May 2025 Privacy News Roundup
Welcome back to another edition of my monthly news roundup. I caught a variety of headlines, but the most common ones include surveillance, AI, and Big Tech. Make sure you check them all out.
✨Notable Substack Reads
✨May 2025 Posts from The Privacy Cloud🔐☁️
1.) License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows - Link
2.) UK government outlines plan to surveil migrants with eVisa data - Link
3.) ProtectEU plan - Link / Additional Link / Another Link
4.) Security Theater REALized and Flying without REAL ID - Link
5.) Russia to enforce location tracking app on all foreigners in Moscow - Link
6.) Switzerland To Hold Referendum on Introducing Electronic ID - Link / Additional Link
7.) The US Is Storing Migrant Children’s DNA in a Criminal Database - Link
8.) ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows - Link
9.) US Border Agents Are Asking for Help Taking Photos of Everyone Entering the Country by Car - Link
10.) Florida bill requiring encryption backdoors for social media accounts has failed - Link
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11.) A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion - Link / Additional Link
12.) Texas’s War On Abortion Is Now A War On Free Speech - Link
13.) All Eyes on my Period? Period tracking apps and the future of privacy in a post-Roe world - Link
14.) Police told how to search a woman's home and her phone for evidence she's had an illegal abortion - Link
15.) China student says college made her 'take off trousers' for period leave - Link
16.) ‘Deep concern’ for domestic abuse survivors as cybercriminals expected to publish confidential refuge addresses - Link
17.) New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S. - Link
18.) Sweden Expands Anti-Sex Work Law to Criminalize Paying for Custom OnlyFans Clips and Camming - Link
19.) Australian Human Rights Commission leaks docs to search engines - Link
20.) Stopping States From Passing AI Laws for the Next Decade Is a Terrible Idea - Link
21.) AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state - Link
22.) Microsoft shuts off Bing Search APIs and recommends switching to AI - Link
23.) Netflix to bring AI-powered interactive midroll ads to ad-supported tier in 2026 - Link
24.) YouTube Announces Gemini AI Feature to Target Ads When Viewers are Most Engaged - Link
25.) Windows 11 adds AI in Settings, a new Start Menu and AI-powered search in Photos & Search - Link
26.) Developer Builds Tool That Scrapes YouTube Comments, Uses AI to Predict Where Users Live - Link
27.) noyb sends Meta 'cease and desist' letter over AI training. European Class Action as potential next step - Link
28.) Sam Altman Wants Your Eyeball - Link
29.) Age Verification Wants Your Face, and Your Privacy - Link
30.) Well, Well, Well: Meta to Add Facial Recognition To Glasses After All - Link
31.) A new bill would force Apple to allow third-party app stores - Link
32.) UN Ditches Google for Taking Form Submissions, Opts for an Open Source Solution Instead - Link
33.) Firefox could be doomed without Google search deal, says executive - Link
34.) Mozilla quietly makes Microsoft’s GitHub the authoritative home for Firefox code - Link
35.) Nextcloud vs. Google - Link / Additional Link
36.) EU ruling: tracking-based advertising by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X, across Europe has no legal basis - Link
37.) Microsoft pushes users deeper into its walled garden - Link
38.) By Default, Signal Doesn't Recall - Link
39.) Google Chrome's Built-in Manager Lets Users Update Breached Passwords with One Click - Link
40.) Poll of 1,000 senior techies: Euro execs mull use of US clouds - Link
41.) New Zealand kind-of moves to ban social media for under-16s, require age checks for new accounts - Link
42.) Indigenous scientists are fighting to protect their data — and their culture - Link
43.) The Kids Online Act (KOSA) - Link / Additional Link / Another Link
44.) After Markup investigation, LinkedIn and Google face lawsuit alleging improper access to health data - Link
45.) The NYC Algorithm Deciding Which Families Are Under Watch for Child Abuse - Link
46.) No Postal Service Data Sharing to Deport Immigrants - Link
47.) After two court losses, DOGE asks Supreme Court for Social Security data access - Link
48.) A Third Party Travel Broker Is Selling Airplane Ticket Records To DHS, DOJ Components - Link
49.) U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data - Link
50.) Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online - Link
51.) US will ban foreign officials to punish countries for social media rules - Link
52.) Trump Administration’s Targeting Of International Students Jeopardizes Free Speech And Privacy Online - Link
53.) Police secretly monitored New Orleans with facial recognition cameras - Link
54.) Greek Authorities Fail In Their Attempt To Make VPN Founder Personally Responsible For The Action Of An Unknown User - Link
55.) 'I Won't Connect My Dishwasher To Your Stupid Cloud' - Link
56.) More US Airports are Scanning Faces. But a New Bill Could Limit the Practice - Link
57.) Wikipedia legally challenges 'flawed' online safety rules - Link
58.) EU to ban anonymous crypto accounts and privacy coins by 2027 - Link
59.) EU High Level Group (established by EU commission) recommends forcing all devices in the EU to be sold with ”integrated Law Enforcement access” and sanctioning non-EU approved messaging services - Link
60.) EU to make GDPR procedures unworkable - Link
61.) Fighting against a nuclear project in France - Link
62.) Stronger together: What we've accomplished since the Tails-Tor merger - Link
63.) House Moves Forward With Dangerous Proposal Targeting Nonprofits - Link
64.) Vietnam orders ban on Telegram messaging app over security concerns - Link
65.) Black Workers Are Most Likely To Be Targeted By Workplace Surveillance, New Report Reveals - Link
66.) Trump signs the Take It Down Act into law - Link
67.) Boffins devise technique that lets users prove location without giving it away - Link
68.) Nintendo warns that it can brick Switch consoles if it detects hacking, piracy - Link
69.) Montana Becomes First State to Close the Law Enforcement Data Broker Loophole - Link
70.) Oregon becomes second state to ban sale of precise geolocation data - Link
Share any privacy-related news you discovered this month in the comments.
Until Next Time,
Monique🔐