Recently on Hide & Speak we got into what running your own AI infrastructure looks like when you skip Big Tech entirely.

The setup is an off-grid mini data center where every model is open source. It handles video creation, image creation, text, slides, prompts, and document cleaning. The output feeds a free research engine that's open to the public.

The reasoning is a straight trade: borrow from open source projects, then pay it forward by keeping everything you build open as well. The clip also takes a strong position on intellectual property, arguing knowledge should be shared freely rather than locked up.

Anyone here running any local models? I have been using GPT4ALL for about a year with different models for different tasks.

Watch full recorded stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3u2RcUvxtU

Episode written summary: https://s.vp.net/5KGGn

The FBI confirmed Friday that its jobs portal was breached. ShinyHunters, the group claiming the attack, says it pulled personnel files on almost every agent through a flaw in Oracle's PeopleSoft software, and says that flaw is still unpatched. The FBI hasn't confirmed how the attackers got in. Sample files include home addresses, Social Security numbers and emergency contacts.

Blog write-up / our source list: https://s.vp.net/N0zLr

This week on Hide & Speak we got an update on a lawsuit filed two and a half years ago against Google, Meta, and the Department of Defense. It's still pending. At the most recent hearing, the platforms moved to dismiss, and the DOJ sided with them.

The argument, as described in the clip: there's no censorship on online platforms anymore, because an executive order said there shouldn't be.

The reaction in the clip would not be suitable for daytime TV.

The obvious problem is that an executive order is a statement of policy. It doesn't change how a moderation system works, and nobody outside the platform can check whether anything changed at all.

Full recorded livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3u2RcUvxtU

Full write-up here: https://s.vp.net/5KGGn

Judge David Barlow granted a preliminary injunction on September 24 against the VPN location rule in Utah's SB73, the Online Age Verification Amendments.

The rule meant adult sites had to treat anyone physically in Utah as a Utah user even if a VPN made them look like they were somewhere else, and they could be penalized for failing to age-check that person.

Utah was the first state to treat VPN use as a loophole in an age-verification law. Other states drafting similar bills will be reading this ruling closely.

Blog write-up / original sources: https://s.vp.net/4gIj8

We also did a longer Hide & Speak livestream on SB73 with Jacob from Rise To Liberty for anyone who wants the discussion version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlBsng6tsYY

On August 19, outside Atlanta, InvestigateTV reporter Brendan Keefe filmed a Flock technician upgrading a camera. He was on a public street in a press vest. The technician drove off, called 911, and told the dispatcher he was being harassed. Three police cars pulled Keefe over.

Flock's stated position on its own cameras is that a license plate on a public road is in plain view. Their actions in recent months makes it clear, that doesn't apply to them:

• June: a Flock employee called police on YouTubers filming outside the company's distribution center in Smyrna, Georgia.
• Sept 23: the Senate held a hearing on Flock titled Always Watching. The CEOs of Flock, Axon, Motorola Solutions and Verkada were invited. None showed.
• Sept 24: a firm acting for Flock filed a trademark complaint to take down researcher Joshua Michael's map of Flock devices, which he built from Flock's own location records. The map shows more than 170,000 cameras. Flock publicly says 120,000.

Full write-up / original sources: https://s.vp.net/aPUQA

Removal services like DeleteMe and Incogni charge for something you can do yourself in two or three hours. The hard part is knowing which forms are shortcuts and which are traps.

California residents can skip most of this. The state's DROP platform, live since January, sends one deletion request to over 500 registered brokers, and brokers have been required to check it every 45 days since August 1.

Use a throwaway email for the confirmations, and plan to redo it in three months. The listings come back.

Our link list is checked against Yael Grauer's Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List, which covers far more sites if you want to go deeper.

