privacy

Europe's Biggest Tech Fines Are Getting Overturned in Court

John Z Black Mar 17, 2026

Policy, Law & Governance #gdpr #amazon #cloudflare #eu-regulation #privacy #piracy-shield #italy #policy

Amazon just got a $858 million GDPR fine thrown out. Cloudflare is fighting Italy's Piracy Shield. Big Tech's legal teams are now the real counterparty to European regulation.

The Week Trust Kept Breaking

John Z Black Mar 15, 2026

Weekly Recap #the-week-in-cyber #iran-cyber #supply-chain #ai-agents #patch-management #ransomware #privacy #cisa

Iranian wipers, poisoned dev tools, AI agents as attack surfaces, patches that never stopped coming, and a ransomware negotiator working for the bad guys. Trust fell apart in every direction this week.

DOGE's Data Problem: Why America's Federal Privacy Crisis Is a Cybersecurity Story

John Z Black Mar 15, 2026

Privacy & Digital Rights #data-governance #privacy #federal-data #access-controls #doge #civil-liberties

DOGE personnel reportedly accessed federal systems holding tax returns, Social Security records, and benefits data without proper audit trails or legal authority. This isn't politics. It's a data governance failure affecting tens of millions of Americans.

Meta's Killing Instagram Encryption While Bragging About Nuking 11 Million Scam Accounts

John Z Black Mar 14, 2026

Privacy & Platforms #meta #instagram #end-to-end-encryption #privacy #scam-accounts #e2ee #signal #whatsapp

Meta's shutting down Instagram's end-to-end encrypted chats in May while touting the removal of 10.9 million scam accounts. Both are real moves. The tension between them says a lot about what kind of security Meta actually cares about.

CBP Was Tracking Your Phone With Ad Data -- And When Their Own Privacy Officers Said Stop, They Were Fired

John Z Black Mar 14, 2026

Privacy & Policy #cbp #dhs #privacy #surveillance #data-broker #foia #government-accountability #location-tracking

CBP bought commercial ad data to track Americans' phones without warrants. When internal privacy officers pushed back on related illegal conduct, they got canned.

The FBI's Warrant-Free Surveillance Just Hit a New High -- Right as Congress Finally Moves to Stop It

John Z Black Mar 14, 2026

Privacy & Policy #section-702 #fisa #fbi #surveillance #privacy #congress #warrantless-search #civil-liberties

The FBI searched Americans' private communications without a warrant 7,413 times last year, up 34%. A bipartisan bill just landed to require warrants going forward.

When 'No' Means Nothing: Privacy Erosion from DHS Surveillance to Duolingo Tracking

John Z Black Mar 11, 2026

Privacy #privacy #surveillance #dhs #duolingo #bytedance #gdpr #tracking

DHS fired the privacy officers who questioned surveillance orders. Duolingo keeps sending your data to ByteDance after you opt out. Your 'no' doesn't work when nobody's enforcing it.

AI Agents Have an Infrastructure Problem — and Researchers Just Proved It

John Z Black Mar 11, 2026

AI Security #ai-security #mcp #red-team #llm #privacy #ai-agents

MCP protocol flaws, a 38-researcher red team exercise, and LLM-powered deanonymization all landed the same week. AI agent security isn't a future problem. It's a right now problem.