Good Monday, friends of privacy!

This week, we celebrate Sim-free Signal accounts, look at the privacy risks of EU age verification, growing resistance to AI, facial-recognition surveillance and a revealing breach of Flock’s camera network.

And for Tool of the Week, welcome Obscura VPN — an independent, privacy-focused VPN that separates knowledge of your identity from your online activity through a two-party relay architecture.

Tool of the week

• Check out Obscura VPN

Insights

• Obscura VPN launches a Circle of Trust connecting independent privacy services
• Signal tests Android account registration without requiring a phone number
• EDRi warns that the EU’s age-verification tool fails to resolve fundamental privacy risks
• California voters grow increasingly concerned about AI and its expanding infrastructure
• Interpol uses AI to identify 126 suspects across a database of 100,000 images
• Hackers steal Flock’s camera software and expose how it tracks vehicles and people

Knowledge

• cp0x shares its latest update on privacy-preserving technology
• Ludlow Institute presents a new update from its research community
• Noah Smith examines two missing pieces in the debate over AI safety
• Proton shares its latest perspective on building a more private internet
• Proton VPN brings private browsing to Amazon’s Vega OS Fire TV devices

Inspiration: Going On(Line) an offering of media from the web

• Get the book The Politics of Privacy: Autonomy and Power in the Digital Age
• 8 more privacy tools experts actually use by Proton
• Check the State of Decentralised Privacy report
• The Digital Independence They Don't Want You To Have by Naomi Brockwell
• Web3 Privacy Now courses in our Academy

Inspiration: Going Off(Line) an offering of IRL events

(new/changes in bold)

• Sep 19–27 - ETHTokyo - Tokyo, Japan
• Sep 25 - BigBrotherAwards 2026 - Bielefeld, Germany
• Sep 25–27 - Quellc0d3 - Nuremberg, Germany
• Oct 2–4 - DARK Prague 2026 - Prague, Czechia
• Oct 2–4 - Digital Independence Days 2026 - Hamburg, Germany
• Oct 9–11 - Interfug 2026 - Chemnitz, Germany
• Oct 27 - Web3Privacy Now x MozFest Meetup - Barcelona, Spain
• Oct 28–30 - MozFest — Mozilla Festival - Barcelona, Spain
• Nov 2 - Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress #3 - Mumbai, India
• Nov 3–6 - Devcon 8 - Mumbai, India
• Dec 27–30 - 40C3 — 40th Chaos Communication Congress - Hamburg, Germany