Biggest data breach ever? (IDScan.net) Governments Outsourcing Liability

"Never trust the government, it is NEVER for the children!!"

"This is all on purpose to take away our privacy and give big brother control over everything."

FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase on this service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely-used identity verification company based in Louisiana. KrebsOnSecurity also has learned that the New Orleans field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today launched an official inquiry into the source of the images.

A record available at this identity theft service that includes the drivers license for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one of several high-ranking U.S. government officials whose drivers licenses can be found for sale.

On Monday, Aug. 31, a source alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service advertised by a new user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit, offering access to digital scans of identity documents on more than 170 million people in North America. The source brought it to my attention because the proprietor of this identity theft service offered my Virginia drivers license as a free sample in their initial sales thread on Exploit.

The service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have more than 153 million drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada, as well as more than 10 million identification cards; more than three million travel documents and/or international IDs; and at least 579,000 medical cards.

A quick look around Nexus finds they are likely not exaggerating about that 153 million number: Running a blank search in Nexus (with no search parameters entered) returns approximately 11.5 million pages of results, with roughly 15 results displayed per page. It includes documents from people in both Canada and the United States, but the bulk of these records are on Americans: searching for just Canadian drivers licenses returns approximately 1.1 million results, with the largest concentration from Ontario (473,673 records).

Curiously, the identity records include not only drivers licenses but also marijuana dispensary cards. Some of the records list their “source” as “CDL,” presumably short for “commercial drivers license.” Other records carry the source notation of “CAC,” which may refer to Common Access Cards, government issued identity cards that grant physical access to government buildings and secure rooms.

The people behind Nexus claim the license images are coming from an active breach at “a major identity verification company” whose customers include multiple Fortune 500 companies.

The record totals listed by the Nexus identity theft service. The number of drivers
license records increased by nearly 400,000 in the span of just 24 hours.

“We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database,” the service enthused in its introductory post on Exploit. “Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available.”

Indeed, over the past 24 hours, the number of drivers license records listed as available in Nexus has increased by nearly 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license data is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular basis.

The record featuring my drivers license includes six image files: three pairs of photos of the license’s front and back, a basic image scan, as well as infrared and ultraviolet versions of the same images. A date and timestamp is appended to each image file, and the timestamp on my license scan corresponds to a date in June 2025 when I took a flight to the midwest United States to attend a family funeral.

Some of the 153 million+ license scans — including mine — feature six image files with date and timestamps appended to the filenames. Not all records include photos, and some that do feature photos do not display the associated filenames.

Intent on discovering the source of this data, KrebsOnSecurity asked more than a dozen friends and family members for permission to search for their licenses in this service. Each person whose license could be found (nine of them) confirmed having traveled on or very close to the dates in the timestamps attached to their images. It is unclear what timezone these timestamps are in, but from reviewing car rental records shared by several people who helped with this research, it appears the timezone is set to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

At first, I thought the source of the data might have something to do with airports. However, that theory went out the window when it became apparent there were no passports in this data set. Also, only some of those who helped with this research said they showed their drivers license at the airport on the day of their travel. One person whose license was in Nexus hadn’t flown at all recently, but was renting a car from Hertz for several months around the date of their timestamp.

Two of those who agreed to help are federal employees who said they shared other forms of government identification when passing through airport security. However, those individuals each said they shared their state-issued drivers licenses later that day when renting vehicles at their respective destinations, and that both rented their cars from Hertz.

After finding a note in my calendar for the day of my June 2025 flight reminding me to bring my passport, I remembered that I also never actually shared my drivers license when I went through security at Reagan National Airport on that day because I did not yet have a Real ID, a security-enhanced drivers license that is now required by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for all domestic travel. Instead, I showed the TSA agent my government-issued U.S. passport.

Here’s where it gets interesting: I was able to find my mother’s drivers license in this service as well, and the timestamps for her images are just a few seconds apart from mine. That’s notable because we both handed our licenses to the Hertz rental car representative at the same time.

According to my mom, the only place she gave her drivers license to that day was the rental car company, and if memory serves that is also true for me. I don’t recall if the rental car representative inserted our licenses into any kind of machine, but I remember they held onto them for several minutes behind the counter while we were signing various forms. KrebsOnSecurity sought comment from Hertz and will update this story in the event they reply.

Zach Edwards is a well-known security and privacy researcher who recently launched a service called DecryptAds to help people better understand how online advertisers are tracking them. A scan of Edwards’s drivers license is available for purchase on this identity theft service, and Edwards said the timestamp on his record corresponds to the middle of a trip last month to Las Vegas for the annual DEFCON security conference.

Edwards told KrebsOnSecurity that although he did not rent a car in Vegas, he did hand over his license at the TSA checkpoint, at a marijuana dispensary in Vegas, and at his hotel (the Aria). But he said the only one of those three that for sure scanned his ID in some kind of device was the dispensary.

To enter Planet13’s weed dispensary in Las Vegas, one must pass through a red telephone booth. Image: Zach Edwards.

Edwards said the dispensary he visited that day was Planet13, a multi-state chain with stores in California, Florida, Illinois and Nevada. In 2022, the New Orleans-based identity provider idscan.net published a press release announcing an exclusive identity verification agreement with Planet13’s dispensaries nationally. IDScan says it processes ID verification for more than 1,000 marijuana dispensaries in 19 U.S. states.

The “trust” page of idscan.net states that the company provides identity verification services for numerous big brands, including Hertz, Target, Fedex, Motorola Solutions, the financial services giant Jack Henry, and Caesars Entertainment. And as idscan.net’s own documentation states, the technology scans IDs with both infrared and ultraviolet light. Idscan.net says the company’s systems and technology perform more than 21 million verifications monthly, at more than 20,000 locations around the world.

