Guardian Project @guardianproject@librem.one

In a major victory for digital rights and common sense, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has officially categorized Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as "lawful technical tools" while establishing new boundaries for online copyright disputes.

The landmark judgment — handed down in July 2026 — stems from a complex legal battle over the online publication of Anne Frank's historical manuscripts. At its core, the case forced Europe's top judges to answer a highly technical question: if a publisher actively tries to block visitors from a specific country, are they still breaking the law if a user sneaks past the digital border using circumvention software?

According to the CJEU, the answer is no. As long as a website employs "state-of-the-art" geo-blocking technology, the publisher cannot be held liable for copyright infringement simply because a determined reader decides to fire up the best VPN to bypass the restrictions.

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpns-are-lawful-technical-tools-says-eu-court-in-landmark-anne-frank-copyright-ruling

Want to know more? Read our latest explainer on why ePrivacy matters, why cookie banners are only part of the story, and how we can move beyond today’s broken system ➡️ https://edri.org/our-work/cookies-and-consent-why-eprivacy-matters-for-our-browsing-life/

When I started building with React Native and Expo, it became much harder to write the recipe to be available on #FDroid.

#CastLab was my first one, with the help of maintainers. The last build of #HolosSocial failed (it happens with Expo upgrades). An F-Droid maintainer warned me first on my repo. Before I could act, they made the changes to the recipe so new builds were possible, and silently closed the issue.

Just a thank you to the #FDroid team, they help users and devs alike!

Today, July 18 (3:00–5:00 p.m.), we continue our four-part series on the topic:

“Digital Neocolonialism: Data, Resources, Dependencies—Who Benefits?”

This time: Content Moderation at Scale—How Labor Extractivism Powers Platform Models. With SANA AHMAD (https://social.bund.de/@Weizenbaum_Institut)

Event in English more information: https://www.topio.info/digitaler_neokolonialismus.html#3

#ContentModeration #DigitalNeocolonialism #berlin #moabit #mitte

The FSFE turned 25 this year!! Hurrah for a quarter century promoting and defending #SoftwareFreedom 🙌
Check out our timeline with our key achievements since 2001: https://fsfe.org/about/timeline/

#FreeSoftware

At the core of #AndroidDeveloperVerification are a couple potentially useful ideas. #Google has entirely wrapped them in a pile of anti-competitive garbage designed to defend their massive #monopoly profit margins, but nonetheless, those specific technical ideas might still be useful. #iOS's "notarization" is basically the same. That leads me to ask the key question:

What would a #FOSS-respecting system of #verification look like? What #identity info is useful for trusting the #developer?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/116890892112806689

Chat Control 1.0 is extended. Via undemocratic procedural tricks plotted by the @EPPGroup, the national government, and most probably also the @EUCommission. The question is: What’s next?

Not only in terms of data protection but in terms of how do we defend democracy. And if you want to say *xit, then you can easily spare us this answer, especially given that this was national governments’ agenda in the first place.

Wow – pure SnakeOil, those so-called anti-virus or anti-malware scanners! "we are unable to proceed with the whitelisting request unless the application is available on the Google Play Store"?!? WTF?!? 🤯

And yes, that's part of a real response a dev got.

So they claim: your app is malware, as long as it is not at Google Play. I'd say we've heard it the other way around, too…

#SnakeOil #AntiVirus #MalwareScanner #falsePositive #Google

Public records confirm that the Austrian Ministry of the Interior bought Webloc, a geolocation mass surveillance system based on data from mobile apps and digital advertising = almost certainly illegal under the GDPR.

Austria is now - after Hungary - the second EU state known to use such a system.
https://mastodon.social/@wchr/116817729453918994

I'm leaving #Google: https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/

While I believe that I have been able to do some good with my continuing (part-time) engagement in the Android security and privacy team since returning to Austria a couple of years ago, the deal with the US #DoW is completely misaligned with my personal ethical principles. I will, therefore, no longer be able to act as a contact point to Google-internal teams and discussions, but will continue our research on private digital identity, end-to-end secure communication and storage, network privacy, (embedded/mobile) operating system security, supply chain transparency, etc. from a purely academic point of view. Android - and in particular AOSP - will remain a research interest, so please feel free to reach out on any of those topics for potential collaborations or discussions on the academic side.

This is absolutely nuts: hackers are hijacking high-profile Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta's AI chatbot to change the email on the account. Meta's AI does it, hacker gets password reset code, they're in. A staggering security issue

https://www.404media.co/hackers-simply-asked-meta-ai-to-give-them-access-to-high-profile-instagram-accounts-it-worked/

RE: https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/116679473218827225

I'm so proud of our government institutions that are moving to Mastodon 🥹

There are now several Dutch ministeries, provincies, agencies and municipalities, but also officials such as state secretaries and ministeries on social.overheid.nl 🥳

A big thank you to @manfredzielinski for making this happen.

The era of unchecked tech monopolies is over.

We're taking decisive action to enforce open, fair, and contestable digital markets.

Our measures had real consequences:

🛡️ Fined major platforms for anti-competitive practices and ignoring consumer data choices

⌚ Required strict hardware interoperability for smartwatches and connected wearables

☁️ Launched three investigations into dominance in cloud services and into search engines hiding media

Accountability is here 👉 https://link.europa.eu/YTddh6

"This case is one of the major judicial tests of the EU’s interoperability obligations under the #DMA. This law aims at preventing large technology companies from unfairly locking out competitors. The FSFE seeks to enforce the DMA in a #FreeSoftware developer friendly way" - Lucas Lasota, FSFE Legal Programme Manager

Find out more: https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260519-01.en.html

#SoftwareFreedom #Applelitigation

I had a chat wtih @eighthave about @fdroidorg on @OpenSourceSecurity

We cover how it works, the security angles for running an app store, and talk about some of the changes that are coming for Android that will make F-Droid's job a lot harder

I learned a ton from Hans, it's a great discussion

https://opensourcesecurity.io/2026/2026-05-fdroid-hans-steiner/