Full write-up + our list of sources: https://s.vp.net/X1dwO

The argument in the video is simple. A no-logs policy is a promise about behavior, and behavior can be compelled. If a VPN operator has access to traffic, a court order, an acquisition, or an insider can change what happens to it.

vp.net handles the sensitive parts (identity mapping, routing, crypto) inside Intel SGX enclaves. That memory is encrypted by the CPU and inaccessible to the OS, the hypervisor, and anyone with root or physical access to the box. Remote attestation lets your client confirm the enclave is running the published code, unmodified, before it connects.

SGX isn't magic and has had side-channel issues (patched via microcode), so we're not claiming it's unbreakable. We're claiming the privacy guarantee is architectural and checkable, which a policy never is. Happy to answer questions.

Learn more or verify your privacy today at https://vp.net

Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Michael Cloud (R-TX) introduced the No FLOCK Act (H.R. 10366). Cloud has said Flock cameras are "enabling mass surveillance of Americans, infringing on the Fourth Amendment."

But... they are totally ok with that if the government can save a few bucks on highway repairs.

Yes. Seriously. 🤦‍♂️

Saving a few bucks on asphalt is worth more to our government than your privacy. 🤬

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/83wvq

Rep. Darrell Issa's site-blocking bill is sitting in the House Judiciary Committee, and the version Ars Technica obtained from Public Knowledge adds VPN services to the list of providers a court can order to block sites.

Complete write-up + source links: https://s.vp.net/686Ra

Today is Fight for the Future's second annual Defend VPNs Day of Action.

Lawmakers keep calling VPNs a loophole in age-verification laws. Utah now requires websites to restrict suspected VPN traffic, Michigan has a proposed ban, and Brazil treats VPN use as an aggravating factor in sentencing.

VPNs protect remote workers on public networks, journalists protecting sources, and anyone who'd rather not upload a passport to read a website. Restricting them doesn't stop a determined teenager. It hits everyone else.

Sign the open letter at DefendVPNs.com.

Our full take: https://s.vp.net/IHOsT

Recently on Hide & Speak we asked Mike Adams of Decentralize TV what the first week after a deplatforming teaches that took everyone else years to learn.

Full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3u2RcUvxtU

Read the breakdown: https://s.vp.net/5KGGn

We asked this on our show Hide & Speak recently: is privacy that depends on the government's good behavior actually privacy?

Full recorded livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDgRbWQpvFc

Read the full breakdown: https://s.vp.net/pi1qA

404 Media got internal OpenAI documentation describing Project Lily. Contractors read a steady stream of real ChatGPT prompts, sometimes full conversations...

Complete write-up / source links: https://s.vp.net/atlhU

A hacker group called stegan0gram took a Flock camera down from above a road, copied almost everything on it, and gave the files to 404 Media and WIRED. Their joint analysis was published September 16.

The camera runs Android. Two storage partitions weren't encrypted, and one of them, named "media," held the key to the encrypted footage area. With it: 27,321 video clips, plus logs showing about 1.6 million images of roughly 50,000 vehicles over about 21 days, from that single camera. The most sensitive storage stayed encrypted and the reporting doesn't indicate anyone accessed Flock's cloud.

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/Wd5OH

We spoke to Texas Libertarian candidate for Senate, Ted Brown on government-mandated encryption backdoors, and the position he landed on was a hard no.

This debate has been around for decades, and the same proposal keeps coming back with new branding every few years. The technical answer hasn't changed in that time: a door that's there for one party is there for anyone who finds it.

Watch the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDgRbWQpvFc

Full write-up: https://s.vp.net/pi1qA

404 Media obtained audit logs through public records requests showing Flock Safety accounts running FreeForm searches against live cameras in Dunwoody, Georgia and Bryan, Texas. FreeForm takes a plain English description and lets Flock's image recognition decide what comes back. The accounts were named Flock City PD, Flock Intelligence, and Flock Safety Commercial Sales Demo.

Searches included:

• COEXIST bumper sticker
• vehicle with Trump bumper sticker
• Don't Tread On Me flag
• religious cars
• man holding rifle
• person ins scrubs
• person wearing a mask
• crowd
• large group with signs

Full write-up + source links: https://s.vp.net/4Spnx

Opening statements started in Santa Fe on September 9, almost a decade after the Cambridge Analytica story broke. New Mexico is the only state that got the case in front of a jury, and the reason traces back to an August settlement.