Image: idscan.net.

Contacted by KrebsOnSecurity, idscan.net said it was investigating the matter, but the company has not yet shared an official statement or a substantive reply to specific questions sent via email.

“At this point I’m not able to share any additional information, but the updates you have provided have been welcome, and helpful to our team’s investigation,” wrote Jillian Kossman, a marketing and operations leader at idscan.net.

During the course of my research for this story, word got around to the FBI that I was poking at the apparent source of this new identity theft service’s data. Probably they were tipped off when I shared with a trusted source that Nexus also is selling the drivers license information for the assistant director of the FBI (I did not find FBI Director Kash Patel’s license in Nexus).

Earlier this afternoon, I was added to a conference call with a half-dozen FBI agents, including senior leaders from the agency’s cyber division. During that call, the FBI shared that earlier today their New Orleans field office opened an official investigation into an apparent breach involving idscan.net.

Edwards said that as more in-person and online experiences require sharing drivers licenses, vendors who collect this sensitive data need to be held to a higher standard.

“This episode should further strengthen the resolve for people who are fighting back against online ID schemes which are requiring countless providers to ask for drivers licenses in order to access services under the guise of protecting kids,” Edwards told KrebsOnSecurity. “These systems are putting sensitive data into more and more 3rd party vendors, and we don’t have nearly the oversight to ensure they are safe.”

Larry Baldwin is principal intelligence researcher at the cybersecurity firm Cybera. Baldwin said a front and back scan of his drivers license available at Nexus contains timestamps that correspond to the date of a car rental from Hertz on a recent vacation.

Baldwin said the Nexus identity theft service presents multiple serious security and privacy threats, noting that state-issued drivers licenses are commonly used as proof of one’s identity when opening new lines of credit. Baldwin said the service could also dangerously expose many people who do not wish to be found but who cannot meaningfully change their appearance (or at least not enough to fool today’s AI-based image matching tools).

This category of people, he said, includes those fleeing domestic violence, and even people who have been assigned a whole new life and identity as part of the federal government’s witness protection program, which is generally reserved for criminal defendants in racketeering and conspiracy investigations who agree to cooperate with federal authorities.

“Just when it seems like we’re making some headway in improving authentication controls through drivers license verification systems, this happens and the very thing those improvements are dependent on are compromised,” Baldwin said.

Update, Sept. 2, 6:05 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Caesars Entertainment said Caesars has not been a client of IDScan.net and has not used VeriScan since February 2025, despite IDScan.net listing them as a client on their website. That person said Caesars had no active VeriScan accounts at the time of the incident and did not authorize IDScan.net to retain data from its accounts, and that IDScan.net said the incident should have no impact on Caesars Entertainment.

Update, 8:56 p.m. ET: Shortly after this story was published, the Nexus identity theft service website vanished from the darkweb, replacing its login page with a plain text message that reads, “This service is no longer available.”

This is a potentially fast-moving story. Any changes or updates will be noted here along with a timestamp.

Source:KrebsonSecurity.

See also short explanation by Matt Johansen on this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRbDaQQwWlY

SO, WHEN WILL THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT COMPENSATE YOU WHEN (NOT 'IF') YOUR PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION GET BREACHED?

AFTER IT'S 'THEIR' LAWS.

SORRY? THEY'RE NOT GOING TO OFFER YOU A REMEDY, AT LAW?

Google Serving You Brain Rot AI Slop!

Google is literally littering the internet with garbage, AI generated garbage.

If Google wasn’t a tech company where it would be a ‘fast’ food or rather junk food corporation it’d be McDonald’s.

The ‘best' part about these corporations is that there is no regulation about how much shit they can feed you.

Google making you consume AI trash in your ‘feeds’ (how appropriate) on its media platform YouTube, is about as good for your brain as McChuck’s is good for your body, where you can refer to the ‘experiment’ by Morgan Spurlock, in Super Size Me

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSZWxjeua3g)

A mental torture tactic used on ‘persons of interest’ by military forces was to bombard the interrogated person with random, questions/facts until their brain goes to mush, a bit like you doom scrolling on social media.

Apparently the world's governments are there to ‘protect the children’, but there is no limitation/legislation on brain rot products by Google (and others).

In many feeds as much as two thirds to seventy percent of content is either AI slop or plain and simple false information contained in the ‘shorts’.

In any event Google and other corporations have invested billions of dollars in AI hardware which at the end of the day, has hurt ‘consumers’ (of hardware) where memory prices have risen six fold to purchase despite costing the same to produce as before the ‘AI crisis’.

Therefore Google (and others) have to serve you AI slop in order to obtain a decent ROI (Return On Investment) in their business endeavours.

The internet has really turned to crap as a result of a few corporations and it's very clear that governments are supporting this. 

Viva la ‘Free’ World.

Warning! Revolut wins Australian banking licence. Don't use it as it's not safe nor secure!

Just because a corporation is allowed to trade in Australia does not mean that it's good for the people.

It may be good for 'business' but not necessarily for the 'consumer' or corporate fodder.

Revolut is apparently Europe's largest private financial technology company started by Nik Storonsky and Vladimir Yatsenko.

Nik Storonsky is the chief executive of Revolut

From industry sources, it runs on Android 9 with no security patches since 2018, where this no way any sane person should do banking with their app.

Prior to conducting any banking on a mobile platform the system must be up to date with security patches in order to mitigate any threats or exploits.

For a few years, GrapheneOS has been the most secure Android mobile phone operating system, period.

