Imagine being fined or even facing jail time just for filming a video in a US national park — whether you're a YouTuber, a documentary filmmaker, or just someone capturing a special moment. For years, the National Park Service (NPS) enforced a system that forced independent creators to jump through costly bureaucratic hoops just to monetize their own content. But after a legal battle led by a free speech advocacy group and professional photographers, the rules are finally changing.
We explore this today.
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Get the post here. |  | But just in time for Germany's early elections, scheduled for the last week of February, large platforms - Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and X - participated in a "stress test" of their readiness to investigate risks to "civic discourse and electoral process" related to that vote. This is taken by some reports to mean that although the voluntary code will become obligatory in the summer, the integration before February 23 in Germany means that platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU will implement "disinformation" rules, acting a "voluntary" basis one last time - in a bid "to avoid future legal risks."
The election campaign in Germany has been marred by contentious attempts by those still in power to discredit and even censor the rising opposition. This is happening both through domestic institutions and by "delegating" some of such efforts to the EU.
The "stress test" done in late January and the reports around code integration timeline fit well in the overall trend. It was conducted by the European Commission and Germany's digital services coordinator.
The code's main purpose is to get signatories to step up content "moderation" - which critics see as code word for censorship, but which the EU, along with the DSA, explains as a way to combat illegal content and "protect users."
Among the measures that will become enforceable when the code becomes mandatory is the requirement for tech companies to come up with "stronger measures to demonetize disinformation."
What Brussels refers to as "the strengthened" 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation made its debut in 2018, covering platforms, advertisers, and trade associations.
The one that deals with "disinformation" is one of many "voluntary codes" the EU has turned to, effectively imposing its policies on internet companies over these last years. Another concerning "hate speech" has already been integrated into the DSA.
Reports indicate that the EU may be trying to follow the entire censorship blueprint by adding a new code to the DSA - this one specifically for advertisers. | You subscribe to Reclaim The Net because you value free speech and privacy. Each issue we publish is a commitment to defend these critical rights, providing insights and actionable information to protect and promote liberty in the digital age.
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Thank you. |  | Once upon a time, Tony Blair was famous for his total aversion to mobile phones while in office—an almost quaint relic of a bygone era where world leaders still relied on briefcases and, presumably, rotary phones. Fast forward to today, and Blair has reinvented himself as a techno-prophet, tirelessly evangelizing the gospel of digital governance. Gone is the Luddite prime minister; in his place stands the zealous architect of a streamlined, hyper-efficient state—one where the bureaucracy hums like a well-oiled machine and the concept of privacy is, well, negotiable.
At the heart of Blair's latest crusade is digital ID and AI, the golden ticket to what he calls "the holy grail of governing." And like any good evangelist, he's found a willing disciple: Keir Starmer, the first Labour leader since Blair himself to win a general election, now pledging to transform the UK into an "AI superpower." With Blair's think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, whispering in the corridors of power, the former PM's fingerprints are all over the new government's tech-driven ambitions.
Digital ID: The Efficiency Dream, The Privacy Nightmare
Speaking to The Times, Blair laid out his vision with characteristic conviction. "You've got to reorder the Government around this technology revolution," he proclaimed, as though Britain's primary governance issue wasn't, say, economic stagnation or a crumbling NHS, but rather a lack of digital paperwork.
Blair's argument hinges on the seductive promise of efficiency. Why drown in red tape when technology can offer a sleek, cost-cutting alternative? "You should be able to have a state that is smaller, more strategic, and providing greater efficiency at lower cost," he explained, adding that technology is "the instrument that allows you to do it."
Translation? Fewer bureaucrats, more automation, and a governance model where algorithms decide who gets what. Of course, the promise of a "smaller, more strategic" state sounds great—until you remember that, historically, technological efficiency in government tends to come with a side order of surveillance creep.
And so, Blair's masterstroke: digital ID. He wants Starmer to go all in, pushing the government to make digital identity systems a cornerstone of its modernization efforts. The government, for its part, has already announced plans to roll out a digital "wallet" in June, allowing people to store official documents—like driving licenses—on their phones. But Blair wants more. Much more.
