Pat Walshe - Privacy Matters 🇮🇪🇬🇧🇪🇺

"This rubble is of my first home. The home where my father also grew up. Where my husband and I said our marriage vows."

What’s happening in Lebanon is a “human rights and humanitarian disaster in the making,” says HRW’s @lamafakih.bsky.social, whose family home in Beirut was struck.

Utterly disgraceful. The US is a rogue state. I despair that it feels it can act with impunity.

This is a real video from the official White House account on a war that is currently killing people. I don’t know how the US is going to come back from this.
The post was “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY. 🇺🇸 🔥”

Don’t let mega-constellation-building billionaires steal your night sky Satellites are wonders of modern technology that have improved all of our lives. But having more than a million of them in orbit could destroy our view of the heavens and seriously damage our planet

‘On January 30, 2026, SpaceX filed for permission to launch as many as one million more satellites.’

www.scientificamerican.com/article/ramp...

How Researchers Won a Legal Fight to Access X's Data Under the DSA A Berlin court has delivered a consequential ruling, ordering X to grant Democracy Reporting International access to its publicly available data.

A Berlin court has ordered X to grant researchers API access under the Digital Services Act. Daniela Alvarado Rincón, Simone Ruf and Jürgen Bering explain how they won the case, and why it’s a major step for researcher data access.

We are hiring a Head of Global Advocacy and Internet Policy at the Internet Society! This is a rare opportunity to join our team and shape the future of the Internet during one of its most challenging eras. 1/5

As Viktor Orbán heads into the toughest election of his 16-year rule, MAGA heavyweights have moved to bolster the man they regard as their most dependable ideological ally in Europe.

🔗 www.politico.eu/article/can-...

The Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened in a post on X that “the southern suburbs of Beirut will become like Khan Younis”.

We now announce war crimes casually and in advance, it seems.

Was diplomacy with Iran really doomed to fail? Trump’s negotiators seemed to misunderstand Iranian positions, but acknowledge they probably could have gotten “Obama plus” deal.

““When complex nuclear negotiations are treated like a real estate transaction, and when big lies cloud realities, unrealistic expectations can never be met,” Araghchi wrote on Twitter. “The outcome? Bombing the negotiation table out of spite.”

diplomatic.substack.com/p/was-diplom...

Exclusive: US investigation points to likely US responsibility in Iran school strike, sources say Military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on Saturday, two U.S. officials told Reu...

Reuters Exclusive

"U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school."

"The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the ​Middle East."

Where things stand with the Department of War A statement from Dario Amodei

I think one of the most staggering industry shifts in my 16 years as a tech reporter is that it’s not become a question of “should our product help the government kill and/or surveil people?” but “to what extent?”

www.anthropic.com/news/where-s...

Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protester A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows privacy-focused email provider Proton Mail handed over payment data related to a Stop Cop City email account to the Swiss government, which handed it to the ...

Edward Shone, head of communications for Proton AG, told 404 Media in an email: “We want to first clarify that Proton did not provide any information to the FBI, the information was obtained from the Swiss justice department via MLAT." Functionally, though, the material was provided to the FBI.

Dirty Business Shocking real-life drama about the muck in our water and a corporate scandal

“They seem to have built criminality into their business models” <the powerful & excellent ‘Dirty Business’ on @channel4news.bsky.social a must watch & we in the UK should hold the govt, the Environment Agency & water companies to account

www.channel4.com/programmes/d...

www.windrushwasp.org

New paper from team @aial.ie! aial.ie/research/gpa...

EU's AI Act Article 53(1)(d) is an obligation for GPAI model providers to publicly provide a 'summary' on their model’s training data. The team assessed published summaries along 6 dimensions & found that all big providers failed on all 6.

1/

Trump’s lightbulb moment: America needs Europe after all The U.S. is even looking to Ukraine to help its operations against Iran — as Trump rages at Starmer and Sánchez for refusing to back his war.

The ultimate irony is Trump asking Ukraine for support . www.politico.eu/article/dona...

Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News

The White House
June 25, 2025

www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...

Also das ist widerlich.

Germany’s privacy chief gets sidelined as intel services bulk up Berlin is preparing a reform of its spy services to grow less reliant on allies’ intel sharing.

Germany’s data privacy authority has warned it can't properly protect citizens from surveillance by the country's intelligence services, right as Germany is moving to fortify its intelligence agency with sweeping new powers.

What he means by "involved" is that he wants bribes and payment to back a particular faction like he did with Venezuelan oil, the proceeds of which are sitting in private bank accounts in the UAE.

Whoever planted them has provided a wonderful gift to us

A moment of bliss during a 12km training walk today

If your political strategy is to alienate your entire voter base and pave the way for a hard-right government, sure

Andrew Tate • § @Cobratate• 1d I fly to Saudi tonight. X Will cross the desert to get into Dubai with War Room soldiers. While the rest of the world runs away like cowards we show respect to the greatest city on earth. Dubai. We're coming. * te x THE WAR ROOM MADMAX DUBAI ROAD FEATURING: ANDREW TATE I TRISTAN TATE +

As if the Middle East hasn’t got enough problems without becoming a magnet for loser grifters who would fall apart at the first sign of actual conflict.

CJEU: Advocate General Rantos: the bank cannot refuse to refund immediately the
amount of an unauthorised transaction on the ground of gross negligence on
the part of the customer

curia.europa.eu/site/upload/...

TikTok starts court battle to save China ties The Irish case is a major test for Europe’s GDPR law.

Ireland: TikTok on Tuesday began a defense in court of how it handles Europeans' privacy and data

www.politico.eu/article/tikt...?

She Came Out of the Bathroom Naked, Employee Says Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded. Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce, uneasy about peering into the most intimate parts of other people’...

“The workers in Kenya say that it feels uncomfortable to go to work. They tell us about deeply private video clips, which appear to come straight out of Western homes, from people who use the glasses in their everyday lives.
Several describe video material showing bathroom visits, sex…”

This afternoon the AI Committee was told An Garda Síochána "is transitioning from a traditional style of police service to a data-led, digitally-enabled organisation."

Part of that transition is presumably a bill before the Oireachtas today - to give gardai the power to use "biometric analysis" 👇

Quietly, calmly and forensically, BBC just dismantled the Trump communications shitshow on Iran.

No hyperbole, just laying out an unprecedented military, diplomatic and reputational shambles.

Worth a watch.

(🎥 BBC News/BBC Verify)

MAGA embrace: Europe’s nationalists head to Washington Right-wing populists from across Europe are converging on the U.S. capital, where Speaker Mike Johnson is headlining a sovereignty conference.

Europe’s right-wing populists may be personae non gratae among the political establishment back home.

But in the U.S. they are being greeted with open arms and access to the top.

U.S. sub sinks Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing 87 and expanding war zone A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening Washington's pursuit of the Iranian navy.

A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflict—and 9000
miles from North America—makes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...