Privacy & Digital Freedom News — 2026-07-25

The daily reading list for people who care about digital privacy — curated headlines with links to the original reporting. Why we track this: every new SIM-registration law, data-broker leak, and surveillance expansion is a reason anonymous connectivity exists.

EFF Deeplinks

• Hundreds of Drone-as-First-Responder Programs Could Soon Be Launched Across the Country — <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p><span>Police departments across the country are lining up to launch drone-a…
• The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required — <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p><em>Legal intern </em><em>Suzanne Castillo was the principal author of this…
• New EU Court of Justice Ruling on Platform Liability Could Cause Collateral Damage to Freedom of Expression — <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p><span data-contrast="auto">Intermediary liability laws </span><a href=" dat…
• Protect Your Privacy with California's DROP Tool — <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p><span>Are you a California resident? Then we've got exciting news for you: …

Hacker News (privacy)

• The privacy problems hidden in your period tracker
• Flock Defense "No Expectation of Privacy in Public" Is Wrong
• An American Privacy Emergency — Recent and related: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau - - June 2026 (604 comments)…
• Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

Hacker News (eSIM)

• eSIM was supposed to replace SIM cards, but carriers turned it into a trap
• Cheapest way to keep a UK mobile number using an eSIM
• Implementing automatic eSIM installation on Android
• Been using this Tourist eSIM while traveling, super cheap unlimited data

Schneier on Security

• Friday Squid Blogging: Illex Squid Catch in the Falklands — Lower catch this year . As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven&#8217;t covered. Blog moderation policy.…
• Why AI Needs a “Genie Coefficient” — This essay was written with Barath Raghavan, and originally appeared in IEEE Spectrum . Major benchmarks measure what AI can do. None measure whether it does what you mean: the distance between what you ask an AI to do a…
• End-to-End Encryption and “Going Dark” — New paper: &#8220; Encryption and Globalization 15 Years Later: End-to-End Encryption and the Third Round of the &#8216;Going Dark&#8217; Debate &#8220;: Abstract : This Article updates and expands on 2012 research on en…
• First-Person Identity Theft Story — Harrowing story of an identity theft victim. Yes, the person made a mistake&#8212;they gave the scammer a two-factor authentication code that allowed the scammer to take over their email address. But the real story here …

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This roundup is generated automatically every day from public feeds. All headlines link to and credit their original sources.