"There's a big debate coming down the line," he warned. And that debate, according to him, boils down to a simple question: "How much privacy are you prepared to trade for efficiency?"
Trading Privacy for Convenience—A Faustian Bargain?
Blair, ever the pragmatist, is confident the public will happily surrender chunks of their personal freedom in exchange for smoother interactions with the state. "My view is that people are actually prepared to trade quite a lot," he declared, as though this was some great insight rather than an ominous warning.
But what exactly would this new digital ID regime entail? Blair envisions it as a multi-purpose tool: a way to control immigration, ensure public services are accessed only by those entitled to them, and prevent unauthorized migrants from gaming the system. "It's sending a signal that there's no point in thinking you're going to come here and disappear into a kind of grey economy," he told The Times.
That's right — Blair's digital utopia doesn't just promise to streamline government. It's also a handy deterrent against the nameless masses hoping to slip through Britain's borders undetected. Because if history has taught us anything, it's that large-scale identity tracking systems never get misused for political ends.
(But the illegal immigrants to the country are already processed by the Home Office, during which they are provided with financial support through the ASPEN debit card. Due to a backlog in processing claims, many are housed in hotels, costing the government over £3.1 billion ($3.8B) annually. Efforts to use alternative accommodations, such as military bases and the Bibby Stockholm barge, have faced legal and safety challenges.)
And just in case anyone thought this was merely about administration, Blair threw in a bonus feature: digital ID, he claimed, could also serve as a weapon against populism. "It will also flush out a lot of people who want to talk about issues like immigration or benefit fraud but don't actually have the means to get to the end," he mused.
Ah, so there it is. The real utility of digital ID, beyond mere efficiency, is to expose the hypocrisy of certain political factions — because apparently, if you're not onboard with the Blair-backed solution, you're just another charlatan peddling empty rhetoric.
The Future of Digital Governance: A Surveillance Dream?
As Starmer's government presses forward with its digital initiatives, the question of privacy versus control will become increasingly unavoidable. The push for digital IDs, biometric tracking, and centralized data systems has always been justified by appeals to security, efficiency, and progress. And yet, history tells us that governments rarely — if ever — tighten their grip on information without also tightening their grip on power.
Blair's vision is clear: a frictionless, AI-powered governance model where the state operates like a tech giant, and the citizen is merely a user navigating its services. Whether the public is as enthusiastic about this brave new world remains to be seen. But if Blair is right, and people really are willing to trade "quite a lot" of privacy for efficiency, then the future of British governance may look a lot less like democracy—and a lot more like a terms-of-service agreement nobody reads until it's too late. |  | A bipartisan effort is now underway in US Congress to have another go at pushing the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA) through. The bill is designed to prevent children under 13 from using social media.
The legislation reintroduced by Republican Senators Katie Britt and Ted Cruz, along with Democrats Brian Schatz and Chris Murphy, also aims to stop platforms from showing personalized recommendations to teenagers under 17.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The proposal does not explicitly mandate age verification, but the methods that would have to be deployed to implement such legislation were one of the reasons it failed last year.
Both rights advocates, Republican legislators, and the industry behind social media argued that KOSMA becoming law could violate free speech, and lead to tech companies harvesting more data than they do now in order to comply with legal requirements. Senator Schatz, however, is now denying this would be the case - the companies would collect no more than they do "in the normal course of business," he said.
The bill explicitly states that it is not mandating platforms to have a "age gating or age verification functionality" but does not specifics how else it expects platforms to ban under 17s without this type of digital ID technology. Announcing the reintroduction of the bill, Senator Britt linked what she said was the US being "in the throws of a mental health crisis" with the minor's use of social media. To Britt's mind, these are "inextricably" tied.
Senator Cruz said that KOSMA would "support families in crisis" and "empower teachers to better manage their classrooms." Senator Murphy addressed content recommendations in particular - which he called "addictive algorithms" and blamed for exposing children to "glorification" of suicide and other serious harms.
The solution to all this, according to the senators who have enlisted six others as co-sponsors, is in addition to the ban on creating and using social media accounts for those under 13 and on algorithms-driven recommendations targeting teens - give the FTC and state attorneys general authority to enforce the law.
