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Campaigners say the chaos caused by the global IT outage last week underlines the risk of moving towards a cashless society.

Supermarkets, banks, pubs, cafes, train stations and airports were all hit by the failure of Microsoft systems on Friday, leaving many unable to accept electronic payments.

The Payment Choice Alliance (PCA), which campaigns against the move towards a cashless society, lists 23 firms and groups, at least some of whose outlets take only credit or debit cards.

Cash payments increased for the first time in a decade last year, according to UK Finance, which represents banks.

The GMB Union said the outage reinforced what it had been saying for years: that “cash is a vital part of how our communities operate”.

In March, McDonald’s, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Gregg’s suffered problems with their payment systems.

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The date for the introduction of the EU’s new entry-exit system has been pushed back again until November, allaying fears of long queues at the border during the October half-term holidays.

The launch of the new biometric checks for foreign travellers, including Britons, entering the EU, has been delayed from 6 October until at least 10 November, with many smaller airports yet to have facilities in place.

The move will again raise questions over the readiness of a system that has been long delayed from the planned 2021 start, with the French insisting the additional border controls should not be introduced before the Paris Olympics.

Under the entry-exit system (EES), non-EU citizens will have to register their biometric information – including fingerprints and facial scans – at the border, under the supervision of an EU officer, on their first visit.

There have been warnings of long queues at British points of entry – including the Port of Dover, and Eurostar’s St Pancras terminal – where the French and EU border is physically located in England, before passengers board ferries or trains.

The cross-Channel train operator said the process would add only a few seconds to border queues and not cause chaos, although passengers would have to ensure they arrived in time for the additional layer of biometric checks.

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Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Chino Valley Unified over a rule its board approved last year requiring school staff to notify parents if their children change their gender identification or pronouns.

A judge halted the policy while the case plays out, and the district later updated the rule to broadly require parents to be notified if their child asks to make any changes to their student records.

Newsom signed the first-in-the-nation law Monday, which bans districts from requiring school staff to disclose a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to any other person without the child’s permission, with some exceptions.

“This critical legislation strengthens protections for LGBTQ+ youth against forced outing policies, provides resources for parents and families of LGBTQ+ students to support them as they have conversations on their terms, and creates critical safeguards to prevent retaliation against teachers and school staff who foster a safe and supportive school environment for all students,” Tony Hoang, executive director of LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality California, said in a statement.

“This bill undermines their fundamental role and places boys and girls in potential jeopardy,” Jonathan Keller, the council’s president, said in a statement.

Last year, for instance, 23 Republican state attorneys general filed a brief to support a Chico, California, mother who claimed that school officials allowed her child to socially transition without her permission.

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SiegedSec, a collective of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers,” has claimed credit for breaching online databases of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that spearheaded the right-wing Project 2025 playbook.

On Wednesday, as part of a string of hacks aimed at organizations that oppose transgender rights, SiegedSec released a cache of Heritage Foundation material.

In a post to Telegram announcing the hack, SiegedSec called Project 2025 “an authoritarian Christian nationalist plan to reform the United States government.” The attack was part of the group’s #OpTransRights campaign, which recently targeted right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice, the Hillsong megachurch, and a Minnesota pastor.

In his foreword to the Project 2025 manifesto, the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, rails against “the toxic normalization of transgenderism” and “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology.” The playbook’s other contributors call on “the next conservative administration” to roll back certain policies, including allowing trans people to serve in the military.

They included an archive of the Heritage Foundation’s blogs and a Heritage-aligned media site, The Daily Signal, as of November 2022.

SiegedSec targeted the Heritage Foundation in early June, according to vio, who denied involvement in the earlier attack.

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SiegedSec, a collective of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers,” has claimed credit for breaching online databases of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that spearheaded the right-wing Project 2025 playbook.

On Wednesday, as part of string of hacks aimed at organizations that oppose transgender rights, SiegedSec released a cache of Heritage Foundation material.

In a post to Telegram announcing the hack, SiegedSec called Project 2025 “an authoritarian Christian nationalist plan to reform the United States government.” The attack was part of the group’s #OpTransRights campaign, which recently targeted right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice, the Hillsong megachurch, and a Minnesota pastor.

In his foreword to the Project 2025 manifesto, the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, rails against “the toxic normalization of transgenderism” and “the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology.” The playbook’s other contributors call on “the next conservative administration” to roll back certain policies, including allowing trans people to serve in the military.

They included an archive of the Heritage Foundation’s blogs and a Heritage-aligned media site, The Daily Signal, as of November 2022.

SiegedSec targeted the Heritage Foundation in early June, according to vio, who denied involvement in the earlier attack.

