What happened?
- ❤️❤️❤️ Having difficult discussions in a calm and open way, and seeing how it shifts it all. I'm so happy to be able to detect when things are going to blow, and find ways to avoid it. It's like a super-power :-)
- ❤️❤️ Two intense weeks preparing for Dangerzone 0.10.0 first release candidate, which contains two big changes we've been working on for the last months. Lots of interesting challenges, and stress managed the good way, pretty happy about this release coming along!
- ❤️❤️ Happy to see how discussing security can offer peace of mind to some exposed folks in the field. We're so much into technical considerations that we sometimes fail to see how the simplest prevention measures (use a password manager, use Tor browser) are the one that matter the most.
- 💔 Work/Life balance has been a bit off. I wish I knew better when to stop and do something else. I see the patterns, I now "just" have to react. Taking vacations would help when we enter fall.
- 💔 Using screens in my spare time seem to drain me somehow. Reading, making music recharges me. I should do that instead.
Resources
- The alt-right playbook (en) is a series of videos exposing the strategies used by the alt-right, and how we should (not) react to them. I've started watching these a while back, and it really is a good reminder of how it works, adn the traps they're setting up for us.
- Edwy Plenel invites Olivier Manonni (fr) and discusses how fascism goes through the evolution of the language, explaining how D. Trump and his surroundings are talking the same way the Nazis propagandist did. I found this fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
- A video of Noam Chomsky on Free Speech. I think I agree with his position that the refutation of the ideas should be where the discussion is, not if people should be able to voice them. Giving censorship power to the state ~~could~~will be used for control.
- "The Muppets" cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, a ska cover of Ghost Busters, Rebirth Brass Band playing Right Foot
- This musical series, where keyboardists hear for the first time a song, and play along with it is amazing.
Quotes, etc.
At the White House, the attack on the press continues:
After the recent departure of Pentagon reporters due to their refusal to agree to a new set of restrictive policies, the defense department has announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets, many of which have promoted conspiracy theories. The Guardian
I've seen "SimpleX" come in my feed more often, and wasn't really aware of it, how it works and how it's done. The technical aspects are interesting, to offer an alternative to Signal, but unfortunately we also learned that the lead developer is leaning towards the far right of the spectrum, from this toot:
I've been studying the chat app SimpleX (I have to keep abreast of these things for work) & was so over focused on the tool I did not see the hand that made it. [...] The author indeed appears to be hardline, highly vocal, conspiratorial extreme right, even so far as drumrolling racist party ReformUK.
(source)
Talk by Micah Lee
But if repression is decentralized, with every state and city having its own local fascists in charge of picking targets they don’t like, then everyone needs to fear it. It’s too early to know how mercenary spyware will be abused by the Trump administration, but it’s prudent for everyone to get prepared now.
The whole talk is great, and I like the fact that he's calling for people to get together and create some bonds in their communities.
Here's what he's recommending. I'm putting it here just to find it later.
On iphone: - Enable Lockdown mode - Enable "Advanced Data Protection" in iCloud - Password manager - iPhone 17+ uses Memory Integrity Enforcement by default
Android: - Enable Android Advanced Protection macOS: - Use fileVault to encrypt - Windows: bitlocker
Some other quotes from this talk:
Last month, ICE entered a new $11 million contract with Cellebrite. But ICE already has a long history of working with them. In 2017, they first spent $2.2 million on a Cellebrite contract, immediately after Trump’s travel ban. In 2019, they spent somewhere between $30 and $35 million on another contract. And now, they’re starting a new $11 million contract.
We knew that Cellebrite was bad, but didn't know what were the connection with the US and ICE.
Rayhunter is a project for detecting IMSI catchers, also known as cell-site simulators or stingrays. It was first designed to run on a cheap mobile hotspot called the Orbic RC400L, but thanks to community efforts can support some other devices as well. Rayhunter
People living under repressive regimes have learned throughout history is the importance of security culture. A security culture is a set of customs and measures shared by a community to keep everyone safe.
As shit gets more real, keeping your community safe is everyone's responsibility.
