US Bans Foreign Routers, systemd Age Verification, Meta & Google Lose Social Media Addiction Lawsuit, and more!
Our top stories this week:
- The US government just banned consumer routers made outside the US
- Systemd’s New Feature Brings Age Verification Option to Linux
- HK police can now demand phone passwords under new national security rules
- Jury finds Meta and Google negligent in social media harms trial
TWIP Live 🔴
Updates from the Team
EFF-Austin Interactive
Jonah & Nate were invited to attend to EFF-Austin's unofficial South by Southwest "Interactive" event on March 13. We were able to film the talks and found them highly insightful, so we've posted most of them online to share with all of you. Be sure to subscribe because there might be one more still!
News
It was a busy week, and our staff writer Fria recapped some of this week's biggest stories, including (but not limited to) Strava revealing the location of a French aircraft carrier, Android 17 getting a post-quantum cryptography upgrade, a sever cybersecurity incident at Meta resulting from agentic AI, Vizio TVs requiring Walmart accounts, and a botnet on Asus routers.
Jonah Aragon
Sources
The US government just banned consumer routers made outside the US
The FCC has banned all consumer routers, citing “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons.” They use the NIST Internal Reports 8425A definition of a "consumer router," which defines them as “intended for residential use and can be installed by the customer.” They explicitly namechecked famous hacks such as Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon as examples of why foreign-made routers can't be trusted.
Sean Hollister
Systemd’s New Feature Brings Age Verification Option to Linux
California, Colorado, and potentially New York have been leading the charge in the latest wave of awful age verification ideas: forcing the operating system to handle it. systemd has reponded by adding a birthDate field to the JSON user records, allowing for a date of birth to be entered when the user account is created on-device. systemd insists that this field is entirely optional and that they're simply adding the functionality for anyone who wants to make use of it, but it remains controversial.
Sourav Rudra
HK police can now demand phone passwords under new national security rules
On Monday, the Chinese government added an amendment to 2020's National Security Law that allows police to demand a phone or computer password from suspects. Refusal could mean up to a year in jail and a fine of HK$100,000 ($12,700/£9,600). The BBC says that changes were announced by the city leader, " bypassing the city's legislative council."
Jury finds Meta and Google negligent in social media harms trial
A woman in her 20s sued Meta and Google over allegations that she the apps were knowingly designed to be addictive, which caused her to become addicted as a small child. (Snap and TikTok were also named, but settled before the trial began.) On Monday, she won and was awarded $6 million in damages. While the monetary amount is negligible for these companies, the legal precedent is really what's noteworthy here.
Bobby Allyn
Forum Updates
