If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. President Karol Nawrocki has blocked a government proposal meant to enforce the European Union’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), in Poland, arguing that it would turn state regulators into online censors. His decision halts one of Warsaw’s most significant attempts to bring national law in line with EU digital rules. “As president, I cannot sign a bill that effectively amounts to administrative censorship,” Nawrocki stated. “A situation in which a government official decides what is permitted on the Internet is reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.” The bill, approved by parliament in November, was presented as a way to protect users from online abuse and falsehoods. It gave two regulatory bodies, the Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) and the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), the power to order the removal or blocking of digital content judged to contain criminal threats, child exploitation, hate speech, incitement to suicide, or copyright violations. The plan also allowed complaints to originate from a wide range of sources, including the police, prosecutors, border guards, or tax authorities. Content authors would have been notified and granted a two-week window to object before any blocking took effect. Supporters of the proposal pointed to new appeal mechanisms for users who felt wronged by platform decisions, calling the bill a step toward transparency and accountability. Nawrocki, however, saw the measure differently. In a detailed explanation posted on the Chancellery’s website, as reported by Notes From Poland, he wrote that the safeguards were superficial: “Instead of real judicial review, an absurd solution has been introduced: an objection to an official’s decision, which citizens must file within 14 days.” He accepted that “the internet poses many threats, especially to children,” but insisted that the government’s draft was “indefensible and simply harmful.” “The proposed solutions create a system in which ordinary Poles will have to fight the bureaucracy to defend their right to express their opinions. This is unacceptable,” he said, adding that “the state is supposed to guarantee freedom, not restrict it.” The government, which has often clashed with the president, condemned the veto. Digital affairs minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said Nawrocki’s action would weaken online protection efforts. Gawkowski argued that the rejected bill would have strengthened user rights, guarded families from “hate” and “misinformation,” and countered the spread of foreign propaganda. The Polish Media Council also voiced disappointment, warning that the veto “will hinder the fight against online disinformation, especially at a time when almost every day brings new lies from across the eastern border.” By rejecting the bill, Poland now remains one of several EU countries yet to implement the DSA, exposing it to possible sanctions from Brussels. The European Commission referred Poland and four others to the Court of Justice of the European Union last May over non-compliance. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post President Karol Nawrocki Vetoes Poland’s EU Digital Services Act Enforcement Bill, Citing Censorship Concerns appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Iran’s government has expanded its control over digital communication, deploying military jamming systems that have largely disabled Starlink satellite access. The escalation represents a new stage in the regime’s long-running effort to cut the public off from the outside world whenever unrest emerges. Early interference affected roughly 30 percent of Starlink’s signal traffic, which rose to more than 80 percent within hours. Because Starlink relies on GPS for positioning and synchronization, interference at that level has fragmented service into irregular pockets of access, leaving many districts fully disconnected. Starlink traffic collapsed at the same time as reports of widespread communication loss appeared online. According to NetBlocks, “Iran’s internet blackout is now past the 60-hour mark as national connectivity levels continue to flatline around 1% of ordinary levels.” The militarization of signal disruption extends Iran’s censorship strategy beyond traditional online restrictions. Starlink had been a last-ditch option for journalists, organizers, and citizens seeking to stay connected during government shutdowns. Now, even that fallback is being systematically dismantled. Governments have interfered with Starlink before, but none have succeeded in cutting off access nationwide.  The new Iranian blackout appears to mark the first time a state has managed to disrupt the satellite network on such a broad scale inside its own territory. In Ukraine, Russian electronic warfare units have repeatedly targeted Starlink terminals since 2022, aiming to degrade connectivity for both military and civilian users.  The attacks have included GPS interference and jamming attempts directed at the Ku-band frequencies that Starlink relies on.  Ukrainian officials and Elon Musk have confirmed these operations, which have caused intermittent service interruptions and packet loss. However, the disruptions remained localized, typically confined to active frontlines, and never amounted to a full shutdown across the country. SpaceX introduced software updates to help Starlink terminals adapt to jamming attempts, keeping the system largely functional despite ongoing attacks. Iran’s earlier efforts were far more limited than the current nationwide jamming.  