So much so that the Israeli based Cellebrite phone hacking tool cannot penetrate an up to date GrapheneOS based phone in the BFU (Before First Unlock) state.

Revolut previously did run on GrapheneOS but has recently stopped its app from being run, citing security reasons, yet they allow it to run on a mobile phone operating system, where security updates stopped in 2018, or 8 years ago.

It's quite clear that this corporation does not have the best security practices in play, where they should not be trusted with you data or cash, irrespective of their previous financial performance.

Revolut is based in Lithuania, so when/if things go awry, then good luck getting your money out from within their app.

Buyer beware!

Edit:

See complaint from a user:

Good morning,

I am writing to raise a formal complaint regarding Revolut's apparent ongoing rollout of changes to its Android application which prevent, or will prevent, the app from operating on devices running GrapheneOS.

My understanding is that this change is currently being rolled out to only a proportion of users. It has not affected my account yet, but reports from other users indicate that Revolut is testing or progressively deploying this restriction. I am therefore raising this complaint now, before I am potentially locked out of access to my bank account.

I object to this decision in the strongest possible terms for several reasons.

1. GrapheneOS is not an insecure or compromised operating system

The restriction does not appear simply to be identifying genuinely insecure devices. GrapheneOS has specifically reported Revolut detecting and rejecting GrapheneOS devices.

This distinction matters.

GrapheneOS is a security- and privacy-focused Android operating system designed specifically for supported Google Pixel devices. It retains verified boot and supports a locked bootloader, while adding substantial security hardening beyond standard Android.

Blocking such a device merely because it does not run Google's stock operating system is not a meaningful assessment of whether that device is secure.

To use a simple analogy, it is rather like an insurance company refusing to insure a house because the customer's front-door lock is too secure.

If Revolut genuinely requires device integrity verification, GrapheneOS provides mechanisms by which applications can perform hardware-backed attestation and verify legitimate GrapheneOS installations. A blanket refusal to support the operating system is therefore neither the only nor, in my view, the most sensible security option available.

2. The policy produces an absurd security contradiction

Revolut currently supports Android versions going back many years.

This means that the Revolut application may operate on an old Android phone which is no longer receiving current operating-system security patches, while refusing to operate on a modern Google Pixel running an actively maintained, security-hardened version of Android.

It is very difficult to reconcile those two positions with an assertion that this restriction is necessary for customer security.

A modern Pixel running an up-to-date GrapheneOS installation with verified boot and a locked bootloader is clearly not inherently less secure simply because the operating system is not Google's stock Pixel firmware.

Security decisions should be based upon the actual security properties and integrity of a device, rather than an arbitrary list of approved operating-system vendors.

3. Revolut has apparently provided no viable alternative means of accessing my money

I have already contacted Revolut customer support regarding this issue.

I was advised that, should my device become unsupported, I could either use Revolut's web application or use another mobile phone.

Neither suggestion provides a reasonable solution.

Firstly, the web application itself requires authentication using the Revolut mobile application. If Revolut deliberately prevents that application from running on my device, telling me to use a website which requires approval from the application I can no longer use is circular and plainly does not solve the problem.

Secondly, I was effectively advised that I could obtain or borrow another person's phone, install Revolut on it, and log into my bank account there.

I find it extraordinary that this can seriously be proposed as the more secure alternative.

Revolut would apparently prefer me to enter my banking credentials and establish access to my account on a friend's device — a device over which I have no long-term control and whose security I cannot independently establish — rather than allow me to use my own modern Pixel with a locked bootloader and a security-focused operating system.

That appears directly contrary to the stated security objective of this change.

4. This risks depriving an existing customer of practical access to their bank account

This is not merely a question of whether Revolut chooses to support an optional feature on a particular platform.

I am an existing customer. I receive my salary into Revolut, use it as a significant part of my everyday banking arrangements, and pay for a Metal subscription.

Revolut has encouraged customers to treat its service as their bank. It is therefore entirely reasonable for customers to expect that Revolut will not deliberately remove their primary means of accessing their accounts without providing a genuinely functional alternative.

If Revolut introduces a technical restriction which it knows will prevent an existing customer from using the application, while its alternative web interface itself depends upon that application for authentication, that raises a much more serious question of effective access to the customer's financial services.

I should not be forced to purchase and carry a second mobile telephone solely because Revolut has chosen to reject a secure operating system which my existing hardware is perfectly capable of running.

Resolution requested

I would therefore like Revolut to:

confirm whether it intends to block, directly or indirectly, correctly installed GrapheneOS devices from accessing the Revolut application;

reconsider this policy and implement an appropriate method of supporting GrapheneOS, including hardware-backed device attestation where Revolut considers integrity verification necessary;

confirm that existing customers will not be deprived of access to their accounts solely because they use GrapheneOS on an otherwise supported device with a locked bootloader; and

if Revolut nevertheless intends to impose this restriction, provide a fully functional method of accessing and administering a Revolut account which does not itself require authorisation from the mobile application that Revolut has chosen to block.

I would also appreciate an explanation of the security rationale for permitting the application to operate on older Android devices which may no longer receive security updates while rejecting a current, supported Pixel running a hardened Android operating system.

Please treat this correspondence as a formal complaint, rather than general product feedback, and provide me with Revolut's formal written response.

If Revolut proceeds with this restriction without providing a reasonable means for affected customers to continue accessing their accounts, or if I do not receive a satisfactory response to this complaint, I intend to refer the matter to the Bank of Lithuania, as the competent out-of-court dispute resolution authority identified in Revolut Bank UAB's terms for Maltese customers. I will also consider seeking assistance through the Maltese Office of the Arbiter for Financial Services and the FIN-NET cross-border consumer complaints framework where appropriate.