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Just last Monday the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam began requiring face scans on phone banking apps as proof of identity for all digital transactions of around $400 and above.

Late last month, US cyber security firm Resecurity flagged similar concerns when it found a spike in leaked identity documents containing selfies of Singaporeans on the dark web.

Resecurity asserted that some were captured by cyber crime groups that run fake telemarketing or customer support scams and gather selfies so they can sell them to other miscreants.

“Using selfies for identity verification has been growing steadily for around the last five years, but the inflection point was during the pandemic when people were forced to engage digitally,” VP analyst at Gartner, Akif Khan, told The Register.

In his experience, businesses that rely on simple still selfies are typically smaller outfits that have experienced fraud and have implemented a selfie-based stopgap as they scramble to put a proper solution in place.

Khan thinks concern about identity theft from still images and picture IDs found on the dark web is overblown, as most entities will require liveness checks for opening bank accounts and other tasks.

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Hours after a battle in eastern Ukraine in August, a wounded and unarmed Russian soldier crawled through a nearly destroyed trench, seeking help from his captors, a unit of international volunteers led by an American.

The shooting of the unarmed, wounded Russian soldier is one of several killings that have unsettled the Chosen Company, one of the best-known units of international troops fighting on behalf of Ukraine.

In a second episode, a Chosen member lobbed a grenade at and killed a surrendering Russian soldier who had his hands raised, video footage reviewed by The Times shows.

In a third episode, Chosen members boasted in a group chat about killing Russian prisoners of war during a mission in October, text messages show.

A Greek soldier known as Zeus was at the center of all three episodes — tossing the grenade and, Mr. Grosse says, firing at the wounded Russian in the trench and bragging about another kill.

But in the United States military, a video showing the killing of a surrendering soldier, regardless of the circumstances, would prompt an immediate investigation, said Rachel E. VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a former U.S. Air Force lawyer.

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Europol published a position paper today highlighting its concerns around SMS home routing – the technology that allows telcos to continue offering their services when customers visit another country.

If a crime is committed by a Brit in Germany, for example, then German police couldn’t issue a request for unencrypted data as they could with a domestic operator such as Deutsche Telekom.

Under home routing, the current investigatory powers of public authorities should be retained and a solution must be found that enables lawful interception of suspects within their territory," reads Europol’s paper.

Two possible solutions were suggested, but the wording of the paper clearly favored a legal ban on PETs (service-level encryption) in home routing over making it possible for one EU member state to request the comms from another country.

There is one that was developed for EIOs but cops are concerned this could lead to scenarios where law enforcement efforts are dependent on foreign service providers, which isn’t ideal.

“With this position paper, Europol wishes to open the debate on this technical issue, which at present is severely hampering law enforcement’s ability to access crucial evidence,” it said.

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Officially (and drily) called the Digital Wallet Beta (Cartera Digital Beta), the app Madrid unveiled on Monday would allow internet platforms to check whether a prospective smut-watcher is over 18.

Once verified, they’ll receive 30 generated “porn credits” with a one-month validity granting them access to adult content.

While the tool has been criticized for its complexity, the government says the credit-based model is more privacy-friendly, ensuring that users’ online activities are not easily traceable.

It will be voluntary, as online platforms can rely on other age-verification methods to screen out inappropriate viewers.

It heralds an EU law going into force in October 2027, which will require websites to stop minors from accessing porn.Eventually, Madrid’s porn passport is likely to be replaced by the EU’s very own digital identity system (eIDAS2) — a so-called wallet app allowing people to access a smorgasbord of public and private services across the whole bloc.

“We are acting in advance and we are asking platforms to do so too, as what is at stake requires it,” José Luis Escrivá, Spain’s digital secretary, told Spanish newspaper El País.

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Australia’s Federal Police (AFP) has charged a man with running a fake Wi-Fi networks on at least one commercial flight and using it to harvest fliers’ credentials for email and social media services.

The man was investigated after an airline “reported concerns about a suspicious Wi-Fi network identified by its employees during a domestic flight.”

The AFP subsequently arrested a man who was found with “a portable wireless access device, a laptop and a mobile phone” in his hand luggage.

It’s alleged the accused’s collection of kit was used to create Wi-Fi hotspots with SSIDs confusingly similar to those airlines operate for in-flight access to the internet or streamed entertainment.

Airport Wi-Fi was also targeted, and the AFP also found evidence of similar activities “at locations linked to the man’s previous employment.”

AFP Western Command Cybercrime detective inspector Andrea Coleman pointed out that free Wi-Fi services should not require logging in through an email or social media account.

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Advances in artificial intelligence are leading to medical breakthroughs once thought impossible, including devices that can actually read minds and alter our brains.

