A Unique Look at Russia’s Biometric ID Web

I was recently on Corbett Report’s #SolutionsWatch and we dug into how Russia’s new online age verification is really a whole web of state-controlled biometrics. Instead of a simple app, they’ve pieced together a “Gosuslugi” system that’s a public-private mashup, layering bank-collected biometrics into a national database.

Check out my digital ID report to learn more!

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📲 Grab the tools to take back your privacy

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🫶 @takebackourtech
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🔐Talking the Clarity Act on The Higherside Chats

Recently talked with Greg Carlwood of The Higherside Chats about something I’m calling the “Patriot Act for Crypto.” We broke down how the Clarity Act, which started as an anti-CBDC move, is morphing into a tool to crack down on privacy coins and decentralized exchanges. Instead of a central bank digital currency, think “Amazon Coin” or “Walmart Coin,” with new rules that basically make it illegal to “split the bill” in crypto without jumping through regulatory hoops.

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📲 Check out Above’s Holiday Sale - ending soon!

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🫶 @takebackourtech
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🤳Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search Is Technocratic Behavior

In this discussion on Redacted, we look at how centralized, cloud-dependent AI on smartphones becomes a tool for surveillance. Features like Apple’s Enhanced Visual Search analyze user photos at scale, often enabled by default, without consent and tied into opaque data pipelines users don’t meaningfully control.

This isn’t a critique of AI as a technology — it’s a critique of who runs it and where it lives. When AI operates inside big-tech ecosystems, tied to identity, cloud services, and data collection, it becomes technocratic infrastructure.

📺 Watch the full interview

📲 Check out Above’s Holiday Sale - ending soon!

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🫶 @takebackourtech
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Bringing Enoch AI to Your Device

A little while back, I joined Mike Adams on The Health Ranger Report to talk about something we’re pretty proud of: we’ve rolled out a line of Above Phones and Above Books with the Enoch AI model built right in. It's a 12-billion parameter powerhouse that runs entirely offline, giving you all the AI smarts without any of the privacy trade-offs. If you’re looking to keep your queries out of the cloud and on your own terms, this is the way to do it.

Check it out at abovephone.com/brighteon and see how we’re making AI both smart and private.

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📲 Above’s Holiday Sale ends today - never a better time to grab real privacy tools!

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🫶 @takebackourtech
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Navigating Privacy: How Above Phone Keeps You in Control

In a recent discussion on Redacted, we talked about how Above phone empowers you to maintain privacy and control over your data. We explore how big tech, like Google, often pushes features that are enabled by default, compromising your privacy. With Above Phone, you get a de-Googled experience that disconnects your device from Google's update stream, ensuring no unwanted background data sharing.

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📲 Choose tech that works for you, not against you. Shop Above.

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🫶 @takebackourtech
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👀Android 16 QPR3 introduces over 160 new emoji: Here’s every single one of them

The next quarterly Android update will support the 163 new emoji from the Unicode 17.0 release.

Here's what's coming👇

🔗https://www.androidauthority.com/android-16-qpr3-new-emoji-3626480/

This is now official: Androidify now works on Wear OS!

You can now create a custom Wear OS watch face with your personalized Android Bot.

🔗 Download Androidify on Google Play

🔗 Google's blog post

🔗Android Developers blog post w/ implementation details