freedomPusher

The fosdem.org website has a rich history of FOSS tech presentations. It’s a good youtube-free place to find videos. But searches only reach the last event. Kinda sucks that we have to use a general search service to look through the archives.

This is barely fitting for this channel, but perhaps this is the most relevant community.

The linked article:

FATCA: Top EU court to decide if Belgium can share 'Accidental Americans' tax data with US

The article implies accidental Americans will get some protection that purposeful Americans will not. Yes, I know what accidental American means in layperson’s terms. I am surprised there is a legal distinction and wonder how the law defines it.

cross-posted from !gdpr@sopuli.xyz

Gem from the article:

Under Article 221, §2 of the Belgian Data Protection Act of 30 July 2018, public bodies are exempt from GDPR fines in Belgium.

So Belgian public services have no incentive to comply with the GDPR.

Yikes. The money taken by fines does not disappear. It would normally move from one public pot to another public pot.

(update) less confusing source: https://eurocloud.org/news/article/no-gdpr-fines-for-public-sector-bodies-at-all-no-discrimination-and-no-problem/

Gem from the article:

Under Article 221, §2 of the Belgian Data Protection Act of 30 July 2018, public bodies are exempt from GDPR fines in Belgium.

So Belgian public services have no incentive to comply with the GDPR.

Yikes. The money taken by fines does not disappear. It would normally move from one public pot to another public pot.

(update) less confusing source: https://eurocloud.org/news/article/no-gdpr-fines-for-public-sector-bodies-at-all-no-discrimination-and-no-problem/

It’s also interesting to see the comment on this case.

This mirror:

http://iso.qubesosfasa4zl44o4tws22di6kepyzfeqv3tg4e3ztknltfxqrymdad.onion/

gives:

Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64/                               19-Dec-2025 09:48                   -
Qubes-R4.2.4-x86_64.iso                            17-Feb-2025 22:11          7266004992
Qubes-R4.2.4-x86_64.iso.DIGESTS                    17-Feb-2025 22:11                1251
Qubes-R4.2.4-x86_64.iso.asc                        17-Feb-2025 22:11                 833
Qubes-R4.2.4-x86_64.torrent                        17-Feb-2025 22:11              139199
Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso                            19-Dec-2025 01:17          8176568320
Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso.DIGESTS                    19-Dec-2025 01:17                1251
Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.iso.asc                        19-Dec-2025 01:17                 833
Qubes-R4.3.0-x86_64.torrent                        19-Dec-2025 01:17              156518

I see no way for someone with R4.2.4 to obtain R4.3.0 by just fetching the changes. Is that correct? If we want to maintain a copy of the latest ISO, we must grab the whole ~8gb ISO file every release?

I checked a couple mirrors (not all of them), and saw no jigdo templates.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/40633635

PDF24 used to be a way to send a fax to European fax numbers. It was a gratis service. It’s still advertised as such but it’s broken now.

The US is covered by faxzero.com, but for faxing outside the US they charge an absurd $2.09 per fax (more than postage in a lot of places). They are also Paypal-only. Fuck paypal.

Any suggestions?

PDF24 used to be a way to send a fax to European fax numbers. It was a gratis service. It’s still advertised as such but it’s broken now.

The US is covered by faxzero.com, but for faxing outside the US they charge an absurd $2.09 per fax (more than postage in a lot of places). They are also Paypal-only. Fuck paypal.

Any suggestions?

When filing a complaint in an agency of a government or ombudsman/mediator, the traditional workplace where everyone is on-site yielded more privacy for complainants because there were more meetings and verbal discussions over the processing. So fewer records were made about complaint processing and decision making.

Now with all the post-pandemic teleworking, most office workers collaborate on cases remotely. Thus more personal data ends up in internal email between case workers. Superficially that’s a detriment to data subjects. Most agencies are Microsoft boot-lickers so MS is needlessly in the loop on your sensitive data. Yikes!

To reduce exposure to MS, I only submit complaints offline on paper. In some cases, MS is at least out of the loop on correspondence to and from me. In other cases, MS sees it anyway because some receptionists are tasked with scanning postal mail then emailing it (indeed, we are fucked in this regard because there is no MS opt-out in those situations).

The advantage we can exploit

There is one little known advantage to this shitshow: when your case or complaint yields an unsatisfying result without rationale or with clumbsy/broken rationale, you can do a GDPR access request for all records. This includes all internal email among case workers and their advisors. It’s a way to gain powerful insight into the REAL reason your case was treated adversely. And that can be used against them.

Snag 1

Privacy policies sometimes give an email address for the DPO but either no offline contact information or the general mailing address for the whole agency. This means your snail mail letter could be internally delivered to your case worker based on your return address. Thus, the staff who fucked you over to begin with sees your request first, which triggers them to delete all email that embarrasses them about the case. Their CMY¹ move likely works. By the time the DPO gets the request on their desk, they have no incentive to assume malice and try to dig up deleted messages (assuming that’s even possible).

¹ CMY: cover my ass

Snag 2

Some orgs wildly interpret what “personal data” is. I’ve known a data controller to deny a GDPR request on the basis that “someone’s email address is not personal data”. So there is not much to stop them from claiming information about a case is not the personal data of the complainant.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/39004447

As someone who pulled the plug on residential Internet, I have naturally clung onto broadcast radio. It occurs to me that tuning into broadcast content gives a rare media source where you are not tracked. There is no digital footprint on your listening.

Tor (along with a couple even more obscure technologies like i2p) are the only viable cloud-sourced ways to escape consumption tracking. Tor is indispensible but it’s not as traceless as tuning broadcast signals. And Tor users are plagued with access discrimination.

Yet broadcast radio must be struggling. They likely lost copious listeners to the Internet. Seems like there is a missed opportunity to promote their stations and privacy along with it. Radio stations should inform people that tracking online is not just to advertise but it’s also used for personalised political manipulation.

Duckduckgo’s privacy theatre demonstrates that privacy promotion works. But DDG relies on trust and it’s rife with scandals. OTA¹ broadcasts do not rely on trust. Promoting privacy would have a long-term self-promotion effect. That is, as listeners come to develop their value of privacy more, their listenership becomes stronger.

Some (most?) stations likely also stream online. But they could still play a different jingle on the broadcast service, no?

¹ OTA: over the air

As someone who pulled the plug on residential Internet, I have naturally clung onto broadcast radio. It occurs to me that tuning into broadcast content gives a rare media source where you are not tracked. There is no digital footprint on your listening.

Tor (along with a couple even more obscure technologies like i2p) are the only viable cloud-sourced ways to escape consumption tracking. Tor is indispensible but it’s not as traceless as tuning broadcast signals. And Tor users are plagued with access discrimination.

Yet broadcast radio must be struggling. They likely lost copious listeners to the Internet. Seems like there is a missed opportunity to promote their stations and privacy along with it. Radio stations should inform people that tracking online is not just to advertise but it’s also used for personalised political manipulation.

Duckduckgo’s privacy theatre demonstrates that privacy promotion works. But DDG relies on trust and it’s rife with scandals. OTA¹ broadcasts do not rely on trust. Promoting privacy would have a long-term self-promotion effect. That is, as listeners come to develop their value of privacy more, their listenership becomes stronger.

Some (most?) stations likely also stream online. But they could still play a different jingle on the broadcast service, no?

¹ OTA: over the air

The !python@sopuli.xyz community is locked and redirecting people into Cloudflare. That’s not good for privacy, digital sovereignty, and decentralisation.

I suggest either deleting it entirely (it’s empty), or redirecting to !python!python@lemmy.sdf.org.