I sincerely hope escalation will not be necessary. I have been a loyal Revolut customer for years and have been sufficiently satisfied with the service to entrust Revolut with my salary payments and pay for a Metal subscription. That makes it particularly disappointing to face the prospect of being arbitrarily excluded from my own banking application despite using a modern and demonstrably security-focused device.

I would much prefer Revolut to address the underlying technical issue properly rather than force otherwise satisfied customers to choose between replacing their operating system, purchasing an unnecessary second phone, or moving their banking elsewhere.

I look forward to your formal response.

Kind regards,

See response from Revolut:

     Source:supplied

False charges against Atlanta man Sam Tunick at US border crossing?

Governments, authorities and prosecutors cannot be trusted, period.

The ‘United Snakes of America’ is definitely a subset of the above.

The anti-privacy agenda, under the excuse of child protection is in full swing against the good citizens of the world.

‘Everyday’ people, whatever that means, are not afforded privacy, yet billionaires, CEO’s, politicians et al are shielded.

IF ‘child protection’ (meaning children of the cannon fodder), truly is so important to the authorities, then charges would arise from the Epstein Files, where the full treasure trove would be released and not deliberately suppressed, but in reality people should be aware that will never happen, as for one reason, the statute of limitation has expired, in many ‘allegations’ of criminal activity.

Over the past few days the online world has been set ablaze, with the news of an Atlanta man, Sam Tunick, ALLEGEDLY destroying 'evidence' from his Google Pixel smartphone.

With all this noise about this matter, Australia’s ‘news’ agencies are mute on this topic.

Why?

Do they not want to draw the corporate fodder’s attention that there is another operating system apart from the global duopoly from Apple and Google that prioritises privacy and security?

Do they not want the Aussie serfs (as opposed to surfs) to know that the world’s (allegedly) most elite smartphone hacking tool, by Israeli firm Cellebrite is apparently useless against up to date Pixel phones that have GrapheneOS instead of the spyware loaded factory (e.g. Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, LG, etc) flavour of Android?

So the ALLEGED criminal action is that a Mr. Sam Tunick, has wiped/destroyed ‘evidence’ from his phone, as a result of a ‘duress’ PIN being typed in by the officer, where that action alone is beyond the scope of this article.

And this is where the FALSE charges / scam by the authorities begins!

Putting aside any legalities of the US Constitution, request for lawyer being denied, and the holding area of the airport, the focus in this article is on the alleged destruction of evidence.

So, let’s make a simple analogy to obtain a clear understanding of what factually happened.

Let’s just say that the phone is equivalent to a file storage cabinet which has a key to open the drawers, where the only way to read the files in their original format /legibly is to use that unique key.

In order to gain access to the files/'data’ on that smartphone the correct PIN (Personal Identification Number) must be entered in order to read those files, otherwise they will remain ‘scrambled’, or in an  encrypted state, and unreadable, BUT most importantly they still reside ON the phone.

A ‘feature’ of GrapheneOS is that a user can set a ‘duress’ PIN, which is obviously different from the one that decrypts the data from the phone, where if a person uses that PIN, the decryption key is removed from the device and the smartphone restarts.

Because the decryption key is removed that phone is not in an operational state.

THE most factual and important part of this action is that the phone does NOT ‘wipe itself’ nor is the data on it ‘destroyed’.

The 'data' that they seek is still there.

It’s just the the key to unscramble this data is not present.

Therefore the person cannot be charged for ‘destroying evidence’ as it is still on the phone.

Could a person be charged for destroying evidence (i.e. the files within a filing cabinet), by throwing away the key?

IF the US courts find that the ‘accused’ did ‘erase evidence’, which the ‘key’ is not part of, then the courts are corrupt beyond any shadow of a doubt.

In any event if you only rely on Australia’s ’news’ outlets to inform you on what’s going on in the Information Technology & Telecommunications world, you will truly be doing yourself a disservice.

See articles:

https://www.techspot.com/news/113236-us-prosecutors-charge-atlanta-man-after-grapheneos-phone.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/us/duress-password-phone-wipe-charge.html

WHEN PRIVACY IS A CRIME: US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system

Concern over US effort to prosecute Sam Tunick, accused by authorities of wiping his phone using GrapheneOS

A memorial to Manuel Terán, also known as Tortuguita,

a Cop City protester who was killed by police in January 2023.

The US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean.

The case, which had its first hearing on Monday, centers on a little-known US federal statute that makes it a crime to destroy property in an effort to prevent it from being seized.

Experts said it may be the first time the law has been aimed at the operating system, which works on Google Pixel phones, and expressed concerns about a technology created for privacy and security being used to criminalize protesters.

“It’s concerning – and sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default,” said Christophe Boutry, a cybersecurity and surveillance expert. Boutry and Bill Buddington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both said they had not seen a similar case.

The defendant, Sam Tunick, was stopped for interrogation at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport on 24 January last year, after vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Unbeknown to him, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City.

Opposition to the $109m police training center, which opened last spring, came from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns around police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police said the center was needed for “world-class” training and to attract new officers.

Several state attempts to prosecute Cop City protesters have foundered in the last several years, while this is the second recent federal effort, after the justice department announced another indictment last month.

The case began shortly after Tunick got off a plane in Atlanta, returning from a vacation spent whale-watching and enjoying nature on a friend’s boat. He did not know that a homeland security agent had circulated an email three hours before. The email contained Tunick’s name and photo and indicated he was being investigated for “suspected terrorism activities”. It was sent to agents on the Customs and Border Patrol tactical terrorism response team and an FBI Atlanta joint-terrorism taskforce officer.