During the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022, authorities interfered with GPS signals, which Starlink terminals use to orient toward satellites.  That caused irregular connectivity in cities like Tehran and Isfahan, but only in select zones. The regime also blocked Starlink’s website and intensified its usual filtering and censorship measures against foreign news and satellite television. But this was rudimentary compared with the military-grade signal suppression now being observed in 2026. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Iran Implements Nationwide Military Jamming to Cripple Starlink and Enforce Digital Blackout appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Apple and Google are under mounting political pressure from Democrats over X’s AI chatbot, Grok, after lawmakers accused the platform of producing images of women and allegedly minors in bikinis. While the outrage targets X specifically, the ability to generate such material is not unique to one platform. Similar image manipulation and synthetic content creation can be found across nearly every major AI system available today. Yet, the letter sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai by Senators Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Luján, and Ed Markey only asked the tech giants only about X and demanded that the companies remove X from their app stores entirely. X is used by around 557 million users. We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. The lawmakers wrote that “X’s generation of these harmful and likely illegal depictions of women and children has shown complete disregard for your stores’ distribution terms.” They pointed to Google’s developer rules, which prohibit apps that facilitate “the exploitation or abuse of children,” and Apple’s policy against apps that are “offensive” or “just plain creepy.” Ignoring the First Amendment completely, “Apple and Google must remove these apps from the app stores until X’s policy violations are addressed,” the letter states. Dozens of generative systems, including open-source image models that can’t be controlled or limited by anyone, can produce the same kinds of bikini images with minimal prompting. The senators cited prior examples of Apple and Google removing apps such as ICEBlock and Red Dot under government pressure. “Unlike Grok’s sickening content generation, these apps were not creating or hosting harmful or illegal content, and yet, based entirely on the Administration’s claims that they posed a risk to immigration enforcers, you removed them from your stores,” the letter stated. That comparison reveals how enforcement decisions often hinge less on consistent rule application and more on the political context surrounding a particular app. More: Starmer’s Looking for an Excuse to Ban X If Apple and Google were to apply the same standard across their ecosystems, they would face the uncomfortable reality that many AI models, some even embedded within their own platforms, are capable of producing identical results. OpenAI’s ChatGPT app, which Apple partners with for Siri (and soon will partner with Google’s AI) and Google’s own Gemini AI tool have also produced such images. But the Senators haven’t called for those apps to be banned too. Generative systems trained on public image data can easily be manipulated into generating any material, including synthetic bikini images. Targeting one company as a scapegoat may ease political outrage, but does little to address the structural problem that all advanced AI models can create content that crosses ethical or legal boundaries. When app store policies are enforced in response to political attention rather than objective criteria, it strengthens the argument that digital gatekeeping is being used as a tool of control rather than a neutral system of protection. The result is an environment where large corporations and government officials determine who gets silenced, while the underlying technological issues remain unresolved. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Democrats Demand Apple and Google Ban X From App Stores appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. It was only a matter of time before Elon Musk’s X became the designated piñata for Britain’s shiny new censorship law, the Online Safety Act. The regulator, Ofcom, has now waddled into the room with the ceremonial clipboard and a trembling sense of purpose, launching a formal investigation into the platform. It follows reports that Grok, X’s resident AI, has been used to create non-consensual images of women and minors in bikinis. Ofcom hasn’t yet proved anything, but the tone in Westminster already suggests they’ve got the torches and pitchforks ready. Tech Secretary Liz Kendall arrived with a statement to make the morning news. “I welcome Ofcom’s urgency,” she beamed. “The public, and most importantly the victims, will not accept any delay.” And sure enough, the “ban” word has been thrown into the air like confetti. If X fails to comply, Ofcom says it could be booted from Britain entirely. A platform with over half a billion users and where the Labour government’s biggest critics have a voice would be gone. Blocked like a dodgy Russian gambling site. All because of a content moderation “crisis” that (and here’s the punchline) is happening on pretty much every AI tool, but apparently only X deserves the guillotine. You can’t really say what you think on Facebook anymore unless you enjoy being suspended for “context missing.” Instagram? That’s for lifestyle influencers and performance art. TikTok’s run by an algorithm that buries anything more controversial than a dancing dog. LinkedIn is basically a corporate cult. But X? On X, people talk. Not because they’re all radicals, but because they care, and because they’re allowed to. And that’s what makes it dangerous. Not Grok. Not memes. Not edgy posts. But freedom. The kind of freedom where the wrong story can go viral before the BBC’s morning meeting. Where a health minister’s mistake doesn’t disappear into committee minutes but gets clipped, posted, and scrutinized by thousands. Where the narrative can’t be managed by press officers and their PowerPoint decks. Under the Online Safety Act, the UK’s censors can fine companies up to 10 percent of their global revenue. For X, that’s hundreds of millions of pounds, enough to make even Elon blink. But what happens if they actually push the button? Imagine the optics: Britain becomes the first Western democracy to ban a major global platform. It would, at least, be in keeping with its recent rapid decline in civil liberties over the last few years. Of course, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman said at a lobby briefing of journalists on Monday that the government would support a ban if that’s what Ofcom calls for. “Ofcom has a back stop power to apply to the courts to block services in the UK where they refuse to uphold our law. If Ofcom deems that to be necessary, they will have our full support,” the spokesperson said. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK Regulator Ofcom Opens Official Investigation Into X appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Germany’s government is preparing to give its foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), far broader powers over online surveillance and hacking than it has ever had before. A draft amendment to the BND Act, circulating by German media, would transform the agency’s reach by authorizing it to break into foreign digital systems, collect and store large portions of internet traffic, and analyze those communications retroactively. At the core of this plan is Frankfurt’s DE-CIX internet exchange, one of the largest data junctions on the planet. For thirty years, global traffic has passed through this node, and for just as long, the BND has quietly operated there under government supervision, scanning international data streams for intelligence clues. More: Germany Turns Its Back on Decades‑Old Privacy Protections with Sweeping Surveillance Bill Until now, this monitoring has been limited. The agency could capture metadata such as connection records, but not the full content of messages, and any data collected had to be reviewed and filtered quickly. The proposed legal reform would overturn those restrictions. The BND would be permitted to copy and retain not only metadata but also entire online conversations, including emails, chats, and other content, for up to six months. Officials expect that roughly 30 percent of the world’s internet traffic moving through German collection points could be subject to capture. A two-step process would follow. First, the BND would stockpile the data. Later, analysts could open and inspect specific content after the fact. Supporters in the Chancellery say that this is not a radical expansion but a modernization that brings Germany into alignment with foreign partners. They claim that other countries’ intelligence services already hold data for longer periods, two years in the Netherlands, four years in France, and indefinitely in Britain and Italy. The government’s view is that the BND must have comparable tools to operate independently rather than relying on allied services for insight. Yet the amendment goes far beyond storage. It would also legalize direct hacking operations against companies and infrastructure that do not cooperate voluntarily with BND requests. Under the term “Computer Network Exploitation,” the agency could secretly access the systems of online providers like Google, Meta, or X. These intrusions would be permitted both abroad and, in some circumstances, within Germany itself, especially if justified as a defense against cyberattacks. Another provision would sharply reduce existing privacy protections for journalists. At present, reporters enjoy near absolute protection from state surveillance. The draft law, however, introduces an exception. Employees of media organizations tied to “authoritarian” governments could be monitored, with the justification that such journalists might be acting on behalf of their states rather than as independent observers. The Chancellery has declined to comment publicly, saying only that the amendment is still under internal review. But the direction is unmistakable. Germany appears ready to embed mass interception and hacking powers into law, effectively normalizing surveillance once viewed as excessive during the Snowden era. While the government frames this as a strategic update, the effect would be the routine collection and long-term storage of personal communications flowing through German networks. Such a structure risks making mass surveillance a permanent feature of the digital world, one that alters the balance of power further away from individual privacy and toward an intelligence system designed to watch nearly everything that passes through its cables. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Germany Considers Broader Legal Authority for Internet Surveillance and State Hacking appeared first on Reclaim The Net.