Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

Sharon Polsky joins us Saturday, August 8 at 4pm ET to walk through the global age verification wave and what it actually does to your privacy. She is President of the Privacy & Access Council of Canada, she has testified before Senate and Parliamentary committees on facial recognition and Bill S-210, and her CIGI essay "The Road to Digital Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions" is the thesis for the whole episode. Set a reminder, see you live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQlbD...

We get into where your driver's license goes after you upload it, who runs the verification companies nobody elected, and why the exact documents these laws demand keep turning up in breach after breach. Sharon's council wrote a full report on facial recognition use by law enforcement in Canada, so we spend real time on face scans: what they get wrong, and who gets locked out when the algorithm guesses an age incorrectly. Then Canada's bills. S-210 was pitched as a porn bill and could reach Amazon, Google, and Reddit. C-63 makes platforms responsible for removing harmful content. C-22 pushes lawful access. All in the same legislative year.

The UK is enforcing. Australia's under-16 social media ban has been in force since December 2025. France starts enforcing in September 2026. Twenty-eight US states are already there. This is the episode where you find out what the machinery behind that actually looks like from someone who has been in the committee rooms.

Set a reminder, see you live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQlbD...

#AgeVerification #BillS210 #HideAndSpeak

5 days ago | [YT] | 1

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

This Saturday, August 1 at 4:00 PM ET, we are hosting a Privacy Game Show on Hide & Speak! Joining us on the panel are Joel Valenzuela (Dash), Christopher Cialone (ShadowRanch & Sub-Rosa), and Jonathan aka ExStaticJ (our first Hero of the Week).
Click through and set a reminder: youtube.com/live/QNRYGq9RgIQ

We are putting our guests to the ultimate test with rapid-fire hot takes on smart home surveillance, four tiers of technical privacy trivia, famous quote attributions, and impossible trade-offs between corporate tracking and government dragnets. From constitutional law and Fourth Amendment precedent to everyday phone microphone paranoia, this interactive showdown delivers high-stakes debates and sixty-second pitches for the future of digital rights.

We still have a couple of open contestant spots available for this Saturday! If you want to jump on stream and have your privacy knowledge tested live alongside our panel, drop a comment below or reach out to us right away.

Click through and set a reminder: youtube.com/live/QNRYGq9RgIQ

#PrivacyGameShow #HideAndSpeak #DigitalPrivacy

1 week ago | [YT] | 2

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

Five Saturdays, five conversations about who gets to watch you.

August opens with a privacy game show: Joel Valenzuela (Dash), Christopher Cialone (ShadowRanch, Sub Rosa) and Jonathan aka ExStaticJ, our first Hero of the Week. Then Sharon Polsky of the Privacy & Access Council of Canada on age verification, a full DeFlock panel for No ALPRs Week, Texas Libertarian Senate candidate Ted Brown on digital ID, and A Lot In Common on the state of privacy.

Saturdays at 4pm Eastern. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

#privacy #surveillance #hideandspeak

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 4

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

Lavabit was told to hand over the keys to every user's mail. Tutanota was ordered to read inbound messages before delivery. ProtonMail was ordered to log a French activist's IP, and complied. In every one of those cases the encryption was real. The problem was that the operator could still be told what to do.

bmail's inbound mail is processed inside Intel SGX enclaves, and the CPU signs a measurement of exactly which code is running. Add a logger, the measurement changes, and anyone watching sees it. You don't need our word for that. You can check the attestation yourself.

Verify it yourself at bmail.ag/

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 3

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

Happy Independence Day from vp.net 🎆

1776: the founders encrypted their correspondence with cipher wheels and invisible ink. They knew private communication was the precondition for free people.

2026: you get hardware-enforced privacy through Intel SGX enclaves that make surveillance technically impossible, not just promised away in a policy.

250 years later, the principle hasn't changed. The tools have.