When Tunick arrived in Atlanta, an agent took him to a room with a table, several chairs and a camera and microphone, and several agents began a “secondary inspection”. But all their questions were centered on child sexual abuse images.

These and other details were revealed in Monday’s hearing, held for a judge to hear testimony on a motion filed by Tunick’s federal public defenders, asking the court to suppress all evidence the agents obtained, including the erasure of the phone’s contents after he gave them a passcode, due to violations of his constitutional rights.

The interrogation, including the questions about child sexual abuse images, was “a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr Tunick’s connections” to the movement against Cop City, according to the motion.

Tunick asked four times during the interrogation to speak with a lawyer, but was rebuffed each time, according to courtroom testimony. Additionally, the agents produced no warrant and did not read Tunick his rights.

But a justice department attorney and the airport agents testifying on Monday asserted Tunick was merely subjected to an everyday interrogation at an international airport, “looking for anything that’s prohibited”, as Larry Findley, a CBP officer, said.

Agent Findley and several others repeatedly asked Tunick to open his phone during the interrogation, telling him they would seize it if he did not. When he finally provided a passcode, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart”, according to the motion.

The motion filed on Tunick’s behalf draws into focus the question of which constitutional rights apply and which ones are suspended at national borders, including international airports.

A judge’s decision on the motion will take at least until end of October.

Marlon Kautz, a member of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, said: “We all have a right to secure our private data against unconstitutional searches. And we should – especially in a time of rising authoritarianism.”

Meanwhile, Boutry, who lives in France, said Tunick’s case was of a piece with tendencies in France and Spain, where authorities have been frustrated in attempts to gain access to the phones of journalists, lawyers and political opponents due to GrapheneOS.

In Catalonia, Spain, police have been profiling people with Google Pixel phones, assuming they have GrapheneOS installed and are drug dealers or gang members.

At the same time, Boutry said, the “main goal [of the operating system] is protection of privacy”.

“They’re our phones and the state can’t tell us how to use them.”

Source:The Guardian

Corporations DICTATE how we communicate on the internet.

Today the internet is not the same as the one that came into the homes of the general population, even though it is a government controlled carriageway.

FIRSTLY, there is no such thing as ‘freedom of speech’.

Your ‘opinion’, or even facts that you present are censored, moderated and/or removed by corporations, especially if they do not fit the current political/mainstream media narrative.

Today the internet is under the control of a corporatocracy, a handful of billionaires, also a totalitarian (virtual) state, that would make Mussolini smile in his grave, as it’s thriving in a world beyond his dreams.

Surveillance capitalism is also the order of the business day, where if something is for ‘free’, YOU are the product, period.

You are conned that the information collected is for 'advertisers', where it primarily goes into the annals of governments. 

The world’s best surveillance device (for governments and corporations) is this self sponsored invention called the smartphone.

Governments and corporations are forcing, or rather ‘enticing’ the general population to use them, in order to monitor and later control them.

Personal Computers pale in comparison to the treasure trove of data that a smartphone produces.

Data is the new gold, as it has a many to one, sale relationship, compared to gold’s one to one.

A very popular resource/forum is reddit, where now it’s limiting how you communicate through it.

Before one could communicate via a browser on a PC or smartphone, whereas now if reddit detects that you’re using a browser on a smartphone, it will terminate your browsing where one MUST download the app to keep on using reddit.

So, where is the 'democracy' there? OOPS! There is none!

This is the way of the order of the new world, where privacy is becoming a criminal act.

The terrifying reason the internet exists - Weaponised against the masses from its inception?

Today, the 'interwebs' has fascist elements that would make our 'mate' Benito a proud man, as it's ideology was born before the tech was made to implement it.

Police and government surveillance is masquerading as so called 'advertisements'.

Deception by government and corporations is rife in the digital realm, where now, people who expose these ('alleged') criminal activities will be silenced through various new laws being put into place.

For those who are interested in a narrative format of an accurate account of what happened and what's going on, with regards to the tech, you can tune in to Cyb3rMaddy's Youtube channel, while you still can, where with regards to this topic you can see the video of the title:

The terrifying reason the internet exists:

Apple conning you that iPhones need to verify your age in the UK.

People should all be aware that governments and corporation lie to us every single day.

Apple are prolific liars, and that’s without any exaggeration whatsoever.

The new age verification laws put in place all over the world have seriously nothing to do with ‘child safety’ but rather everything to do with data collection, so that this can be used against the people to not only monitor and control their movements, but more importantly especially to stifle so their so called ‘free speech’.

Corporations (and governments) are now dictating how people can communicate on the internet, and that's deliberate by design.

See approx. 17 minute explanation by David Bombal on YouTube within the video of the title: Install GrapheneOS Before Your Phone Becomes the Checkpoint:

Laws like the Online Safety Act 2023 (UK) apply to websites and online services, where a phone's operating system does not fall under any of the two categories of the said Act.

Keeping in mind that Apple is an active participant of the FiveEyes 'Anglosphere' global surveillance network.

If you truly value your online security and privacy, the use of Apple products is not recommended.

How corporations get away with paedophilia and omit age verification

Governments are giving corporations a free pass to host material that can put the children (of the cannon fodder) in danger, contrary to their actions against the general population.

‘Age verification’ has been setup by shell corporations of Meta, in order to disassociate the onus from the ‘social media’ giants, where governments are following along with this.

The global policy to enact age verification started in the (penal) colony called Australia, under the false premise to ‘protect the children’.

