Privacy tools…

https://pogowasright.org/resource-privacy-law-directory-codamail/

Resource: Privacy Law Directory — Codamail

Regular readers may recall that this site recently noted The Data Broker Directory: Who has your data, where they got it, and who they sell it to by Codamail’s Stephen K. Gielda of Packetderm.

Instead of taking a well-deserved break after all the work he did to compile that resource, Steve went down the rabbit hole and compiled yet more helpful information. Codamail has now released a Privacy Law Directory. From its explanation:

This directory covers 21 country jurisdictions across the United States, the European Union, and international partners as of February 2026. Each page examines not just data protection legislation but also surveillance laws, intelligence agencies, data broker contracts, Internet exchange point taps, sureveillance company contracts, mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), data sharing agreements, data retention laws, encryption laws, child protection laws, oversight boards, and enforcement actions, because understanding privacy requires understanding the full picture.

The directory is organized around the intelligence alliance framework that shapes modern signals intelligence cooperation: the Five Eyes (the core anglophone alliance), the Nine Eyes (adding four European partners), and the Fourteen Eyes (SIGINT Seniors Europe). These alliances determine how intercepted communications and personal data flow between governments, making them directly relevant to any assessment of a jurisdiction’s privacy posture.

A recurring finding across every jurisdiction in this directory is that privacy laws primarily protect a country’s own citizens and residents. Nearly every nation examined here maintains legal exemptions that permit its intelligence agencies to collect, intercept, and retain foreign communications with fewer restrictions than apply to domestic targets. These foreign traffic exemptions, combined with intelligence-sharing alliances that allow partner nations to collect on each other’s populations and share the results back, create a global system in which domestic privacy protections can be structurally bypassed.

Beyond government surveillance, commercial data collection operates largely outside the scope of these laws. Data brokers aggregate personal information from public records, commercial transactions, app SDKs, advertising exchanges, and social media into profiles that can be purchased by governments, private investigators, and corporations without the judicial oversight required for law enforcement surveillance. Internet exchange points are monitored in multiple choke points (places most traffic passes through). Commercial surveillance contractors sell endpoint exploitation tools, spyware, and analytics platforms directly to government agencies. The result is that the privacy protections documented in this directory, while significant, represent only one layer of a more complex reality.

For detailed coverage of these mechanisms, see the Data Broker Directory (over 1700 across 17 categories) and The Myth of Jurisdictional Privacy.

Go explore and bookmark the Privacy Law Directory now.

With great thanks to Steve and Codamail for taking our privacy so seriously.

The Lone Ranger will be unmasked?

https://pogowasright.org/federal-judge-masked-ice-agents-violate-fourth-amendment/

Federal judge: Masked ICE agents violate Fourth Amendment

Chris Dickerson reports:

A federal judge has ruled Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s practice of conducting arrests with masked, unidentifiable agents violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures.

In a February 19 opinion, U.S. District Judge Joseph E. Goodwin ordered the immediate release of petitioner Anderson Jesus Urquilla-Ramos, who was “arrested abruptly and without warning by a group of masked men purporting to be” ICE officers.

“Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening,” Goodwin wrote to begin his 34-page ruling. “Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government — masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind — are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process.

Read more at Legal Newsline.

Related posts:

• ICE Taps into School Security Cameras to Aid Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

Is it too late for the US to follow suit?

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/19/poland_china_car_ban/

Poland bans camera-packing cars made in China from military bases

Poland’s Ministry of Defence has banned Chinese cars – and any others include tech to record position, images, or sound – from entering protected military facilities.

A Tuesday announcement from the country’s Ministry of Defence says the decision came after risk analysis of the potential for the many gadgets built into modern cars to allow “uncontrolled acquisition and use of data.”

The ban also prohibits officials connecting their work phones to infotainment systems in China-made cars.

For your amusement?

https://www.bespacific.com/epsteinalysis-com/

Epsteinalysis.com

Under the moniker – Axiomofinfinity – for which there is no further information that I could locate – a individual or group has posted a remarkable searchable database, Epstein Files Explorer, of over one million documents and over two million pages that comprise the Epstein Files released by the DOJ. Applications used – Programmatic applications – Extracted via spaCy NER and clustered by similarity. = curated key figure. Use “Known Only” to filter.

Features include the following:

• Search – There is a search feature for: Documents, Bates numbers, Entities

• Analyze – Timeline; Event, Network, Events, Meetings

• Images – All Images, Faces

• Videos – All Videos

• Redactions – Inconsistencies, Statistics

A large percentage of the population probably needs AI to explain what the word ‘apology’ means.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/world/asia/new-zealand-court-ai-apology.html

In Arson Case, a Judge Wrestles With A.I.-Assisted Apology Letters

A judge in New Zealand who discovered last week that apology letters from a defendant in an arson case had been written with the help of artificial intelligence raised questions about the sincerity of her sentiments.

“The issue of remorse is interesting,” said the judge, Tom Gilbert, of the district court in Christchurch, as he mulled the punishment of a woman who had pleaded guilty to arson and other charges. Remorse can be a mitigating factor in sentencing. Her letters to the victims and the court were nicely written, the judge said. He decided to do some sleuthing.

“Out of curiosity I punched into two A.I. tools ‘draft me a letter for a judge expressing remorse for my offending,’” the judge said, according to a transcript of the sentencing hearing that was shared with The New York Times. “It became immediately apparent that these were two A.I.-generated letters, albeit with tweaks around the edges.”

How to be human.

https://www.bespacific.com/transform-ai-text-into-human-writing/

Transform AI Text Into Human Writing

“Humanize AI text from ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini for free. Make content natural to bypass AI detection and feel truly human. Guaranteed undetectable results.” [Let that sink in.]

