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alshafei

@alshafei@mastodon.social

Founder of Majal.org. Co-founder of the Numun Fund. Board member @ Wikimedia Foundation & Tor Project. Open web and privacy enthusiast.

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alshafei , to Privacy
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Slack has always had a horrific privacy policy and default settings that enable workplace surveillance, so it's a good time as ever to share this campaign by @fight - supported by dozens of civil society organizations globally:

https://www.makeslacksafe.com/

"Safety should be an inherent feature of the tech we use in our daily lives and our workplaces. Sign the letter to demand Slack put user privacy and security first."

alshafei , to Privacy
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A reminder that the Tor Project itself strongly recommends against using Tor in any browser other than Tor Browser. Using Tor in another browser can leave you vulnerable without the privacy protections of Tor Browser.

Get it here and protect yourself from surveillance and censorship while browsing the web: https://www.torproject.org/download/

alshafei , to Privacy
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Proton Mail Discloses User Data Leading to Arrest in Spain

https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-leading-to-arrest-in-spain/

alshafei , to Privacy
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Disappointed to see The Markup share advice for people to use WhatsApp in its post about preparing your phone for a protest, and that it's coming from "digital security trainers."

Metadata literally kills, and WhatsApp is swimming in it. The metadata they collect includes:

Groups you're a member of, location, personal info (email, phone number, user IDs), contacts and their phone numbers, in-app search history, when you use the app & how often you use it. E2EE alone doesn't guarantee

alshafei , to Random stuff
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An important thing to clarify on the newly formed Mastodon 501(c)(3) entity: it's not here to make or influence product decisions. It has no legal ability to enforce any such changes. Primary operations will remain led by the Germany-based Mastodon gGmbH, and this won’t change.

The focus of the U.S entity is to provide another vehicle for donations and other forms of support. The Board has no legal "control" beyond this.

alshafei , to Privacy
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"Grindr is currently revising its terms of service to ask people explicitly if the company can train its AI models on their personal data, which could include direct messages"

"This information will likely be used to train another paid product: an AI boyfriend"

Deeply troubling, and opens the door to so many (potentially life-threatening) security vulnerabilities:

https://www.platformer.news/grindr-ai-boyfriend-wingman-monetization-paid-taps/

alshafei , to Privacy
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"Musk made hay of his legal battle against secret surveillance but continued selling X user data to a company that facilitates government monitoring."

To no one's surprise:

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/25/elon-musk-x-dataminr-surveillance-privacy/

alshafei , to Privacy
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"Mike Gallagher pushed the bill to ban TikTok because China can 'surveil its users.' Now, he's resigning and joining an American surveillance firm" (Palantir) :thaenkin:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-gallagher-tiktok-ban-palantir-1234993167/

alshafei , to Random stuff
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"Proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide."

https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/statement-from-the-no-tech-for-apartheid-campaign-on-googles-retaliation-against-and-firing-of-b779d3442f48

alshafei , to Random stuff
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"Meta keeps insisting that it will not promote 'political' content on Threads"

"How the hell do they define 'political' content?"

As a queer Arab woman I ask, how do you shy away from politics when your very existence is political in your context?

Good read from @mmasnick -

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/29/metas-plans-to-downplay-political-content-is-itself-a-political-decision/

alshafei , to Privacy
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"For years, the antivirus software company harvested information from users’ web browsers without their consent."

Its clients have included Home Depot, Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, and McKinsey.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24080135/avast-security-privacy-software-ftc-fine-data-harvesting

alshafei , to Random stuff
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"An Israeli incursion into Rafah will be an attack on the world's biggest displaced persons camp."

"It is impossible to invade Rafah now without committing war crimes."

