The US State Department is building a web portal, where Europeans and anyone else can see online content banned by their governments, according to Reuters. It was supposed to be launched at Munich Security Conference last month, but some state department officials reportedly voiced their concerns about the project. The portal will be hosted on freedom.gov, which currently just shows the image above. “Freedom is Coming,” the homepage reads. “Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get Ready.”

Reuters says officials discussed making a virtual private network function available on the portal and making visitors’ traffic appear as if they were from the US, so they could see anything unavailable to them. While it’s a state department project, The Guardian has traced the domain to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is a component of the US Department of Homeland Security. Homeland also serves as the administrator for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The project could drive the wedge further between the US and its European allies. European authorities don’t usually order broad censorships preventing their citizens from being able to access large parts of the internet. Typically, they only order the blocking of hate speech, terrorist propaganda, disinformation and anything illegal under the EU’s Digital Services Act or the UK’s Online Safety Act.

“If the Trump administration is alleging that they’re gonna be bypassing content bans, what they’re gonna be helping users access in Europe is essentially hate speech, pornography, and child sexual abuse material,” Nina Jankowicz, who served as the executive director of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, told The Guardian. The board was very short-lived and was disbanded a few months after it was formed, following complaints by Republican lawmakers that it would impinge on people’s rights to free speech.

When asked about the project, the state department said it didn’t have a program specifically meant to circumvent censorship in Europe. But the spokesperson said: “Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, however, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/us-website-freedomgov-will-allow-europeans-to-view-hate-speech-and-other-blocked-content-130000014.html?src=rss

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A decision to ban Telegram on home soil may have backfired on the Kremlin. Last week, Russia went on a blocking spree, banning a number of Western apps in an effort to push domestic users towards Max, an unencrypted state-owned app. One of the restricted apps was WhatsApp (which was also blocked) rival Telegram, a move that drew rare internal criticism from soldiers and pro-war bloggers, with the army being heavily reliant on the cloud-based messaging service for communications.

As reported by Bloomberg, pro-Russian military channels are now complaining that the sudden Telegram blackout — coupled with Elon Musk cutting Russia’s access to Starlink earlier this month — is now actively harming frontline operations. As well as being the messaging app of choice for millions of Russian civilians, soldiers also use Telegram to liaise directly on the battlefield. The government said last week that it was banning Telegram for violating national law, and that the decision was for the "protection of Russian citizens."

Bloomberg was told by senior European diplomats that the double blow of Telegram’s sudden unavailability and SpaceX moving to block Russia’s use of "unauthorized” Starlink terminals in Ukraine earlier this month has had a significant impact on Russian comms. Starlink’s satellite coverage is particularly important for coordinating the Russian military’s drone strikes, the frequency of which has seemingly been disrupted in recent weeks, giving Ukrainian forces an advantage.

Whether these developments will have a longer term effect on the tide of the conflict remains to be seen, but a Ukrainian drone operator who calls himself Giovanni has told the BBC that the Russian army has lost "their ability to control the field" in the wake of the Starlink outage. "I think they lost 50% of their capacity for offence," he said. "That's what the numbers show. Fewer assaults, fewer enemy drones, fewer everything."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/russias-recent-blocking-of-telegram-is-reportedly-disrupting-its-military-operations-in-ukraine-135250159.html?src=rss

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Nevada is taking action against the rapidly growing Wild West of prediction markets. The state's gambling regulators and attorney general sued Kalshi on Tuesday. They accuse the company of bypassing Nevada law by operating a sports gambling market without proper licenses. In addition, they say Kalshi provides services to individuals under 21, which violates state law.

The lawsuit follows a federal appeals court’s rejection of Kalshi's request to prevent the state from pursuing legal action. And it comes a day after the Trump administration claimed that only the federal government has the right to enforce the industry.

Prediction markets, which allow users to bet on events such as sports, political outcomes and wars, have exploded in popularity. Business Insider reports that Kalshi did 27 times as much business during this year's Super Bowl as last year's. Some of that growth has been at the expense of regulated gambling; Nevada's gambling operations did less business during this year's game.

"Kalshi has continued to dramatically expand its business, rather than attempting to maintain any kind of status quo," Nevada regulators wrote in a letter this month.

Kalshi and rival Polymarket insist that their businesses are "event contracts" and should be regulated as financial investments rather than gambling. The Trump administration, rife with conflicts of interest in this area, agrees. The Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed an amicus brief on Tuesday, claiming that it alone has the authority to enforce the prediction market.

"The CFTC will no longer sit idly by while overzealous state governments undermine the agency's exclusive jurisdiction over these markets by seeking to establish statewide prohibitions on these exciting products," CFTC Chair Michael Selig wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

OLIVIER TOURON via Getty Images

Not coincidentally, prediction markets are a growing part of the Trump family business. Donald Trump Jr. is a paid adviser to Kalshi. He's also an investor in and unpaid adviser to Polymarket. In January, his family's social media business said it would launch its own prediction market platform.

Prediction markets have the potential to be a hotbed of insider trading. According to blockchain analyst DeFi Oasis, fewer than 0.04 percent of Polymarket accounts have captured over 70 percent of the platform's total profits, totaling over $3.7 billion.

Last month, The Guardian highlighted the case of a Polymarket user who bet tens of thousands of dollars on "yes" to the question, "Israel's military action against Iran by Friday?" Within 24 hours, Israel bombed Iran, leaving hundreds dead. The user made $128,000 on that bet. The Guardian traced the blockchain data to a wallet associated with an X account. Its location on the social platform was set to Beit Ha'shita, a northern Israeli settlement. The user later transferred their bets to two other accounts, apparently to avoid detection. In January, the accounts held 10 live bets on Israeli military strategy.

Another anonymous user made over $400,000 by betting that Nicolás Maduro would be ousted by the end of January. The bets were placed in the hours and days leading up to the US strikes on Venezuela. In another case, eight jointly owned accounts collectively generated over $161,000 by betting on the country's María Corina Machado Parisca winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The accounts' handles used names such as "fmaduro," "madurowilllose," "striketheboats" and "trumpdeservesit".

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/nevada-sues-kalshi-for-operating-a-sports-gambling-market-without-a-license-175721982.html?src=rss

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