Pauzaskie says our brain waves are like encrypted signals and, using artificial intelligence, researchers have identified frequencies for specific words to turn thought to text with 40% accuracy, “Which, give it a few years, we’re probably talking 80-90%.”

Researchers are now working to reverse the conditions by using electrical stimulation to alter the frequencies or regions of the brain where they originate.

But while medical research facilities are subject to privacy laws, private companies - that are amassing large caches of brain data - are not.

The vast majority of them also don’t disclose where the data is stored, how long they keep it, who has access to it, and what happens if there’s a security breach…

With companies and countries racing to access, analyze, and alter our brains, Pauzauskie suggests, privacy protections should be a no-brainer, "It’s everything that we are.

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As negotiations to end the long legal brawl between Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and the United States reached a critical point this spring, prosecutors presented his lawyers with a choice so madcap that a person involved thought it sounded like a line from a Monty Python movie.

In April, a lawyer with the Justice Department’s national security division broke the impasse with a sly workaround: How about an American courtroom that wasn’t actually inside mainland America?

By early 2024, leaders in Australia, including Kevin Rudd, the ambassador to the United States, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, began pressuring their American counterparts to reach a deal — not so much out of solidarity with Mr. Assange, or support for his actions, but because he had spent so much time in captivity.

But after a short period of internal discussions, senior officials rejected that approach, drafting a somewhat tougher counteroffer: Mr. Assange would plead to a single felony count, conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information, a more serious offense that encompassed his interactions with Ms. Manning.

Instead, his initial refusal to plead guilty to a felony was rooted in his reluctance to appear in an American courtroom, out of fear of being detained indefinitely or physically attacked in the United States, Ms. Robinson said in the TV interview.

Nick Vamos, the former head of extradition for the Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for bringing criminal cases in England and Wales, believes the ruling might have “triggered” an acceleration of the plea deal.

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In communications with a federal confidential informant, the pair allegedly planned to “coordinate to get multiple [substations] at the same time.” Clendaniel pleaded guilty to conspiring to damage or destroy electrical facilities in May of this year.

But in a court filing, the ACLU attorneys say Russell has “reason to believe” that the government “intercepted his communications” and subjected him to a warrantless “backdoor search” by querying the Section 702 databases.

And less than a month after that initial query, we disrupted that US person who, it turned out, had researched and identified critical infrastructure sites in the US and acquired the means to conduct an attack.” The defense’s motion to compel the federal government to provide notice of use of Section 702 surveillance of Russell includes both the Politico report and Wray’s speech as exhibits.

The ACLU’s response, filed this Monday, notes that the government “does not dispute that Mr. Russell was subject to warrantless surveillance under Section 702” but instead claims it has no legal obligation to turn over FISA notice in this instance.

Legislators’ attempts to rein in the controversial surveillance authority failed, and multiple amendments requiring the FBI to obtain warrants to search or access Americans’ communications under Section 702 were voted down.

“Especially as recently expanded and reauthorized by Congress, this spying authority could be further abused by a future administration against political opponents, protest movements, and civil society organizations, as well as racial and religious minorities, abortion providers, and LGBTQ people.”

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Health officials in the Biden administration pressed an international group of medical experts to remove age limits for adolescent surgeries from guidelines for care of transgender minors, according to newly unsealed court documents.

The email excerpts released this week shed light on possible reasons for those guideline changes, and highlight Admiral Levine’s role as a top point person on transgender issues in the Biden administration.

One excerpt from an unnamed member of the WPATH guideline development group recalled a conversation with Sarah Boateng, then serving as Admiral Levine’s chief of staff: “She is confident, based on the rhetoric she is hearing in D.C., and from what we have already seen, that these specific listings of ages, under 18, will result in devastating legislation for trans care.

The excerpts were filed by James Cantor, a psychologist and longstanding critic of gender treatments for minors, who used them as evidence that the international advisory group, referred to as WPATH, was making decisions based on politics, not science, in developing the guidelines.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on youth gender medicine, which makes it a felony for doctors to provide any gender-related treatment to minors, including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mark Del Monte, chief executive of the American Academy of Pediatrics, pointed out that the medical group, which represents 67,000 U.S. pediatricians, had not endorsed the international guidelines because it already had its own in place.

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Speaking in Scotland, Reeves said protection for women-only spaces would “absolutely stay”, adding: “We’re not going to be changing anything around biological sex … We’re really happy to talk to JK Rowling to give her assurances about that.”

The shadow chancellor made the offer to meet the author and former Labour donor on Monday, after Rowling said she would “struggle to support” the party in next week’s general election.

The plan is largely the same as that outlined last year by Labour’s national policy forum, but was reported by the Times after an article for the paper on Saturday by Rowling expressed her unease with the party’s position.

