What would happen if ICE wanted to join the Fediverse? Most instances probably wouldn’t host that account, but some would. The account would be broadly blocked at both individual and instance levels, and some instances would probably defederate the hosting instance. Some folks would migrate […]

We could try to explain the privacy concept of "resignation" (answering apparent "privacy paradox" with evidence that people conclude surveillance is inescapable) with academic papers from Joe Turow and survey research ... or, you could just watch this Subway Take […]

The decisions made in standard-setting have "crucial ramifications for human rights" (so says the Human Rights Council) — so how should we design technical standard-setting bodies and their practices to better support human rights?

I think that schools should take on this role. You could have a server for a school with mastodon, but not connected to the rest of the fedi, you could network with similar schools. Just like at the school dance the teachers are around so there are limits to how it's used. Teens could post […]

I wish it need not have happened in my time

because my favorite fediverse client is behind cloudflare, had to log in to my instance to directly to keep using decentralized social media

I was (and still am) concerned about "papers, please" demands, but didn't recognize how quickly the government would move to facial recognition lookups of anyone brownish and tackling people on the street and throwing them in a warehouse ("Kavanaugh stop").

The canceling of ICEBlock is more evidence, were any needed, that the Web is the platform of the future, the only platform without a controlling vendor. Anything controversial should be available through a pure browser interface. #uspolitics

I can't make it in person this year, but @CenDemTech Tech Prom is coming up October 23rd -- it's always both nerdy and a fun party: https://cdt.org/event/2025-tech-prom/ #techpromcdt

In a city of a quarter million people where an infectious disease is currently spiking, what seems like the right number of healthcare facilities that will offer the protective vaccine?

We worried that there would be checkpoints and arbitrary stops where innocent people would face the dreaded "Your papers, please" demand. But that was wrong. They don't say "please". https://wapo.st/41IZKeF

I have spent a lot of my career in circular conversations like this: "We should maintain privacy feature X in Platform A." -- "But Platform B doesn't have privacy feature X. Really what you're doing is forcing users to platform B, with worse privacy." "Platform B should add privacy feature X as […]

Are the DC police just inundated with 911 calls? Gangs of armed men -- some wearing masks, some with tattoos -- are roaming the streets, harassing people when they get off the metro.

From time to time, I re-read "Who Goes Nazi?", with sadness. https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ The "macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one's acquaintances" is just as macabre, but that much more accessible when I accidentally open my Facebook feed. The spoiled […]

I often use search to confirm or deny a detail that I may have encountered in passing. This is among the most harmful moments for LLM intervention. Because I'm asking about something plausible, and LLMs produce plausible content, and because LLMs are obsequious, it will confirm the detail […]

"Yes, you read that right. A law supposedly designed to protect children now requires victims of sexual assault to submit government IDs to access support communities." […]

Thanks to engineers and advocates for meeting on a Sunday afternoon (before a very full week of other meetings) to talk about human rights in the technical standard-setting process. https://techpolicy.social/@CenDemTech/114914121122768643

Presented my intro remarks to the UN workshop on Technical Standards and Human Rights at #ietf123. Slides here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1h9VaRly3WVgMn0xE6tk_Aktlzvi_wFsvi6-ACca5YHM/edit?usp=sharing It's a bit of a summary of what we've done so far with wide review in the W3C, how […]

Nick: this work is harmful. Rather than just saying no, I will do some good faith work to point out in greater detail the specific ways that it's harmful to our shared goals. []: Thanks for pointing out the ways that this is harmful. There seems to be broad agreement that you are correct about […]

I had long stopped using the service or even checking on it, but finally realized that even having a dormant account with my name on it over on the MechaHitler site was too stomach-churning.

Part of our mission to create a more open and decentralized social web ... is to be a centralized control point enforcing collection of identity documents and biometric data to comply with an invasive governmental mandate.

