Welcome to In the Open
First edition · Jul 2026
Welcome to the first edition of In the Open.
If you’ve been here long enough, you’ve seen this newsletter change shape more than once, from useWeb3 to Privacy on Ethereum and now In the Open. A new privacy initiative for open technology, and digital autonomy.
Technology is changing rapidly around us. Its a fundamental part of our identity, work, relationships and how we communicate, but new systems for identity verification, biometric monitoring, message scanning and other surveillance infrastructure are creeping into our daily life, and reshaping our digital rights.
With this newsletter, I’ll help you follow those developments, understand what they mean and what you can do about it. Each month, I’ll share the most important developments, wins, tools, resources, and events. Beyond the newsletter, the goal is to build open-source tools, models, research, and find ways to take back control.
Get in touch if you’d like to get involved!
- Wesley
Updates
EU Chat Control 1.0 revival
The European Parliament forced an extension of Chat Control 1.0 that allows big tech to continue scanning private messages until 2028. Most MEPs voted against it, but due to an undemocratic and sneaky tactic it was pushed one day before summer recess. See which representatives enabled it.
The real fight over Chat Control 2.0 resumes in September.
Age verification and social media bans
Age-verification laws keep spreading under the guise of child safety. So far they have strengthened the most powerful tech companies more than they have protected children. France has now approved an under-15 social media ban, while security researchers continue to break the verification systems meant to enforce this.
Proton’s tracker shows how quickly these laws are spreading globally.
Your car required to watch you
Every new car in the EU must now include a driver-facing camera to detect distractions. Its another step in collecting biometric data, for training purposes in an everyday private space with little clarity or regulation on what is allowed with that data. Ironic is that these mandates arrive when the next generation of cars does not need a driver at all.
Flock watches more than plates
The street is no longer anonymous either. Cops already use Flock to track people, not just cars, and Tommy G maps how deep that dragnet already runs: national sharing, stalking abuses, cameras you never voted for. Pressure still works on the edges. Flock ended its audio “Distress Detection” rollout after city mics risked sending armed police to ordinary street noise. A small win, as their wider network keeps growing.
Keep Android Open
From September 2026 Google will block sideloaded Android apps unless developers register, pay, and hand over government ID. Keep Android Open.
News
American charged for using a duress PIN - American traveler charged for the alleged destruction of data using Graphene OS during border search
Meta and Google introduce selfie verification - Both pushed face-video checks sold as security or recovery. Do not hand over your face for a badge or a password reset.
AI coding tools overreaching on your repos - xAI admitted Grok Build kept developer repositories, and Anthropic Claude was caught reading files outside its allowed scope.
Mobile VPNs leak more than they claim - Engineers at the University of Michigan audited 281 Android VPNs and found many leak traffic or identifiers and fail basic hardening.
Apple patches Hide My Email, a year late - A flaw let anyone reverse-lookup a real address from a Hide My Email alias. Apple fixed it quietly after more than a year.
arXiv LaTeX sources leak secrets - A study of nearly three million preprints finds LaTeX sources often expose passwords, GPS coordinates, and private author comments.
Wins
UK drops workplace digital ID - The UK scraps its mandatory workplace digital ID scheme after cross-party pushback.
Meta smart glasses backlash - After public pressure Meta stripped facial-recognition code from its glasses app, and New York banned the glasses in every courthouse.
US Supreme Court limits geofence warrants - Warrants for phone location history around a crime scene now count as searches, so police need stronger constitutional grounds.
EU Court: VPNs are lawful tools - The EU Court of Justice affirmed VPNs as lawful technical tools, not infringement gadgets, in an Anne Frank copyright case.
UK leaves VPNs alone - The UK kept VPNs outside Online Safety Act controls, and the VPN industry called it the right call.
Apple loses Digital Markets Act challenge - The EU General Court upheld Apple interoperability duties and rejected its bid for exemptions.
Proton VPN transparency report - In 2026 through June, Proton denied all 47 data requests targeting VPN users, with nothing to hand over under its no-logs design.
Tools
Paperweight v0.5 - Local-first PII analysis for addresses, phones, IBANs, national IDs, cards, and more.
Multi-account containers in Firefox and Brave - Both browsers now ship containers so work, personal, and other sessions stay isolated from cross-site trackers.
pvcli - A curl-like CLI for debugging Oblivious HTTP and other privacy proxy protocols, open-sourced by Cloudflare under Apache-2.0.
DuckDuckGo YouTube ad blocking - DuckDuckGo browsers now block most YouTube video ads by default, on top of tracker and cookie-pop-up protections.
Site Behavior Lab - Runs 98 real sites in a controlled browser and shows every request, cookie, and tracker, including what Brave Shields would block.
EFF wearable privacy review - Most watches, rings, and bands lack transparency reports and share health data widely. Apple is still the rare end-to-end encryption case.
Resources
Exit Chat Control - A multilingual field guide to encrypted messaging, email, VPN, DNS, 2FA, and self-hosting.
Peer-to-Peer (Coin Center) - New Coin Center newsletter on tech authoritarianism and the tools to resist it. This is the first post.
When is software protected speech? - Law of Code with Peter Van Valkenburgh on code as speech, from the crypto wars to AI export controls.
Privacy is not about hiding - Jaya Klara Brekke (Nym) on privacy as the freedom to think, err, and connect, not just conceal data.
Your apps are scanning your photos - Techlore on how photo and message scanning works, why Chat Control-style mandates make it worse, and how to lock down defaults.
Your Period Data Should Be Private - A practical guide to protecting menstrual health data.
Events
06 Aug 2026 - DEF CON (Las Vegas, USA)
10 Aug 2026 - Privacy Camp 2026 call for sessions (Brussels, Belgium)
14 Aug 2026 - HOPE (New York, USA)
31 Aug 2026 - Cypherpunk Week (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
01 Sep 2026 - Web3Privacy now (Amsterdam) (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
18 Sep 2026 - Web3Privacy now (Tokyo) (Tokyo, Japan)
29 Sep 2026 - Bitkom Privacy Conference (Berlin, Germany)
13 Oct 2026 - Brussels Privacy Symposium 2026 (Brussels, Belgium)
13 Oct 2026 - Privacy Camp (Brussels, Belgium)
02 Nov 2026 - Web3Privacy Congress (Mumbai) (Mumbai, India)
27 Dec 2026 - 40C3 (Hamburg, Germany)