The EU Commission is telling all 27 member states to deploy its age verification app by end of 2026. This is the same app a researcher bypassed in under two minutes back in April. Von der Leyen says platforms have "no more excuses." Show your digital passport to read a website. https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-pushes-age-verification-app-for-all-states

Britain is running a public consultation on banning social media for under-16s, except ministers have already confirmed in parliament that the ban is happening no matter what the public says. The consultation is theater. Stopping a teenager from logging in means every adult uploads ID, which is exactly what the government ultimately wants. https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-social-media-under-16s-restrictions-pre-decided

Australia is forcing Meta, Google, and TikTok to prop up News Corp, Nine and the ABC. Money is taken from the platforms people actually use and handed to the legacy giants people are moving away from. The Communications Minister calls it an "incentive." It's more of a subsidy for the giant incumbents. https://reclaimthenet.org/australia-wants-to-force-big-tech-to-pay-legacy-media

Congress just renewed Section 702 for three more years, and the FBI can still search Americans' emails and texts without a warrant if the data was scooped up while spying on foreigners. Twenty Republicans tried to add a warrant requirement and lost. The program was sold as foreign surveillance, but it has always been a backdoor into Americans' communications, and Wednesday's vote made that backdoor permanent for the rest of the decade. https://reclaimthenet.org/house-renews-fisa-section-702-rejects-warrant-requirement

Colorado’s AI law tells developers which kinds of discrimination the state likes and which it doesn’t, and the First Amendment may have something to say about that. https://reclaimthenet.org/doj-backs-musks-xai-in-first-amendment-fight-over-colorado-ai-law

Court Forces German Chancellor Merz to Open Files on 300 “Insult the Chancellor” Cases https://reclaimthenet.org/merz-insult-law-controversy

Eurail demanded passport numbers to sell train tickets. Now 308,777 of those passports are on the dark web, and victims are paying out of pocket to replace them. Every mandatory ID scheme rests on this same fantasy: that the database won't get breached. They always do. https://reclaimthenet.org/the-eurail-breach-and-the-digital-id-problem

Turkey is moving to ban anonymous VPNs. Approved providers must log everything and hand it over. Unapproved means illegal. Erdoğan is turning the tool Turks use to escape surveillance into another surveillance pipe. https://reclaimthenet.org/turkey-to-ban-anonymous-vpns

France's government ID portal just lost up to 19 million records. Names, DOBs, addresses, phone numbers, logins. A third of the country, sitting in a criminal forum listing. This is the same government lobbying for encryption backdoors and mandatory digital ID. They can't protect what they already have. https://reclaimthenet.org/france-titres-data-breach-centralized-digital-identity

Massie and Boebert's new bill effectively kills the third-party doctrine. No more warrantless access to your bank records, your browsing history, your location data just because it sits on a corporate server. The terms of service can't consent to surveillance on your behalf. Worth reading in full. https://reclaimthenet.org/surveillance-accountability-act

"Harvest now, decrypt later." Intelligence agencies are already hoarding encrypted files, betting quantum computers will crack them in ten years. Your medical records, legal docs, everything in Google Drive. Tuta Drive just launched to fix this. https://reclaimthenet.org/tuta-launches-tuta-drive

People are handing over their DNA, their scans, their health records to research projects, AI wellness apps, genetic testing kits. UK Biobank alone has leaked 198 times in a year. Once that data is out, it identifies your kids and siblings forever and you can't take it back. https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-biobank-failures-expose-the-permanent-cost-of-sharing-genetic-and-medical-records

FISA Section 702 Extension Faces House Vote With No Privacy Reforms https://reclaimthenet.org/fisa-702-clean-extension-warrantless-surveillance

Tokyo just sent a guy to prison for 18 months because his website published movie reviews and summaries that contained spoilers. He didn't even write them himself, he just ran the site. The studios decided the descriptions were too thorough and the court agreed. Every entertainment writer in Japan is now guessing where the line is. https://reclaimthenet.org/japan-jails-a-man-for-publishing-movie-spoilers

DOJ Blocks France’s X Probe, Citing First Amendment https://reclaimthenet.org/doj-blocks-frances-x-probe-citing-first-amendment

The Parents Decide Act makes Apple and Google verify every user's age at device setup. The bill doesn't say how. It hands that to the FTC, so a federal agency gets to decide whether your face scan, ID, or credit card is the price of turning on a phone. It's called the Parents Decide Act but parents don't decide anything. The FTC decides what counts as age verification, Apple and Google decide how to collect it, and every American hands over ID to turn on a phone. Parents lose power. The state gains it. https://reclaimthenet.org/us-bill-mandates-on-device-age-verification

California just advanced a bill letting immigration nonprofit employees demand their faces and info be scrubbed from the internet. $4,000 minimum fine for journalists who don't comply. No exemption for reporters. It's already being called the "Stop Nick Shirley Act." Prior restraint is the exact thing the First Amendment was written to prevent... https://reclaimthenet.org/california-ab-2624-stop-nick-shirley-act

Singapore gamers are being locked out of games they already own unless they hand Microsoft a face scan, a passport, or their national ID. Google went further: its "age estimation" watches your YouTube habits and search history to guess how old you are. They call it child safety. The result is a biometric toll booth between you and your own library. https://reclaimthenet.org/singapore-xbox-age-id-checks

Britain just pulled off a neat trick: make online platforms fund the machinery that polices their speech. Ofcom charges tech firms a slice of global revenue to run the censorship law, the Online Safety Act, then decides what counts as “harm,” ramps up enforcement, and sends the bill as it grows. Pay for the system that watches you, or get pushed out. A tidy little loop. https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-online-safety-act-ofcom-fees-tech-companies-speech-regulation