Supreme Court upholds Texas demand for ID for Web browsing: https://papersplease.org/wp/2025/06/27/supreme-court-upholds-texas-demand-for-id-for-web-browsing/ In its worst decision ever on demands for ID, the Supreme Court today upheld a law that requires all visitors to some websites to […]

The court's opinion in FSC v. Paxton only briefly touches on privacy, asserting that of course pornography websites and their vendors "have every incentive to assure users of their privacy" and so dismisses it altogether. As a factual matter, though, there are compelling reasons for users to be […]

it is uniquely energy-sapping to me to hear "of course we're doing the bad thing, there's nothing you can do about" and "how dare you raise concerns" when it's combined simultaneously with "you, alone, need to work as quickly as possible on this topic to meet our intense deadlines or we'll do […]

generatively-produced work isn't good enough to rely upon, but can effectively devalue the effort of anyone doing work that is good enough to rely upon if your goal were to devalue the work of others, these tools are exactly good enough

Are you curious why the critiques you hear about the technology you use are so strong? I genuinely understand why you might be frustrated by the strength of those critiques or the tenor of the discourse. But are you also curious as to why it became that way? Some are just insulting those […]

taking my son to the pediatrician when he has an ear infection, and then to the pharmacy to pick up antibiotics, and buying some fun sunglasses as a treat for him, for waiting patiently thousands of babies starving in Gaza, waiting for food and medicine and an end to the bombings

Publication of Privacy Principles as a W3C Statement has been a long process and represents the culmination of years of multistakeholder work on this topic: https://www.w3.org/TR/2025/STMT-privacy-principles-20250515/ In 2022 @CenDemTech welcomed the first public note […]

did anyone have that experience in grad school where a business school guy wanted to have coffee to talk about their tech idea? and you're nice, and interested in the area, so you have the coffee with them and talk about it. and they say they've done the hard work and come up with the visionary […]

Once upon a time organizing relied on things like telephone calls and newsletters in the mail. For the civil rights movement, *churches* played an essential role -- providing a meeting place, hosting visiting speakers, etc. What organizers have now? The Internet. It needs to work

Several US states already offer digital IDs, while more are experimenting with pilot projects. The member states of the European Union are required to offer European Digital Identity Wallets starting next year […]

International standards bodies can no longer safely invite people to meetings hosted in the United States. Many US persons can no longer safely travel outside of the US and return home. Though in-person meetings have never been universally accessible, we have lost something more. There is […]

A great deal of harm is being perpetrated on purpose by people whom it feels charitable to call villains. You personally individually on your own cannot meaningfully take action to prevent it all. You can see much more evil than you can personally prevent. And that is just an immensely […]

It's not a new argument, but it bears repeating. Backdoors that break end-to-end encryption undermine everyone's security. We must keep reading, and citing, and quoting the "Keys under doormats" paper, again and again and again, whenever governments raise this prospect […]

Emilia notes an additional project for age rating: https://age-label.com/ Thanks for the pointer! There are also several defunct past options to reference, but not active proposals. https://hachyderm.io/@thisismissem/114231019340273475

There are alternatives to potentially invasive and often ineffective age verification mandates that can still help kids (and their parents) avoid adult-oriented content. Internet standards can make a difference here […]

Better idea: pass a comprehensive data privacy bill that applies across the board... and maybe *DON'T* mimic Chinese authoritarianism by creating a "Great Firewall" of apps that aren't allowed to operate here. You can actually fix things AND not abuse the 1st Amendment in one shot!

I was going to post something else this week, but the structural inability of global corporations to govern platforms seems inescapably relevant. https://www.wrecka.ge/bad-shape/

Some personal news: Excited to team up with @snarfed.org to form A New Social, a non-profit focused on building cross-protocol services and tools for the open social web. It's time for social media to be centered around people, not platforms. Let's build bridges 🌐 […]

Long overdue — and we need to make sure delaying tactics aren't repeatable in the future — we have a Privacy Working Group at the @w3c! https://cdt.org/insights/cdt-helps-form-new-w3c-privacy-working-group/ I'm co-chairing, along with Pete Snyder (Brave) and Christine Runnegar (Internet Society).

Today is a big day. The Ethical Web Principles has been published as a W3C Statement, meaning it’s now fully endorsed by the W3C. More info here: https://www.w3.org/news/2024/ethical-web-principles-is-a-w3c-statement/ #ethicalwebprinciples These principles already have started to influence the […]

the real-life alice's restaurant, the back room in stockbridge, massachusetts, just after its april 1966 opening, the late alice brock behind the counter. #folk #berkshires