Gideon Levy for Haaretz:

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-02-11/ty-article-opinion/.premium/an-israeli-incursion-into-gazas-rafah-will-be-an-unprecedented-humanitarian-catastrophe/0000018d-9435-d443-a19f-fcb529aa0000

alshafei , to Random stuff
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"The past year has been a strong one for the decentralization movement. More and more people are realizing that the large centralized services are not all there is to the internet, and exploration of alternatives is happening at a level that we haven’t seen in at least a decade."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/taking-back-web-decentralization-2023-review

alshafei , to Random stuff
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"Destruction, killing, starvation and siege in such monstrous dimensions can no longer be explained or justified"

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-12-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/theres-no-way-to-explain-the-degree-of-death-and-destruction-in-gaza/0000018c-ace3-d22d-a3dd-bdfb92870000

alshafei , to Random stuff
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"To be a journalist in Gaza is to be both the person who reports on an attack and the victim who witnesses it. You are the reporter who writes about the hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people, and you are one of the forcibly displaced people who was forced to flee because your neighbourhood was carpet bombed and your home was destroyed."

https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/first-person/2023/12/20/being-a-journalist-in-gaza

alshafei , to Random stuff
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"The Israeli army has killed more journalists in 10 weeks than any other army or entity has in any single year. And with every journalist killed, the war becomes harder to document and to understand"

https://cpj.org/2023/12/israel-gaza-war-takes-record-toll-on-journalists-2/

alshafei , to Privacy
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"End-to-end encryption is a pivotal capability that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats, and helps defend people around the world from surveillance, identity theft, fraud, and data breaches in the cloud."

"Breaches are at an all-time high. Policymakers and technologists must urgently work together to keep data safe, and there is no stronger protection for data in the cloud than end-to-end encryption." 🔒

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/personal-data-in-the-cloud-is-under-siege.-end-to-end-encryption-is-our-most-powerful-defense

timnitGebru , to Random stuff
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There was a Venture Beat hit piece by Sharon Goldman on a number of us, calling the letter we signed from the responsible AI community antisemitic & platforming a number of Israeli researchers who have been incessantly harassing us, & of course, you can guess how many Palestinians were platformed (hint ZERO). But there was so much gold that was comically evil. Lets start with this one. I'll let you process that an article said that "AI" & surveillance tech is saving Palestinian lives right now.

"Yoav Goldberg, a professor at Bar Ilan University and research director at AI2-Israel, also emphasized that many of the "AI systems" or "surveillance systems" described in the letter have "likely saved countless Palestinian lives." For example, he said he was certain AI technologies -- or AI-human collaborative interfaces -- are used to try and track the hostgages. "Finding hostages will make things conclude faster, saving lives," he said. AI is also used to navigate missiles, he added, making them more likely to hit their targets and not random people, while AI is used to surface targets. "It means the IDF can target legitimate military targets and not random ones," he explained.
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    • alshafei ,
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    @timnitGebru Isn't it ironic this poster wants to justify the mass killing of innocent civilians while her header reads: "What a time to be alive"

    Also I wasn't aware "monitor collective consciousness" is the new phrase for "racially motivated mass surveillance" - good to know! 🙄

    alshafei ,
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    @timnitGebru "The Saudi government is pleased to arrest feminist journalists after a heroic effort monitoring collective consciousness enabled by AI"

    timnitGebru , to Random stuff
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    Here is a German "journalist" Jakob Schirrmacher attempting to get us to lose funding. He sent the following press request.

    Dear <Funder>,

    "I am writing to you in my capacity as a freelance journalist, presently working on an article for the German newspaper WELT. The focus of my story is the Distributed AI Research Institute, which has been a beneficiary of your foundation's support."

    alshafei ,
    @alshafei@mastodon.social avatar

    @timnitGebru What does he expect the response from the funder to be? "Thank you for making us aware! We agree that genocide should continue completely unchallenged and appreciate the role of tech and AI in enabling and widening the scale of horrific war crimes. You are correct to point out that DAIR doesn't stand for our shared humanity, and as such, we'll stop funding them immediately!"

    alshafei , to Privacy
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    Find out who you help when you support the @torproject, which is protecting the of millions of people:

    https://blog.torproject.org/support-tor-project-share-your-story/

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