cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49722402

Swedish VPN vendor Mullvad is facing a backlash from some customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson personally donated SEK 5 million (£385,000, $519,000) to the controversial populist Örebropartiet, which is running in Sweden's national elections for the first time.

Berntsson has this week published a blog post explaining the donation, alongside posts titled "Immigration," "Political individualism," and "Moral individualism." Before that, he had not posted since 2019.

The flurry of posts follows weeks of customer criticism over the donation – for example, Finnish blog Moonwriting's post "I'm done with Mullvad." Another blog, Unutterable, is more direct: "Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership." The Hacker News discussion thread about the donations has reached a remarkable 1,784 comments so far.

Mullvad was co-founded and is still jointly owned and run by two CEOs, Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Its name, as reflected in the company's logo, is Swedish for "mole." It also offers the Mullvad Browser, a privacy-enhanced fork of Firefox ESR co-developed with the Tor Project. Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman ("The Flame") revealed the donation in its story "High-profile techie gives millions to the Örebro Party."

In a post on X, the company said it was devoted to freedom of speech and tolerance, saying: "It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47523336

Global Privacy Control (GPC)

We've talked a lot about how Americans have somehow accepted the fact that our voice networks are now saturated with scammers, fraudsters, and robocallers (no, that's not something that happens in well run, functionally regulated countries). I've also explained for years how the U.S. government solutions to the problems are usually ineffective because they're endlessly…

Section 702 surveillance powers are still limping along, mostly unimpeded, despite on-again/off-again objections by federal politicians. More active recently have been several GOP politicians. These representatives are newly opposed to clean reauthorization of Section 702 powers. This isn't because they've come to realize the threat to Americans' rights that warrantless access by the FBI (and…

Surveillance creep is once again striking in the age verification debate. This is happening at the FCC this time.