Don't trust. Verify. → vp.net/

1 month ago | [YT] | 2

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

Today on Hide & Speak we sit down with Daniel J. Bernstein, known as djb, on the fight over the future of encryption. The heart of it: he wants a traditional layer kept alongside the new post-quantum crypto, a seatbelt for when the new math breaks. It already broke once, when an algorithm called SIKE shipped to millions of connections and then collapsed. He says the NSA is pushing the weaker option and the standards body is quietly silencing the people who object.

Stream starts at 10am ET. Live today: youtube.com/live/qPhoJQtvgUo

#DanielJBernstein #IETF

1 month ago | [YT] | 3

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

This Saturday we sit down with Daniel J. Bernstein, the legendary cryptographer known as djb, for a long conversation about who gets to decide how your encryption works. He built Curve25519, Ed25519, and ChaCha20, the algorithms running quietly inside the tools you use every day. Now he is fighting the people writing the next set of standards.

The fight comes down to one word: hybrid. djb wants a traditional encryption layer kept alongside the new post-quantum algorithms, a seatbelt in case the new math breaks. It has broken before. An algorithm called SIKE shipped to millions of connections and then collapsed. He says the NSA is pushing the weaker, no-seatbelt option through federal purchasing power, and that the standards body is bending its own rules to silence the people who object.

This one decision shapes what protects your web traffic, your email, and your VPN for the next decade. Once it ships, it can take years to undo.

Set a reminder, see you live Saturday June 27 at 10am ET: youtube.com/live/qPhoJQtvgUo

#DanielJBernstein #PostQuantum #IETF

1 month ago | [YT] | 1

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

This Saturday on Hide & Speak: the people mapping Flock Safety's cameras one corner at a time, and the movement trying to get them pulled. Set a reminder, see you live Saturday June 20 at 4pm ET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQT...

We've pulled together a roundtable from the DeFlock and anti-ALPR world, including DeFlock's Tyler and Indivisible Highland Park, plus local activists fighting Flock in their own towns. Automated license plate readers have spread across American towns fast, and so has the pushback, as residents learn their plate data can be searched far beyond their local police, sometimes for immigration enforcement. We get into how a crowdsourced map grew into a nationwide coalition, why Flock branded its own critics a "terroristic organization," and the concrete first steps for fighting a camera in your own community.

This is the rare fight that pulls the far left and far right onto the same side. Whether you've never thought twice about the camera on your corner or you're already at city hall arguing about a contract, this one's built to show you what's actually happening.

Set a reminder, see you live Saturday June 20 at 4pm ET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQT...

#DeFlock #FlockSafety #ALPR

1 month ago | [YT] | 1

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

This Saturday, June 13 at 4pm ET, Veronica Harper of the Utah Freedom Coalition joins Hide & Speak to walk through how Utah became the national test bed for the connected surveillance state. Set a reminder, see you live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jNnv...

Utah applied to the federal government back in 2017 to become the first true Smart State in the nation, and nobody voted on it. Since then: SB 275 passed unanimously in March 2026 and took effect May 6, putting a state-endorsed digital ID on Utahns' phones, with the ACLU calling it the strongest digital ID privacy framework in the country. Flock cameras are live in Provo, Ogden, and Cedar City. Tens of millions in federal grants are flowing into V2X smart road infrastructure, and the 2034 Olympics are about to accelerate all of it. Veronica has spent years inside the state's own paperwork: federal applications, procurement documents, presentations, and contracts. She'll show us what's in the documents that never makes the brochure.

If you want to understand how this stuff actually gets built, it's in procurement files, not press releases. This is the episode that reads them for you.

Set a reminder, see you live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jNnv...

#DigitalID #FlockCameras #HideAndSpeak

1 month ago | [YT] | 4

Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net)

Hide & Speak streams today at 4pm ET. Join us live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMORc...
@frankahearn, a former skip tracer turned privacy consultant, joins us on the art of disappearing in the AI era. We get into why a fresh identity is one of the worst moves you can make, what digital starvation means, and why people get found by their own behavior, not the tech. Join us live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMORc...


#Privacy #HideAndSpeak #skiptracing

2 months ago | [YT] | 3