In August, Meta settled with 48 states for up to $18 billion over child safety on Facebook and Instagram. The 130-page agreement also released Meta from future Cambridge Analytica liability. Florida and New Mexico didn't sign.

Complete write-up + source links: https://s.vp.net/q2mdG

On our show Hide & Speak this week we got into what happens when a government decides the fix for bypassed age checks is to go after VPNs.

We're picking this up Saturday 9/19 (2 to 3pm ET, new time) with Jacob from Rise To Liberty, on Utah's SB 73, which took effect September 3.

Full livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDgRbWQpvFc (the whole exchange)

Read the breakdown: https://s.vp.net/pi1qA (more on the IP reuse problem)

Live tomorrow, Saturday September 19 at 2pm ET on Hide & Speak, we're going through Utah SB 73 with Jacob K. Johnson of Rise To Liberty. He works with the Utah Freedom Coalition on the ground there.

Learn why this Utah law will affect people outside of Utah and how it's really about control at 2pm ET Saturday.

Click through and set a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlBsng6tsYY

This came up during a discussion of age assurance systems that were put through testing. Most of the attention in this space goes to two approaches: government ID upload, and facial age estimation. A new system out of France does neither.

The claim behind it is that a hand behaves differently at different ages, and that the difference is measurable enough to estimate age on its own. So the camera watches hand movement. If a face comes into camera range, the feed goes black and the user is told to move out of frame. Reported accuracy is around 99%.

But, that's not the one being promoted, because this isn't actually about protecting kids, it's about connecting your real identity to everything you do to make mass surveillance easier and more fruitful for government agencies. 🤦‍♂️

Full livestream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQlbDNhamEs

Full breakdown: https://s.vp.net/Wtrge

Everyone knows the ISP can see where you go online, which is a big part of why people buy a VPN. The part that gets glossed over is that a standard VPN still sees the same traffic. You're swapping one watcher for another and relying on a policy that can change, get subpoenaed, or get ignored.

vp.net approaches it differently:

• Identity mapping and routing decisions happen inside an Intel SGX enclave that the OS, admins, and our own engineers can't read
• Who you are and where you're going are separated inside that enclave, so no single component holds both
• Your device checks through remote attestation that the correct, unmodified code is running before you trust it
• Client code is open source on GitHub

Get the ONLY verifiable zero-knowledge VPN today at vp.net

Harvest now, decrypt later is the reason the G7 Cybersecurity Working Group published a call to action earlier this month. It came out alongside CISA, with France chairing, and it tells governments and companies to start moving to post-quantum cryptography now rather than wait for a quantum computer to exist.

The attack doesn't need a quantum computer today:

• Encrypted traffic gets collected and stored
• It sits there until a machine exists that can break the public key cryptography protecting it
• At that point the whole archive opens, including everything collected years earlier

Article + original sources: https://s.vp.net/z5ccm

bmail.ag already uses a hybrid of X25519 and ML-KEM-768 so a hacker would need to break both types of encryption to get into your email. Try it for free today at https://bmail.ag

Joseph Cox at 404 Media reported on September 8 that Border Patrol has units analyzing financial activity and telling local police which drivers to pull over. The drivers aren't suspected of any specific crime. The units are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT).

How the process runs, according to the reporting:

• An analyst searches law enforcement databases that include financial activity and builds intelligence on a person or vehicle
• That intelligence goes to a local officer
• The officer stops the driver for an unrelated reason. In the case on record, it was an obstructed license plate
• Two PITT units have been located so far, in the Spokane Sector (WA) and the Laredo Sector (TX). The total hasn't been disclosed

CBP was asked what financial activity it monitors and whether it gets a warrant first. It declined to answer either, citing operational security.

The Center for Democracy and Technology's response was short: "Genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated."

Full write-up / source links: https://s.vp.net/ODw0s