Martin Shelton

"We made sand think."

I mean, no, we didn't. But let's say we did — what a very rude to do to those innocent computers.

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities | TechCrunch ProtonMail, a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French

About five years ago we learned that Proton shared the IP address associated with a French climate activist with Swiss police, who passed it along to French police.

Again, Proton is not for anonymity. techcrunch.com/2021/09/06/p...

This sounds like a killer job for someone who cares about privacy and getting the bag. Help Signal keep doing their critical work. jobs.lever.co/signal/68f75...

Google says half of all zero-days it tracked in 2025 targeted buggy enterprise tech | TechCrunch Enterprise software was a major focus of zero-day activity during 2025, with security and networking devices, like firewalls, VPNs, and virtualization platforms among the most targeted by malicious ha...

Half of the zero-day bugs that Google tracked last year were found in buggy enterprise tech, including VPNs, firewalls, and routers, which are *meant* to protect large corporations from intruders. (And yet, the irony.)

It's also basic flaws are getting big companies hacked.

Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protester A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the ...

Proton is fine if you are looking for encrypted communications between Proton / PGP users. It's important to remember it is ABSOLUTELY NOT for anonymity. In this case, a user was unmasked because Proton had their payment data. www.404media.co/proton-mail-...

Google urges Supreme Court to strike down geofence warrants as unconstitutional In its amicus brief, Google called the warrants a violation of people’s rights and said that in recent months it has objected to more than 3,000 geofence warrants on constitutional grounds.

Google tells Supreme Court geofence warrants are unconstitutional. No court would authorize a physical search of hundreds of people or places, yet geofence warrants sometimes do so by design,” Google’s brief argued.

therecord.media/google-urges...

For sure. I mostly use Windows for Steam compatibility. Their recent moves have me just foregoing most Steam games. Not a big deal for me to walk away. That’s not going to work very well for most people for whom this is their daily driver, and if they’ve built businesses on top of this OS.

In fairness, I did agree to the terms of service that almost no one read.

Windows 12 Reportedly Set for Release This Year as a Fully Modular, Subscription-Based, AI-Focused OS Reports suggest that Microsoft may be gearing up to launch Windows 12 this year, which will be a modular and AI-focused OS.

I’m wondering how Windows can get more hostile to its users. Perhaps they can send over Steve Ballmer to punch me in the gut every time I turn on a Windows device. tech4gamers.com/windows-12-r...

A scene from The Simpsons in which five men circle two monkeys engaged in a knife fight. The men are holding up fistfuls of dollars and cheering on the monkeys.

I don’t use Kalshi or Polymarket but this is what I imagine they’re like

the official gambling app of United States democracy

Baby me: PGP, wow cool, hacker stuff
Grey hairs me: I will decrypt this and reply with my Signal. I'm so damn tired

Our agreement with the Department of War Details on OpenAI’s contract with the Department of War, outlining safety red lines, legal protections, and how AI systems will be deployed in classified environments.

OpenAI is saying, here are the laws that make this decision okay. Then they go on to list a series of laws that creative lawyers are taking advantage of to enact surveillance both internationally, and domestically. I'm not sure this is the kind of defense they think it is. openai.com/index/our-ag...

OpenAI's deal with the DoD definitely looks like it's okay with existing dubious domestic surveillance loopholes.

This includes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under Section 702, the FBI has been running warrantless searches on Americans' data 'incidentally' collected along the way.

Our agreement with the Department of War Details on OpenAI’s contract with the Department of War, outlining safety red lines, legal protections, and how AI systems will be deployed in classified environments.

OpenAI is saying, here are the laws that make this decision okay. Then they go on to list a series of laws that creative lawyers are taking advantage of to enact surveillance both internationally, and domestically. I'm not sure this is the kind of defense they think it is. openai.com/index/our-ag...

OpenAI is basically saying, here are the laws that make this decision okay. Then they go on to list a series of laws that creative lawyers are taking advantage of to enact surveillance both internationally, and domestically. I'm not sure this is the kind of defense they think it is.

OpenAI's deal with the DoD definitely looks like it's okay with existing dubious domestic surveillance loopholes.

This includes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under Section 702, the FBI has been running warrantless searches on Americans' data 'incidentally' collected along the way.

User Chris: What was the core difference why you think the DoW accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic Sam Altman: I can't speak for them, but to speculate with the best understanding of the situation. *First, I saw reporting that they were extremely close on a deal, and for much of the time both sides really wanted to reach one. I have seen what happens in tense negotiations when things get stressed and deteriorate super fast, and I could believe that was a large part of what happened here. *We believe in a layered approach to safety--building a safety stack, deploying FDEs and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the DoW. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one. *We and the DoW got comfortable with the contractual language, but I can understand other people would have a different opinion here. *I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did

I saw some folks asking what the difference was between what OpenAI signed with the DoD and what Anthropic said they wanted, and Sam more or less admits here the key point: OpenAI's deal requires them to trust the NSA. Anthropic's contract had real safeguards.

Just when I thought I had enough reasons to walk waaaaaay around these guys.

Registration: FPF's J-school digital security training program Register here for Freedom of the Press Foundation’s free, virtual training program designed to help you directly deliver critical content from our U.S. J-school digital security curriculum. Led by FPF...

If you are a journalism instructor and want to get started teaching digital security for your students, we'd love to show you how. Sign up for our training for journalism educators. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Registration: FPF's J-school digital security training program Register here for Freedom of the Press Foundation’s free, virtual training program designed to help you directly deliver critical content from our U.S. J-school digital security curriculum. Led by FPF...

If you are a journalism instructor and want to get started teaching digital security for your students, we'd love to show you how. Sign up for our training for journalism educators. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Five security lessons from the FBI’s Washington Post raid Court documents show how investigators can track digital activities, and reveal ways to harden journalists’ devices

Investigators tried to make a forensic extraction of Hannah Hatanson's phone. They said it didn't work because Lockdown Mode for iPhone was enabled. But they did still manage to unlock her laptop and take photos and recordings of her Signal messages. Read our analysis. freedom.press/digisec/blog...

Judge says government may not search devices seized from Post reporter The ruling suggested that the federal judge in Virginia did not trust the government to conduct a narrow search of Hannah Natanson’s devices.

Good news for once. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Four Reasons FISA 702 Still Needs a Warrant Rule for US Person Queries Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”) is controversial because it is a warrantless surveillance authority that collects Americans’ private communications. Although targ...

First and most importantly, it requires a warrant for US person queries. The FBI has systematically abused 702 to snoop on protesters, lawmakers, Congressional staff, campaign donors, and journalists.

You can read more from CDT about why adding a warrant rule for queries is an essential measure:

Now also a certain subset of AIs.

The 2026 journalist’s digital security checklist Our digital security training team's checklist to help journalists secure their digital life.

In tumultuous times, we believe in being prepared, not scared.

We’ve distilled the advice our trainers have shared with thousands of journalists over the years into the actionable, concrete steps in our 2026 journalist’s digital security checklist:

Judge who allowed FBI to search Washington Post reporter’s home rips into Justice Department | CNN Politics A federal judge ripped into the Justice Department on Friday for failing to inform him of the applicability of a law intended to protect journalists from government searches and seizures when it asked...

The Justice Department seems like they are having a very difficult time keeping their facts straight with judges, part eleventy thousand. www.cnn.com/2026/02/20/p...

The Forbes 30 Under 30 is kind of like, “Hey, all of these people are driving 180 in a 65”

If you're a journalist who covers law enforcement, don't let their claims about slick and effective technology go unchallenged.