This shifts a bit how I'm thinking about security, by avoiding to put this on individual shoulders. You help keep your community secure by thinking about security. It's not (only) about you.
PSF refusing funding from the US gov
We were forced to withdraw our application and turn down the funding, thanks to new language that was added to the agreement requiring us to affirm that we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/27/psf-withdrawn-proposal/
Crazy times, where governments try to tie the hands of organizations via their fundings. It's great to see the PSF holding to their values. Refusing 1.5 billion is really impressive.
ICE deports British Journalist Sami Hamdi
The British journalist Sami Hamdi was reportedly detained on Sunday morning by federal immigration authorities at San Francisco international airport, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) says that action is apparent retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US.
A foreign british journalist was deported because he was criticizing Israel in the USA.
Peter Thiel, Palantir and André Girard
I did a fair amount of reading because I completely missed on what Palantir is. They market themselves as "AI-Powered Automation for Every Decision", and here are quotes from a letter from the CEO:
The growth rate of our business has accelerated radically, after years of investment on our part and derision by some. The skeptics are admittedly fewer now, having been defanged and bent into a kind of submission. Yet we see no reason to pause, to relent, here. [...] The United States is not, and should not be permitted to become, a soft compromise and amalgam of global values and tastes.
In short, however, a tolerance of everything, a shallow embrace of all views and perspectives as equally valid, often and unfortunately devolves into a belief in nothing.
This is awful. Just knowing that this company has governments and big corporations customers while taking this stance makes me sick. In France, the DGSI is a Palantir customer. In the USA, ICE uses algorithmic profiling done by Palantir.
In a video (in French), Nastasia Hadjadji mentions that Peter Thiel is using René Girard philosophical work to back his position, which I found very surprising:
Il y a une conjonction d'idéologies un peu composite, mais dans cette rhétorique extrèmement guerrière empruntée notamment à René Girard pour Peter Thiel, y'a cette idée de nommer des ennemis. Et l'ennemi est vraiment désigné, ce sont les démocraties libérales, et c'est l'état nation.
After wondering if I misread, I actually found where this is coming from. A friend of mine pointed me to a talk by Nidesh Lawtoo, a specialist of Girard's works, which says:
[...] This theory of the scapegoat actually works, it is something that works not only in theory but but in political practice. The problem is that although this was obviously not Girard's intention — his intention was the opposite: generating scapegoating mechanism to recognize the truth of mimetic desire and rivalry in us, the violence in us —, Rivalty theory can be turned into a manual for new fascist leaders, as the example of JD Vance quote suggests.
And to continue a bit on that:
There is a hint of Girardian logic in his 2014 book, Zero to One, which argues that capitalists should eschew mimetic rivalry and create monopolies beyond the reach of their competitors.
In his 1999 book, I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard describes how globalisation had led to “the rise of victim power”. He praised this development, referring to international aid and universal healthcare as expressions of a genuine concern for the most vulnerable. But it could be taken too far. “This concern sometimes is so exaggerated and in a fashion so subject to caricature that it arouses laughter, but we should guard against seeing it as only one thing.”
— source
And finally, that starts to make sense: they are using Girard's work on how being a victim can give some power, and taking it to the extremes, to discredit vulnerable people. That's what's behind the whole "wokeism debate".
par son mécénat philanthropique, Peter Thiel est désormais le plus gros sponsor des sociétés d'études girardiennes dans le monde. France Culture, Va savoir
Unfortunately, watermarking works
Every spatial element of a document — including the spacing between characters, words, sentences, and paragraphs — can be modified in every version to form a unique signature that identifies the recipient of that particular document. For instance, a version of a document sent to one person could have slight variations in the distance between certain characters, words, sentences, or paragraphs that uniquely differentiate the document from a version sent to another person with ever-so-slightly different spacings. The intercept
There are multiple ways to mark documents to know who is leaking them, but I wasn't aware about subtle versions like that, which tend to make me think that it's almost impossible to avoid. That's why it's safer to not disclose the documents in some cases.
In any case, if a whistleblower leaks a document that has been sent to them, I would consider it watermarked, and thus not for publication. — @apyrgio, in the Dangerzone issue tracker