In reality the action is used to hoover as much information as possible on a person that is connected to the internet, to be later used against that person.

People have too many ‘freedoms’ (e.g. of speech) on the internet and this must be kerbed by governments and corporations 

An operating system (either mobile or personal computer) that may not even be connected to the internet, must now be subject to age verification and even content scanning, to allegedly keep the children ‘safe’.

Source: https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions/which-platforms-are-age-restricted

Even though Facebook and Instagram are Meta’s ‘assets’ that are age-restricted social media platforms, at face value, other Meta assets Messenger and WhatApp are given free reign.

WhatApps is considered a ‘social media’ platform, yet it’s immune from ‘age-restriction’ law in Australia.

Roblox, facing over 150 child abuse cases,  needs them moved out of the courtroom, as it does not want the instances on ‘public record’.

What’s worse is that once you enter into an agreement to use Roblox, you forfeit any ability to pursue lawsuits in an open court.

How is that even allowed by the lawmakers?

Discord is also dodgy.

Keep in mind that's it's not about the safety of the children [of the serfs], but rather stifling people's alleged right to 'free speech' on the internet.

No one taking action on the Epstein Files?

No one going to prison for paedophilia?

No one releasing the FULL data cache?

In any event, the Epstein Files are a farce, as the statue of limitations has expired for many victims to obtain a so called 'remedy'.

Ontario police using spyware to take over your phone, fighting to keep almost everything about it secret

The police use of ODITs is so secret that police forces have signed agreements to drop serious criminal investigations rather than reveal the name of their vendor.

The Joint Technical Assistance Centre (JTAC) makes local police and prosecutors agree not to disclose key details of the so-called ODITs. JTAC is a collaboration of the OPP, Toronto Police Service, Peel Regional Police, York Regional Police, Durham Regional Police and Ottawa Police Service. Led by the OPP.

When police in Windsor began looking into an alleged international auto‑theft ring in late 2022, they turned to familiar investigative techniques.

Some officers went undercover, others conducted long hours of surveillance, while the courts gave police permission to hide a tracking device in the alleged ringleader’s car and to intercept his cellphone location.

Within a few months, cellphone data placed the main suspect’s phone near 23 car thefts, sometimes hours apart. Yet, police never caught him actually stealing any vehicles.

Up to this point, it was an investigation like many others — but the police believed it wasn’t enough.

In April 2023, Ontario Provincial Police and Windsor Police Service asked a judge for something far more intrusive: authorization to wiretap phones, plant audio probes in homes and vehicles, and to secretly deploy what law enforcement calls “on‑device investigative tools,” or ODITs. Far more than a simple wiretap, these allow police to not just intercept calls, but to directly hack into a target’s phone or computer to extract everything from call logs and photos to encrypted messages, and more.

Essentially spyware, an ODIT can grant almost unlimited access. Investigators can capture screenshots, monitor keypresses, access emails and text messages — including those that are encrypted — and even remotely activate microphones and cameras. All without the owner knowing.

By August, police announced 23 arrests, 279 charges, and more than $9 million in recovered vehicles.

But the case has also done something else: It has pulled back the curtain on how police forces in Ontario — not just in Windsor, but in Toronto and Peel Region — are now using these powerful technologies to reach deep inside suspects’ devices. And despite ODITs growing use in major prosecutions in the province, government lawyers and police are fighting tooth and nail to keep almost everything about them secret: how they work; what safeguards, if any, govern their use; even the names of the companies that sell them.

The secrecy around the tool is so extreme that the Crown may abandon the prosecution rather than reveal the vendor’s identity and details of the ODITs capabilities and limitations, according to a court document filed in Windsor Superior Court. 

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says the lack of openness is troubling.

“If police want to make the case that use of spyware is justified, they need to do this in a transparent manner that fully explains the details and level of intrusiveness of the tool,” Tamir Israel, the CCLA’s director of privacy, surveillance and technology, wrote in an email in response to the Star’s questions. 

If the secrecy makes it impossible for police to provide the information courts need to assess these tools, “then these tools are inappropriate for police investigations, and police should not be using them.”

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario — which has previously raised alarms about police use of artificial intelligence, facial recognition technology and genetic genealogy — shares the concern and says the office is “closely monitoring” ODITs in terms of technical capacity, privacy risks, guardrails and ongoing court cases where their use is involved.

Given the privacy and security risks, “it is critical that police adopt and apply an appropriate transparency and accountability framework,” the privacy commissioner’s office said in a statement. 

How Ontario police are using ODITs

On Tuesday, a highly secretive court case involving the use of ODITs is set to resume in Brampton, where prosecutors are fighting to keep details about the spyware under wraps.

Most of the court documents in the opium-smuggling investigation are under seal, pretrial arguments have been held behind closed doors, and the judge’s 146-page decision relating to ODIT-related disclosure remains under a publication ban — at least for now.

The type of ODIT used in both the Windsor and Brampton cases has been “shrouded in secrecy,” defence lawyers Kim Schofield and Miranda Brar wrote in their factum filed in Ontario Superior Court in the Windsor case. Although based in Toronto, the lawyers also represent some of the accused in Project Fairfield, the name of the Windsor vehicle theft investigation.

Schofield and Brar are challenging the constitutionality of the ODIT warrant, saying police did not release volumes of related information to the authorizing judge, nor did they tell him such documentation even existed. They also didn’t tell the judge about the agreement between the police and the Crown to end the prosecution in the event the court orders them to disclose the identity of the ODIT vendor.

This “novel technique” demands “scrutiny and fully informed judicial oversight,” Schofield and Brar write in their filings, arguing they need these details to ensure there was no infringement of their clients’ constitutional rights.