She added: “Asking on behalf of female survivors of domestic violence and gay people who don’t subscribe to gender identity ideology, I’d also like to know whether Angela Rayner still considers the last two organisations hate groups.”

Under current rules, people are asked to show evidence “from a variety of different sources” over the two-year period, such as official documents, payslips and letters, which give their new name or title, or their gender.

We will remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance, while retaining the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a specialist doctor, enabling access to the healthcare pathway.”

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“Civil rights guardrails are essential for consumer trust in a system that allows companies to collect and use personal data without consent,” the legal group said in a statement.

When first proposed in April by US House Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and US Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the APRA was sold as a way to give all Americans meaningful data privacy protections, something many have sought for decades.

The lobbying organization in April said it wanted to avoid the creation of “a federal floor” that might “encourage states to pass more restrictive privacy laws.”

“Moving forward without baseline civil rights protections would create blind spots and permit discriminatory data practices to remain undetected and unchallenged,” said Ruiz.

“This was the one comprehensive privacy bill that had a real chance of passing and now Congress has effectively gutted it as part of a backroom deal to appease right wing extremists,” Greer opined to The Register.

By removing crucial civil rights language, lawmakers have turned it into a bill that effectively endorses privacy violations and discriminatory uses of personal data.

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Parades have been taking place in Poland during Pride month as organisers call for LGBTQ rights to be expanded in the largely conservative and mostly Catholic country.

Pride parades in Poland have traditionally been more of a protest event than an opportunity to party, as they are in some of Europe’s more LGBTQ-friendly cities.

The index takes into account the legal, political and social environment for LGBTQ people in each country in Europe.

Under the slogan “Equality is Now” the parade organisers say that Poland should recognise same-sex marriage, introduce an anti-hate speech law to protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination and exclusion.

Equality minister Katarzyna Kotula from the Left party of the government’s current coalition has said that progress towards introducing same-sex civil partnerships for the first time in Poland had been made, however it has to be approved by other members of the coalition, including the centre-right Polish People’s Party.

But Poland’s new government led by Donald Tusk has promised to improve LGBTQ rights, although it has yet to pass any legislation.

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The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) has awarded $35,000 in damages to an Indigenous transgender woman who was refused a leg wax at a salon in Windsor six years ago.

In an email to CBC, Carruthers called the ruling “unjust” and said he’s “shocked by the awarded amount as a small business owner.”

's human rights complaint, Carruthers issued a release and was quoted in the media as referring to a “male Brazilian wax” regarding the service A.B.

testified the respondent’s remarks to media outlets “opened up a non-consensual public conversation as to the status of her physical transition,” which was very traumatizing, the decision states.

allegedly threatened a “media circus” and then posted a video about Mad Wax to the Facebook page of a transgender organization.

's legal counsel from the HRLSC, said she had not yet received the application for judicial review but that the tribunal’s ruling was reasonable and she believes it will be upheld.

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The country legend, also affectionately known as “The iron butterfly,” “The Smoky Mountain songbird” and “The backwoods Barbie,” among other priceless nicknames, has a blockbuster career that spans more than half a century and boasts more than 100 million records sold globally.

As the country has sharply split along primary red and blue lines with nearly every public figure choosing sides, Parton has long remained the last standing vibrant purple.

The California gays and the Alabama hillbillies alike planned getaways to Dollywood, Parton’s Pigeon Forge, Tennessee based theme park.

Which also made her the last standing whispers of a centrist, united America I long joked — and worried — that Parton was the canary in the coal mine and when they came for her, all hope was officially lost.

As long as Dolly Patron remained cheerful and unscathed, I surmised that America had a chance at overcoming its challenges and moving forward as a united nation.

But now, with the arrows aimed at Parton, all I feel is existential dread (and I also hear the lyrics to “Jolene” playing on a loop in my weary head — why is it so dang catchy?!

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BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to approve a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage, clearing the last legislative hurdle for the country to become the first in Southeast Asia to enact such a law.

The government and state agencies are also historically conservative, and advocates for gender equality have had a hard time pushing lawmakers and civil servants to accept change.

The bill now needs the pro forma endorsement of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, followed by its publication in the Government Gazette, which will set a date within 120 days when it becomes effective.

After the vote, Plaifah Kyoka Shodladd, an 18-year-old who identifies as non-binary, took the floor and thanked everyone who supported the legislation, calling it a “force of hope” that will help Thailand become more accepting of diversity.

The ground in front of the main building was decorated with rainbow carpets, flags and a giant balloon in the shape of two hands making a heart sign.

The party was joined by politicians, celebrities, diplomats and activists from the LGBTQ+ community and their supporters who rode in a colorful parade of floats from Parliament after the vote.

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