Guardian Project @guardianproject@librem.one

Last weekend I co-organised a "EU policy devroom" at #FOSDEM, marking the end of a wild 17 month ride in EU policy land working on the #CyberResilienceAct.
A blog I just published provides an overview of CRA #FOSDEM content, including my personal story starting #FOSS policy engagement in Brussels.
I hope it will contribute to a shared understanding of how the #CRA will most likely affect developers of #opensource software. Feedback welcome.

https://blog.nlnetlabs.nl/what-i-learned-in-brussels-the-cyber-resilience-act/

Think tank funded by Big Tech argues #AI’s climate impact is nothing to worry about - https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/07/ai_climate_impact/ it's the "cryptocurrencies don't use much energy" argument all over again...

For people asking why Encrypted Client Hello is so important:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/26/national-security-agency-americans-internet-browsing-records-warrantless/

Even if you are using DOH (or ODoH), your ISP can see what websites your visiting (and then sell to NSA) by inspecting the certificate SNI field. Even with Encrypted SNI (ESNI), there are artifacts of the TLS session establishment leaked that can be used for TLS Fingerprinting - things like ALPN, and cipher suite.

#privacy #EncryptedClientHello #ECH

Mozilla added scanning of data broker sites to its privacy protecting Mozilla Monitor

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-mozilla-monitor-plus-a-new-tool-to-automatically-remove-your-personal-information-from-data-broker-sites/

#mozilla #firefox #data #privacy

The White House just announced visa restrictions on those involved in spyware misuse. Are you a family member of someone misusing or facilitating spyware? You can be sanctioned as well! Great step to further delegitimise the highly invasive surveillance industry!

https://www.state.gov/announcement-of-a-visa-restriction-policy-to-promote-accountability-for-the-misuse-of-commercial-spyware/

This week in F-Droid (TWIF) was published again.

Our highlight this week:

F-Droid and F-Droid Basic were updated to the stable version 1.19.0. It brings automatic background updates and a new and better workflow for adding repositories. Please note: this version is not yet the suggested version, so you need to enable beta updates, if you don't want to wait any longer.

Also we talk about notable updates oft some apps and the ongoing spring cleaning.

https://f-droid.org/2024/02/01/twif.html
#FDroid

Do you share F-Droid repos with the NFC feature in our client app?

Background: the support for Android NFC Beam was removed in Android 14, so we probably have to remove this feature in the future. We want to know if anybody is impacted by this.

#FDroid

Hello #FOSDEM, this guy, Alberto Marti, announced 3bn euros for this open source European cloud project with an explicit focus on interoperability.That’s more than 2x the funding announced here back in December. Is there a link online for more info?

Did the other 2bn come from private sector investors?

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/ipcei-next-generation-cloud-infrastructure-and-services-boost-europes-digital-decade

After #FOSDEM my current understanding of how #EU #CRA and #PLD affects #FDroid and anyone who contributes to it:

* F-Droid org makes the "product" so it would be liable
* F-Droid is currently entirely non-commercial, handles no money
* Volunteer contributors are very clearly exempt from all this
* Donation funded contributions are also exempt
* Contracted contributors are helping build the regulated product, so the legal entities of the contractors would not be liable for F-Droid's "product"

#FOSDEM 2024 will be happening in a bit more than 1 week in Brussels!

Catch my talk "From phone hardware to mobile Linux" on Saturday morning or "Open Source for Sustainable and Long lasting Phones" (together with @agnes007 in the big Janson room!) on Sunday afternoon!

Or come by the postmarketOS (+friends) stand in the AW building!

I hope to see you there!

Links:

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2234-from-phone-hardware-to-mobile-linux/
https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3362-open-source-for-sustainable-and-long-lasting-phones/
https://fosdem.org/2024/stands/

This week in F-Droid (TWIF) was published again.

We have a lot of information in it, so jump right in: https://f-droid.org/2024/01/25/twif.html

In short:

- FOSDEM is around the corner.
- We specifically talk about the following apps: Money Manager Ex, Open Video Editor, Tachiyomi, Fossify Phone, KOReader, OnionShare, Organic Maps and OsmAnd~.
- The spring-cleaning of our repo is underway, and we have found some proprietary dependencies. The affected versions were removed.

#FDroid

VICTORY! Ring has announced it will no longer facilitate warrantless police requests for footage to Ring’s users. This comes after years of sustained pressure from EFF and other civil liberties and privacy advocates. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/ring-announces-it-will-no-longer-facilitate-police-requests-footage-users

Nächste Woche geht es wieder los: Ihr könnt euch mit euer #OpenSource-Software-Idee bei uns bewerben. Es warten 47.500€, Coachings sowie Vernetzungs- und Bildungsangebote auf euch!
Alle Infos:
prototypefund.de

Court ruling rejects spyware vendor’s motion to dismiss lawsuit filed by Apple. Judge says anti-hacking laws fits #Pegasus case „to a T“. #NSOGroup will fight on https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/24/us_judge_rejects_pegasus_spyware/ #Staatstrojaner

“Ring hopefully will altogether be out of the business of platforming casual and warrantless police requests for footage to its users,” EFF’s Matthew Guariglia told @verge though we remain "deeply skeptical" about how police and Ring will cooperate.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/24/24049165/ring-police-neighbors-app-clips-search-warrant

Fun fact: it's data privacy week 🔒 so here are some of our favorite extensions for a safer online experience.

1. Multi-account containers! cookies are separated by container, so you can use multiple accounts at the same time.

2. Privacy badger: this extension automatically blocks invisible trackers and opts you out of data sharing & selling.

3. History cleaner: this deletes browsing history older than a specified number of days 👀

Which ones are you currently using?

NEWS: OPENAI QUIETLY DELETES BAN ON USING CHATGPT FOR “MILITARY AND WARFARE”

The Pentagon has its eye on the leading AI company, which this week softened its ban on military use.

Read here: https://theintercept.com/2024/01/12/open-ai-military-ban-chatgpt/

We have defined a secure and usable architecture for decentralized package repositories that any mobile user can use and understand possible risks.

The next official release of the official F-Droid client will widely deploy this to our users. We then plan to make a final architecture document, so others can understand the whole model.

We would love any kind of feedback, our drafts are here: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/wiki/-/wikis/Repository-Management-Overhaul#architecture-and-ux-considerations

Its cool to see more and more apps using #MabLibre. It used to be so many apps just used #Google for maps and then just failed on #GoogleFree devices. For example, I just downloaded a city's bike sharing app made by a mega corp, and it uses MabLibre so works fine without Play Services. My experience used to be that all the navigation apps required Google.