They’re also arguing the warrant is invalid. Police obtained a general warrant when they should have requested a search warrant — hacking into a phone to seize data is essentially a search of the device, they argue.

The CCLA’s Israel says that because police in Ontario appear to be using commercial spyware tools, the public absolutely needs to know whether the currently secret vendor can see, store or access any of the data being collected.

“A court needs to understand the full scope of how the tool is going to operate if it’s going to fully assess its impact,” he wrote.

“This capability is among the most intrusive in terms of the detailed window it can open into any individual’s life and in a democratic society.”

He noted that regimes around the world lacking strong human rights protections have misused spyware tools to spy on political dissidents, journalists, civil society groups, political opponents and others in their home countries and around the world, including Canada.

Why so secret?

In court documents reviewed by the Star, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada says that, like other police techniques, details about how the spyware works must be kept secret if revealing them would compromise future investigations. The accused still gets full access to the evidence gathered — just not the technical play‑by‑play of how police obtained it, the Crown argues.

If disclosure “results in the police no longer having access to an effective technological tool that allows it to intercept communications, then that will have a profound impact on public safety and the ability of the police to do their job,” they write.

In the separate Brampton case, Schofield, Brar and lawyers Leora Shemesh and Michael Little are representing three brothers charged in connection with opium smuggling. They all declined to comment as their cases are before the court.

Dubbed Project Vegas, the Crown’s case against the accused drug dealers relies almost entirely on ODIT-derived messages. Defence lawyers are demanding access to the tool’s manuals, configuration details and vendor information, arguing it’s the only way they can make a full answer and defence.

The Windsor court documents indicate that federal prosecutors in Brampton have refused to release more than 140 documents related to the ODIT, citing Section 37 of the Canada Evidence Act. That section allows the Crown to object to disclosure of information on the grounds “of a specified public interest.”

The Windsor court documents reveal ODITs in Ontario are managed by the Joint Technical Assistance Centre (JTAC), a little‑known unit that pools resources from multiple police agencies — the OPP and the local services in Toronto, Ottawa and York, Peel and Durham regions — and is funded by the province.

The court documents say JTAC has a relationship with a private company vendor. But the information is so secret that JTAC is making the Crown and local police sign an agreement to potentially drop major prosecutions rather than reveal the name of the company that made the tool, Brar and Schofield write in their factum. 

Disclosure of sensitive information — including the vendor’s identity, where they’re located, the name of the tool, its capabilities and its technical infrastructure — could impact “relationships with domestic and international partners, and undermine the JTAC’s ability to use the tools and techniques in the future,” reads an “engagement agreement” in the Windsor court documents.

There are a number of reasons why the vendor should be known, Israel argues. “Different companies have different track records when it comes to their data handling practices, their respect for human rights and more,” he writes, crediting the University of Toronto’s Citizen’s Lab for putting information about specific spyware tools and companies in the public domain.

“This is not a tool that police buy and operate themselves, and as a result, you cannot separate the vendor from the tool.”

A parliamentary committee report on the RCMP use of ODITs stated the Mounties have dropped a number of prosecutions rather than reveal key details.

The scrutiny pushed the Mounties, in 2024, to publish a “transparency bulletin” that said ODITs had been used in 32 investigations between 2017 and 2022.

However, in an email responding to the Star’s request for updated information, the RCMP indicated ODITs have only been used in three additional investigations since 2022. “To be clear, ODITs are used extremely rarely and in limited cases,” involving serious criminal and national security investigations, a spokesperson wrote in an email.

They’re also expensive.

A former senior intelligence officer and expert on national security and intelligence told a parliamentary committee that just one operation involving an ODIT “will easily reach half a million dollars. That’s just to make one interception on one target with maybe one device only.”

Source:Toronto Star

With regards to Australia's corrupt police forces, when will this technology be available to them and will the general population be aware of this? 

What is Australia and Who Runs it?

Let's start off with what Australia is not.

Australia is not a "Lucky Country", sorry Donald Horne, it's factually still a (self governing) colony where it won't take long to find that in the Constitution.

It may have been 'lucky' at one stage where it was "run mainly by second-rate people", but for quite a while now, it is deliberately 'mismanaged' by total scum in office that are also destroying Australian people's quality of life, more on that for another article.

Also, Australia has become authoritarian state with elements of a totalitarian régime.

It also has other elements such as fascism, oligarchy and nepotism just to spice things up a little.

It's truly a 'Money for Mates' paradise.

SO, who's been running Australia for a while?

See half an hour video by OnePath Network of the title: Israel Is Running Australia and No One Is Talking About It 

The signs are in every state, e.g. Victoria:

Google WIPES OUT over 700 videos of Israel's Human Rights abuse in Palestine - Of Course It Does!

"YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations", 4 November 2025

A documentary featuring mothers surviving Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A video investigation uncovering Israel’s role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist. Another video revealing Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank.

YouTube surreptitiously deleted all these videos in early October by wiping the accounts that posted them from its website, along with their channels’ archives. The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

The move came in response to a U.S. government campaign to stifle accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Palestinian groups’ YouTube channels hosted hours of footage documenting and highlighting alleged Israeli government violations of international law in both Gaza and the West Bank, including the killing of Palestinian civilians...

After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants and charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant with war crimes in Gaza, the Trump administration escalated its defense of Israel’s actions by sanctioning ICC officials and targeting people and organizations that work with the court...

“Congress did not intend to allow the president to cut off the flow of information to the American public and the world — instead, information, including documents and videos, are specifically exempted under the statute that the president cited as his authority for issuing the ICC sanctions.”

