Notices by Martin (mshelton@mastodon.social)

We're hiring. If you or someone you know are looking for a role in HR/finance, @freedomofpress is a great place to work. https://freedom.press/careers/job/?gh_jid=4649061005

I receive a shiny new YubiKey, but my 2FA is on my previous two YubiKeys.

The result: I now use three YubiKeys.

I work in press freedom. The news is bleak, and I know journalists feel it too.

I hope you will support the news in whatever way you can to ensure they can do the work. It’s not their fault things suck, they’re just working their asses off to help get you fact checked information. Get them paid.

A joint project of @freedomofpress and @eff: Journalists have been asking us about how to prepare devices for travel. We put together a checklist of things you can do. https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/border-security/

Cooking something at work on identifying people on Signal. As always, I like to include illustrative screenshots.

To help confirm someone's identity, Signal offers nicknames and information about the groups you share in common with your contacts. Make sure you're inviting the right person to your group. Learn about Signal's identifiers: https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/signal-identifiers/

The tech world has a habit of framing narratives around progress and inevitability — that only backward-looking people get in the way. Notice where this happens with narrative-building in our politics. Don't let anyone convince you of unidirectional progress, nor inevitability. It’s another tactic.

Just remembering one time when a guy jumped into my mentions to defend Elon after I shared recall data. I think the guy turned out to be the president of a Tesla owners club.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also responsible for issuing safety recalls. The Cybertruck alone had seven in 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/musk-trump-autonomous-selfdriving-doge-auto-safety-99b369c5e3ccd3e7c09b6951604b3a0a
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/every-tesla-cybertruck-recall-thats-happened-so-far/

Reminder: It's always a good time to download updates. https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/russia-targeting-signal-messenger

We train journalists to use Advanced Data Protection to better secure their iCloud accounts. What the U.K. is proposing is to make journalists (also… you know, everyone) less secure. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-encryption-backdoor-uk/

"Reporters and editors at national newspapers are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/business/trump-media-threats.html

I'm quite proud of the work @davisa and I did on this one. I'm hoping people in our communities will take advantage of it. The time is now. https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/journalists-digital-security-checklist/

"OpenAI expects about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue this year, CNBC confirmed in September. Those numbers are increasing rapidly."

So… The business model is to train models on everyones' data without paying them, then lose a billion dollars.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/27/openai-needs-more-capital-than-wed-imagined-moves-to-for-profit.html

Admitting "I don't know" is one of the best things in the world. Once I know what I don't know, and need to know to protect myself or the people around me, it's one of the most helpful compasses.

The information we have itself can also be overwhelming. So here's a fun meta thing: Doing all of this without doomscrolling, listening to pundits who game this stuff out too far into an unpredictable future, grasping at straws. Monitor the situation, but enough information needs to be enough.

After zeroing in on the things we need to prioritize, determine what can be done about it with the resources we have. This looks different for everyone, but it really does help to concretize what's necessary, and think through the tradeoffs of doing so. It's hard, but helps make decisions.

It's easy to be overwhelmed gaming out the bad things that can happen. Instead, we have to use the information we have to figure out what we think is most consequential, and most likely to happen, which may change over time. Stay on top of that, and put the rest aside.

Finding myself using the risk assessment I teach in security trainings as a mental health tool, AMA.

It's back! @micahflee Semiphemeral tool for removing your data from Twitter is now Cyd. https://cyd.social/