Hackaday Links: March 22, 2026

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/03/22/hackaday-links-march-22-2026/

The #Foilies2026

Established in 2015, The #Foilies are an annual project by the #ElectronicFrontierFoundation & #MuckRock to recognize the agencies, officials & contractors that thwart the public's #right to know. We give out these tongue-in-cheek "awards" during #SunshineWeek (March 15-21), a collective effort by media & advocacy organizations to highlight the importance of open government.

This year, we've got a few "winners" whose behavior defies belief.
#eff

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/foilies-2026

#SpotTheSurveillance

#EFF #ElectronicFrontierFoundation

https://www.eff.org/pages/spot-surveillance-vr-experience-keeping-eye-big-brother

Oh cool, now it’s harder to track what spy toys our tax dollars buy. The article says FPDS.gov—used to spot everything from phone hacking tech to location data and Palantir installs—was shut down Wednesday and replaced by SAM.gov, which reportedly makes searching way worse. Transparency got declawed 😼

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/02/26/1722205/the-government-just-made-it-harder-to-see-what-spy-tech-it-buys

#Surveillance #ICE #ElectronicFrontierFoundation

#Google Fulfilled #ICE Subpoena Demanding #StudentJournalist’s #Bank and #CreditCard Numbers

#AmandlaThomasJohnson didn’t know how much information ICE requested in a subpoena until months later. Google never gave him a chance to fight it.

Jessica Washington. February 10 2026

Excerpt: "Amandla Thomas-Johnson had attended a protest targeting companies that supplied weapons to Israel at a #CornellUniversity job fair in 2024 for all of five minutes, but the action got him banned from campus. When President Donald Trump assumed office and issued a series of executive orders targeting students who protested in support of #Palestinians, Thomas-Johnson and his friend Momodou Taal went into hiding.

"Google informed Thomas-Johnson via a brief email in April that it had already shared his metadata with the Department of Homeland Security, as The Intercept previously reported. But the full extent of the information the agency sought — including usernames, addresses, itemized list of services, including any IP masking services, telephone or instrument numbers, subscriber numbers or identities, and credit card and bank account numbers — was not previously known.

" 'I’d already seen the subpoena request that Google and Meta had sent to Momodou [Taal], and I knew that he had gotten in touch with a lawyer and the lawyer successfully challenged that,' Thomas-Johnson said. 'I was quite surprised to see that I didn’t have that opportunity.'

"The subpoena provides no justification for why ICE is asking for this information, except that it’s required 'in connection with an investigation or inquiry relating to the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.' In the subpoena, ICE requests that Google not 'disclose the existence of this summons for indefinite period of time.'
Thomas-Johnson, who is British, believes that ICE requested that information to track and eventually detain him — but he had already fled to Geneva, Switzerland, and is now in Dakar, Senegal.

"The #ElectronicFrontierFoundation, which is representing Thomas-Johnson, and the #ACLU of Northern California sent a letter to Google, #Amazon, #Apple, #Discord, #Meta, #Microsoft, and #Reddit last week calling on tech companies to resist similar subpoenas in the future from #DHS without court intervention. The letter asks the companies to provide users with as much notice as possible before complying with a subpoena to give them the opportunity to fight it, and to resist gag orders that would prevent the #TechCompanies from informing targets that a subpoena was issued.

" 'Your promises to protect the privacy of users are being tested right now. As part of the federal government’s unprecedented campaign to target critics of its conduct and policies, agencies like DHS have repeatedly demanded access to the identities and information of people on your services,' the letter reads.

" 'Based on our own contact with targeted users, we are deeply concerned your companies are failing to challenge unlawful surveillance and defend user privacy and speech.' "

Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/02/10/google-ice-subpoena-student-journalist/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/zEa6d

#ResistICE #ResistFascism #USPol #Authoritarianism #Fascism #ICEOut #DefundICE #Orwellian #BigBrother #NineteenEightyFour #FreePalestine #FreeGaza #SilencingDissent #SilencingFreeSpeech #DepartmentOfHomelandInsecurity

These are organizations I have donated and supported so far this winter:

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library - https://imaginationlibrary.com/

Privacyguides: @privacyguides https://www.privacyguides.org/

Electronic Frontier Foundation: @eff https://eff.org/yec

I was inspired by @PhoenixSerenity to make this post. Like they said, please consider donations to nonprofits and charities who do good work.  

#Support #donations #Privacy #PrivacyGuides #EFF #ElectronicFrontierFoundation #nonprofits #charities