YouTube...confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the groups’ accounts as a direct result of State Department sanctions against the group after a review. The Trump administration leveled the sanctions against the organizations in September over their work with the International Criminal Court in cases charging Israeli officials of war crimes.

“Google is committed to compliance with applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws,” YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle said in a statement...

Al Mezan... told The Intercept that its YouTube channel was abruptly terminated this year on October 7 without prior notification...

...Al-Haq’s channel was deleted on October 3...with a message from YouTube that its “content violates our guidelines.”...

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which the U.N. describes as the oldest human rights organization in Gaza, said in a statement that YouTube’s move “protects perpetrators from accountability.”...

The three human rights groups’ account terminations cumulatively amount to the erasure of more than 700 videos...

The Al-Haq spokesperson said Mailchimp, the mailing list service, also deleted the group’s account in September. (Mailchimp and its parent company, Intuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)...

Source:business-humanrights.org

The EU is Ditching WhatsApp and So Should YOU!

"WhatsApp is also not truly secure, no matter what Meta tells you"

NEVER forget the the creep Zuckerberg LIES to an authority (Congress) so why should he not lie to his 'products' you know the people that use his platforms.

See report:

TOP REPORT: Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can’t Trust His Testimony.

Never trust what the pervert says, especially when it's to the goyím (né cattle).

Keep in mind that he's a government 'resource' as he's operating under the Five-Eyes 'Anglosphere' surveillance network.

See under 10 minute video from TLDR News EU:

IF you truly value your products, you will not use Meta products, where YOU are the product, how ironic.

Trump's Lies Exposed in a Series of Contradictions.

The old adage; "How do you know a politician is lying? His lips are moving" holds truth in Trump's public appearances.

See a collection of Trump's public appearances where he lies through his teeth to the world, as collated by Jimmy Dore within the video of the title: WATCH: Trump CAN’T STOP Contradicting Himself! , paying attention to Kurt Metzger's comments.

Trump lied on "regime change", day care, medicaid, medicare just to name a few.

With the U.S. and Israel attack on Iran, it's very clear that the US is Israel's soldier.

If Every Nation Is in Debt, Who Are They Paying? How Governments install Austerity

The people in governments and corporations truly do not care about the 'people'/serfs/commoners/general population.

The people in government are generally self serving, where all they truly care about is how much they can siphon from the positions they're in.

This 12 minute video is a great summary of how governments install austerity via a fraudulent monetary system.

See "If Every Nation Is in Debt… Who Are They Paying?" by Hidden Capital

"We the people" are the April Fools.

Hong Kong police can demand phone and computer passwords under amended national security law

Refusing to comply could lead to year in jail and hefty fine, while providing false information carries up to three years in prison

Hong Kong police can now demand that people suspected of breaching the city’s national security law provide mobile phone or computer passwords in a further crackdown on dissent.

The amendments to the law also empower customs officers to seize items that are deemed to have “seditious intention”, regardless of whether any person has been arrested for an offence endangering national security because of the items.

Refusing to comply could lead to up to one year’s jail and a fine of up to HK$100,000 ($12,773), while providing false or misleading information could bring up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to HK$500,000.

The city government on Monday published the amendments to the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020, using powers to bypass Hong Kong’s legislature. Officials will brief lawmakers on Tuesday, a government statement said.

The sweeping law punishes acts, including subversion and collusion with foreign forces, with up to life imprisonment.

The law sparked criticism from western governments and rights groups but Beijing and Hong Kong officials said it was needed to restore stability after the city was rocked by months of pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The amendments empower police to require a person under investigation suspected of endangering national security to provide any password or decryption method for electronic devices and to give the police “any reasonable and necessary information or assistance”.

Urania Chiu, a law lecturer in the UK researching Hong Kong, said the new provisions interfered with fundamental liberties, including the privacy of communication and the right to a fair trial.

Chiu said: “The sweeping powers given to law enforcement officers without any need for judicial authorisation are grossly disproportionate to any legitimate aim the bylaw purports to achieve.”

A Hong Kong government spokesperson said the amended rules conformed to the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and its human rights provisions, and “will not affect the lives of the general public or the normal operation of institutions and organisations”.

According to the Security Bureau, a total of 386 people have been arrested for national security crimes so far, with 176 people and four companies convicted. The Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai was sentenced to a 20-year jail term in February for collusion with foreign forces and sedition, sparking international criticism.

Source:theguardian

Coming to a colony (e.g. Australia), near you? Why not? We're half way there anyway!

Keeping in mind that Australia is a totalitarian state, and NOT a (purported) democracy.

Meta deletes your personal messages

The online world, or rather the World Wide Web, is a fascist corporatocracy.

If people believe they have a right to ‘free speech’ under an amendment to whatever so called constitution their nation has, this is not the case in the digital world.

Corporations rule and are given free reign over the online serfs/slaves/products.

They and only they can decide what can be not only posted ‘publicly*’ but now privately, where there is little recourse if one has been banned from posting something.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger now deletes content in ‘private’ messages between people.

No it wasn't, it was removed by Meta!

No only does it (Meta) delete the message from the sender but it also deletes the recipient’s message.

The message can as innocuous as a cat video can be, to political satire or a link to a medical article, where ZERO justification is given and the content is removed.

We have entered a new age of slavery, digital slavery that even law makers in the ‘real world’ are upholding. 

TV series Black Mirror seems to be a dystopian documentary series rather than just ‘entertainment’.

IF you value your privacy (and therefore security), Meta products are not recommended to be used.

* IT’s not technically ‘public’ as it exists within the (private) domain of that corporation’s forum/platform