• AI Humanizer Eliminates AI Tones for Natural Writing – Directly trim the stiff and repetitive patterns found in machine-generated writing. AI text humanizer converts dry drafts into authentic, natural expressions, adding rhythm and relatability to your work. The refined results flow much better, keeping readers fully engaged in your logic and allowing you to humanize ai so your content gets flagged as bot-written.

• Humanize Text Secures Content for Safe Publishing – Significantly improve the security of your copy across various detection platforms. By restructuring the underlying logic and enhancing expression diversity, our tool helps you bypass ai detectors and avoid sensitive identification by search algorithms. This provides an invisible shield for every submission, protecting your text authority and making your humanize ai free experience simple and worry-free.

• AI Text Humanizer Protects Your Original Intent and Meaning – Maintain your core perspective while restructuring sentence patterns. Humanizer ai accurately identifies and locks in technical terms, factual data, and key arguments, ensuring the rewritten draft is simply more readable without any semantic drift. You get a qualitative leap in flow and tone, allowing you to humanize ai text while keeping your original message perfectly intact…”

I thought Social Security was private. Silly me.

https://pogowasright.org/social-security-workers-are-being-told-to-hand-over-appointment-details-to-ice/

Social Security Workers Are Being Told to Hand Over Appointment Details to ICE

So it’s not only the IRS handing over personal info to ICE.  It’s SSA, too. Zoë Schiffer, Vittoria Elliott, and Leah Feiger report:

Workers at the Social Security Administration have been told to share information about in-person appointments with agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, WIRED has learned.

“If ICE comes in and asks if someone has an upcoming appointment, we will let them know the date and time,” an employee with direct knowledge of the directive says. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

While the majority of appointments with SSA take place over the phone, some appointments still happen in person. This applies to people who are deaf or hard of hearing and need a sign language interpreter, or if someone needs to change their direct deposit information. Noncitizens are also required to appear in person to review continued eligibility of benefits.

Read more at WIRED.

It might also be possible to use this technology on writing. Would the New York Times be interested?

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence/sony-group-tech-can-identify-original-music-in-ai-generated-songs

Sony Group tech can identify original music in AI-generated songs

Sony Group has developed a technology that can identify the underlying music used in tunes generated by artificial intelligence, making it possible for songwriters to seek compensation from AI developers if their music was used.

Sony Group's technology analyzes which musicians' songs were used in learning and generating music. It can quantify the contribution of each original work, such as "30% of the music used by the Beatles and 10% by Queen," for example.

If the AI developer agrees to cooperate for the analysis, Sony Group will obtain data by connecting to the developer's base model system. When cooperation is not attainable, the technology estimates the original work by comparing AI-generated music with existing music.

Improving intrusion… (Would this technique work on some redacted files?)

https://pogowasright.org/increasingly-hipaa-cant-stop-ai-from-de-anonymizing-patient-data/

Increasingly, HIPAA Can’t Stop AI from De-Anonymizing Patient Data

Martin Anderson reports:

Even after hospitals strip out names and zip codes, modern AI can sometime still work out who patients are. Great news for insurance companies; not so much for healthcare recipients.

New research from New York University finds that US patients’ medical notes, stripped of names and other HIPAA identifiers, can expose patients to re-identification. By training AI language models on a large corpus of real world, uncensored patient records, identity-defining details remain – in some cases allowing a patient’s neighborhood to be inferred from diagnosis alone.

The new study places this risk in the context of a lucrative market in de-identified health data, where hospitals and data brokers routinely sell or license scrubbed clinical notes to pharmaceutical firms, insurers, and AI developers.

The authors of the new study challenge even the very concept of ‘de-identification’, enshrined in the patient protections established by HIPAA after Massachusetts Governor William Weld has his medical data de-anonymized in 1997….

Read more about the research findings at unite.ai.

Apparently it is Okay to ignore judges…

https://pogowasright.org/courts-have-ruled-4400-times-that-ice-jailed-people-illegally-it-hasnt-stopped/

Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped.

Nate Raymond, Kristina Cooke, and Brad Heath of Reuters report:

Hundreds of judges around the US have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found.

The decisions amount to a sweeping legal rebuke of Mr Trump’s immigration crackdown. Yet the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely even after courts ruled the policy was illegal.

“It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written,” US District Judge Thomas Johnston of West Virginia, an appointee of former president George W. Bush, wrote last week, ordering the release of a Venezuelan detainee in the state.

Read more at The Straits Times.

Were these consequences unintentional?

https://www.ecoticias.com/en/all-u-s-social-security-numbers-may-need-to-be-changed-following-a-massive-breach-that-is-already-being-investigated-as-a-national-threat/27158/

All U.S. Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat

… Borges alleges that a little-known [??? Bob] federal tech team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, copied the government’s master Social Security database into a cloud system that lacked normal oversight.

… The dataset at issue is not just a list of numbers. A Washington Post ruling summary describes how DOGE team members were given access to databases containing Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, bank and credit card information, tax details, work histories, and home addresses for millions of Americans.

A MarketWatch summary shared by reporter Angela Moore adds that the records tied to those numbers also include names, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, phone numbers, and even parents’ names and Social Security numbers.

Resistance is futile…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html?unlocked_article_code=1.L1A.ftyi.gclrVR6fXM6A&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement by sending tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.

In recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, according to four government officials and tech employees privy to the requests. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Google, Meta and Reddit complied with some of the requests, the government officials said. In the subpoenas, the department asked the companies for identifying details of accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and that have criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents. The New York Times saw two subpoenas that were sent to Meta over the last six months.

The tech companies, which can choose whether or not to provide the information, have said they review government requests before complying. Some of the companies notified the people whom the government had requested data on and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court.