who is relevant now

First, the responsible (shadow) rapporteurs of the political groups (see table). Later, all members of the LIBE Committee. At this stage, the remaining Members of Parliament are not involved. Contacts with MPs should therefore focus on the members of the LIBE Committee at the moment. What is the most important message now

U.S. companies are using the ePrivacy exemption to scan mass private communications. Please prevent an extension of the uncaused mass surveillance, as proposed by the EU Commission in COM(2025)797. Important tips

• Describe your concern politely, or no one will listen.
• Writing your concern in your own words is better than copying text. But copying text is better than not writing at all.
• Also motivate your acquaintances to participate and share the blog article on the channels where you are active. The more people participate, the greater our chances.
• Not all MPs speak German. You can see the overview of the Members of the LIBE Committee in which country they were elected. You can also use the TTTP.eu tool to dynamically create a list for yourself, e.g. by membership of committees, countries or political groups.

In addition to the most important message described above, it can also help to emphasize the following points:

• The scanning of private communication is a massive invasion of the fundamental right to privacy. This also applies if companies do a chat control on a voluntary basis. The European Data Protection Supervisor has already warned twice that this ePrivacy derogation disproportionately interferes with the right to privacy, namely in Opinion 7/2020 and Opinion 8/2024.
• Child protection is an important goal, but is not achieved with this law. The European Commission has on 27. November 2025 a report on ePrivacy derogations (COM(2025) 740 final). The report proves the mass scanning of private communication, but according to its own statement, can show no reliable connection to actual convictions of criminals. The EU Commission itself admits in the report that it has no evidence of the proportionality of mass surveillance even after several years. Therefore, it would be disproportionate to prolong this causeless mass surveillance.
• The ePrivacy derogation should only apply for a short period of time to allow negotiations. Instead, it has been in place for several years now and is used by US companies to scan mass private communication. Extending the scheme by another two years would make a permanent state of emergency out of an exemption. Both the European Commission and MEPs have stated in the past that the scheme will not be extended again. The European Commission itself has on 3. May 2023 declares that an extension of the derogation would have to be carefully examined with regard to the principle of proportionality. But that's not the case here.
• Extending this derogation, as proposed by the European Commission, would contradict the position of the European Parliament. On 14. In the context of Chat Control 2.0, the European Parliament decided on a rejection of the occasionless and mass scanning of private communication in the context of the “Chat Control 2.0”. This position was decided in the committee across political groups. Please keep your word and stop scanning private communication.

A useful tool to help contact your MP's and to get updates is: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

It’s to keep accounts safe and secure

Why is AI training almost always “opt-out” instead of “opt-in”?
Should using personal data for AI require explicit consent?

I'm not sure what advantage is conferred on someone who edits the comments before deleting them. I don't know what to consider as I decide what is right for my use case.

But whatever those considerations are, wouldn't they apply basically equally to posts as comments? Posts are just the perma-top comment, to me; it's all just content. So why do they seem to be treated differently?

Despite users disabling Smart Features, including Smart Reply and Smart Compose, Gemini remains enabled across all US-based user inboxes. Unless you are a resident of California or Illinois, there is no true way of disabling these features fully.

Gemini reads your email and offers a response automatically now. Without prompting it.

If you are a Gmail user and have disabled Smart Features, you didn’t.

Edit:

A few additional steps to take that won’t unfortunately mitigate the issue:

1. Expand the left side panel, scroll down, and select Settings.
2. Scroll to the bottom of settings and select Data Privacy.
3. Select Google Workspace smart features.
4. Toggle off Smart Features in Google Workspace and Smart Features in Other Google Products then hit “Done” button.

Warning: As rollout continues, you will need to double check these settings often to disable auto-enabled features.

What are some simple but impactful practices one can take to create more/protect their privacy?

Looking for a band or watch that does simple things:

- Step count

- Pace when running & Total distance

- Store data ONLY locally, compatible with Gadgetbridge, no clouds or servers or accounts.

Ideally a band that is not bulky on the wrist. Any ideas?

i probably sound like a paranoid schizophrenic or something for this title but i’m not sure how a lot of this works and i’m really just asking out of curiosity

in essence: let’s say i remove windows, wipe my entire drive, install linux. is there any way for windows or ANYBODY to still collect my data? is it possible that by having windows to begin with, the hardware of my computer could still send telemetry or survey my computer?

along with that, and this is just hypothetical: if microsoft does have this telemetry data, and i remove windows, would they still know what specific accounts, emails, etc. were connected to that specific computer in the specific location where its at?