First things first,

This post was written in a university computer, in a Southeast Asian jurisdiction, which may have concerns regarding verification methods when it is used by multiple people.

The UK, Australian, and specific U.S. state-level laws regarding age verification are fearmongering and it will hurt end users even more.

The effect has forced some people to migrate to alternatives to Discord, which each is in beta phase, so not everyone is ready for mass migration.

Another thing is the Fediverse will resist any attempt to implement age verification methods, as it will ruin privacy of each user.

Decentralization reduces the risk of mishandling data.

Privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data that the FBI then used to determine who was allegedly behind an anonymous account affiliated with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, according to a court record reviewed by 404 Media.

The records provide insight into the sort of data that Proton Mail, which prides itself both on its end-to-end encryption and that it is only governed by Swiss privacy law, can and does provide to third parties. In this case, the Proton Mail account was affiliated with the Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTAF) group and Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which authorities were investigating for their connection to arson, vandalism and doxing. Broadly, members were protesting the building of a large police training center next to the Intrenchment Creek Park in Atlanta, and actions also included camping in the forest and lawsuits. Charges against more than 60 people have since been dropped.

Information the FBI received showed a specific person as the payment source for a particular Proton Mail account, the record shows. “On January 25, 2024, subscriber information received from the Swiss Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty Unit, revealed [full name] (SUBJECT) as the payment source for the Proton e-mail address defendtheatlantaforest@protonmail.com,” it reads. 404 Media is not publishing the person’s name because they don’t appear to have been charged with a crime, according to searches of court databases.

The record, written by an FBI Special Agent from the Domestic Terrorism squad, is an affidavit in support of a search warrant. It says the defendtheatlantaforest@protonmail.com email address is publicly listed as the primary email address on the DTAF Facebook page. The email was also listed as the point of contact on a blog that regularly shared details about actions taken against the planned training center, including spray painting a related building with a message for executives “You will drop this contract eventually, why wait to see how far we will go?” and setting another on fire. “DTAF uses the Scenes Blog and other social media platforms to encourage followers to participate in their events, and to take independent action in furtherance of DTAF objectives, to include criminal activity,” the document says.

The document says the FBI believes that whoever manages the Proton Mail account likely has administrative access to the blog. The FBI received details about that Proton Mail account from the Swiss authorities via a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, or MLAT. An MLAT is when authorities in one country agree to provide information to an agency in another country. These are often used when the company or entity holding the information may only respond to local law enforcement demands for data.

Edward Shone, head of communications for Proton AG, the company behind Proton Mail, told 404 Media in an email: “We want to first clarify that Proton did not provide any information to the FBI, the information was obtained from the Swiss justice department via MLAT. Proton only provides the limited information that we have when issued with a legally binding order from Swiss authorities, which can only happen after all Swiss legal checks are passed. This is an important distinction because Proton operates exclusively under Swiss law.” Functionally, though, the material was provided to the FBI.

“Proton accepts payments via cryptocurrency, cash, and also credit card. If you use a credit card, we do have access to the payment identifier which can be used to identify the credit card holder from the card issuer. We check all legal orders received from Swiss authorities and we understood that a law enforcement officer was shot and explosive devices were involved, and we verified that Swiss legal requirements were met,” he added. The FBI search warrant affidavit does not mention a shooting. Police killed Manuel Paez Terán in January 2023 at a forest protest after he fired a gun at police from inside a tent injuring an officer, records reviewed by The Guardian showed. Before the shooting, police fired pepper balls into his tent, the records showed.

The document says DeKalb Police Department arrested the person believed to be behind the Proton Mail account for alleged trespass at one of the first DTAF protests in January 2022. The document also shows the authorities obtained the person’s travel plans, and planned to execute the search warrant at the Atlanta airport.

Prosecutors in Georgia previously charged 61 people allegedly connected to Stop Cop City activity under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The RICO Act is usually reserved for prosecuting mob bosses or for arguing that an organization is entirely criminal in nature. In December, a judge threw out all of those RICO charges, but five defendants still faced domestic terrorism charges. Proton Mail previously provided authorities with the recovery email address of someone allegedly connected to the Democratic Tsunami movement, which pushes for Catalonian independence.

Ok posters, are you ready to get out and ?? Do you want to :vote: with power and efficiency?! Well, I thought about this comment I made earlier, and decided to weaponize AI for the good of posting. Now, you no longer need to think about upvoting stories from other communities, if you're already upvoting that story right now.

With this userscript that I had Deepseek cook up, you can have your upvote automatically distributed to all cross-posted versions of that story without you having to lift a finger! It's mobile friendly, and can be moved and shrunk to keep it out of your way.

It uses the authentication cookie you've already got in your browser, and thus doesn't require you to enter any information into the software for it to work.

You can find it here: https://codeberg.org/Abolish-Capital/Automatic-Crosspost-Upvote

If you want to install it in your favorite userscript extension right now, you can follow the link in the README above, or go directly to the source here: https://codeberg.org/Abolish-Capital/Automatic-Crosspost-Upvote/raw/branch/main/automatic-crosspost-upvote.user.js

So far, I'm the only one who's tested this and even though I did have a slop-machine generate this thing, I do understand how it works, so if you encounter any issues I'll be curious to know about them. I've only tested it in Fire Fox, and I've tested it on Hexbear and Lemmy.ml thus far.

Anyway, Bear-Army-Nation, enjoy this little doodad and remember...

Now you're posting with POWER!

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10899106

AI Can Now Easily Unmask Your Secret Online Life for $4

A new research paper from ETH Zurich, Anthropic, and MATS demonstrates that Large Language Models can automatically de-anonymize users across platforms like Reddit and Hacker News.​

The AI acts like a digital detective using a method called ESRC (Extract, Search, Reason, Calibrate). It scans a user's post history for subtle clues (hobbies, writing style, locations), searches the wider internet (LinkedIn, other forums) for matches, and uses complex reasoning to confirm the identity.​

The terrifying results:

• It correctly linked secret Hacker News usernames to real people 67% of the time (with 90% accuracy when it made a firm guess).​
• It successfully matched a person's separate Reddit accounts from different years 68% of the time.​
• The entire automated process costs only $4 per target.​

"Practical obscurity"-the idea that you're safe online because it takes too much human effort to connect your digital breadcrumbs-is dead. Anyone with a few dollars and an LLM API can now mass-dox thousands of pseudonymous accounts in minutes.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7836474

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7835600

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7834923

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7830491

https://chuffed.org/project/150674-support-umm-mohammeds-family-to-rebuild-their-future-and-to-survive-amidst-the-genocide name is Karim. He is 11 years old today, but the war stole his childhood when he was only 10. In the war in Gaza, Karim lost a limb… and we lost our home, our safety, and everything we owned. Karim can no longer run like other children, but he still dreams. He dreams of living like them, of smiling without pain, and of having a future. We are a family who has nothing left. Our home was destroyed, our lives were shattered, and everything we knew was taken from us. But Karim’s heart is still alive, waiting for mercy, waiting for hope. Karim is not asking for much… Just a chance to live as a child, not as a victim of war. **