The senators cite public opinion surveys that show parents are concerned about their children's use of social media to support the intent behind the bill, as well as the backing it received from a number of associations gathering mental health workers, parents, etc.
The first attempt to push KOSMA failed amid worries expressed by the House Republican that it could wind up abused by Democrats, who would have enforced it (the FTC of the time), or suppress free speech without deliberately seeking to achieve that effect. |  | Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren - who sits on the the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee and the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, AI and the Internet - is launching another battle in the "war on piracy."
The stated intent behind the bill she introduced - HB 791 - is supposed to be evident from its name: the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA).
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
And Lofgren insists it will at once protect US consumers, creative community and workers from foreign internet piracy, and, "preserve the open internet." But there are concerns that were it to become law, HB could pave the way for mass site blocking.
FADPA is the first time since the hugely controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) failed more than a decade ago, that US legislators have tried to revisit the issue of copyright infringement. Ironically, Lofgren at the time opposed SOPA, but now thinks her proposal is better.
Lofgren, a California Democrat, said she worked "closely" with Hollywood in drafting the bill, which would let copyright holders force ISPs to block sites accused of hosting pirate streams.
How this might play out in the real world (this time, on the internet) is another matter. If the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is anything to go by, the fear of abuse, as copyright holders are able to remove content including in cases where the notices are false, does not seem unfounded.
FADPA is seen by some observers as even more flawed, in this sense, than the DMCA.
But the bill was introduced after several months of negotiations between tech companies and those producing content, with the goal of ensuring its constitutionality, and enforceability, but also, so that it does not impose "undue liabilities."
Not surprisingly, the bill has received support from the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Authors Guild, the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the Copyright Alliance, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA), as well as the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).
And Congresswoman Lofgren hopes to "continue work" on anti-piracy legislation with House Republicans. |  | Activists in the UK who once campaigned against Covid mandates, including lockdowns and vaccines, now face another challenge: the way the Covid Inquiry, meant to investigate the response to the pandemic in that country, is shaping up.
Under investigation, among others, is a government entity known as the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), which was used to spy on the critics of government pandemic-era policies on the internet, and flag those opinions as "misinformation."
The inquiry has been set up as independent, but is getting "dangerously one-sided" - and that would be, siding with the government. This is how pharmaceutic physician Dr. Alan Black and founder of UsForThem Molly Kingsley see the goings-on.
They allege that the inquiry's bias is prominent specifically around the way it treats "mis/disinformation" and cite the remarks made by the secretary to the inquiry, Ben Connah, who announced that what is known as Module 4 of the probe was to look at these phenomena to establish if they had "led to vaccine hesitancy."
If "mis/disinformation" represented what it did before the pandemic - namely, lies and inaccuracies, this would not be a problem, Black and Kingsley suggest. However, they say the terms have been weaponized during COVID-19 to shut down scientific debate and enforce official narratives.
As reported by Daily Sceptic, More proof of bias is seen in the comments made by lead counsel for the inquiry Hugo Keith, who said that the CDU and the Rapid Response Unit were on the job of "tackling Covid vaccine mis- and disinformation" - as well as that these were "real problems" with the question for the government now being, what they did to address them.
"We have also obtained evidence from the social media platforms as to how the government interacted with them, and we will be hearing from the Permanent Secretary at the DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) about the processes for identifying and acting on such material," Keith added.
However, Black and Kingsley write that these remarks "seem obsequious" and that this is clear to those who, like them, were impacted by CDU's censorship efforts. The implication is that the inquiry will look at what the government could have done to "better" control the narrative around its response to Covid - rather than actually shed light on the censorship involved, and do that in a critical way.
Moreover, the two activists note that simultaneously, the government, pharmaceutical companies, and "friendly" media were able to "pump out industrial levels of demonstrably inaccurate, false and in some cases deliberately misleading information about the risks and effects of Covid and the risks and benefits of Covid vaccines."
"The presumption already being engineered for the next pandemic appears to be simply to shut down public debate and eliminate dissenting views ever more efficiently," Black and Kingsley said of the apparent intent behind the inquiry. | | Thanks for reading,
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