April, 02 2018, 09:45am EDT
Privacy, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Groups Launch Groundbreaking "Security Pledge" Campaign In Wake of Facebook Data Scandal
Tech and legal experts propose concrete steps tech companies can take to ensure their products are not used to undermine democracy.
WASHINGTON
A group of prominent privacy, civil liberties, and human rights organizations have launched SecurityPledge.com, a major new campaign calling on tech companies to take concrete steps to protect their users in the wake of widely reported abuses like the harvesting and manipulation of Facebook data conducted by Cambridge Analytica. The site asks Internet users to add their name to an open letter calling on tech companies to take the data security pledge and make needed changes to ensure their users' data isn't used against them.
"Tech companies need to change," reads the headline on the site, backed by the 18 Million Rising, the American Civil Liberties Union, Demand Progress, Coworker, Color of Change, Fight for the Future, and Sum of Us, grassroots groups that represent millions of people. The pledge outlines a detailed set of technological and policy commitments that tech companies must make in order to "ensure the Internet is used to expand democracy, not undermine it."
Specifically, the pledge calls for companies to:
- Limit the amount of data they collect in the first place, and give users control over how it is shared.
- Offer end-to-end encryption by default to ensure that users' communications are protected from corporate and government surveillance
- Provide users with full transparency about what data is collected, how it is used, and what measures are in place to prevent it from being abused.
- Support legislation and policy reforms that limit government access to user data except with a warrant and judicial oversight.
The organizations behind the campaign will encourage users to flock to services that have taken these steps and avoid those that haven't until they do.
"The internet can be made a tool for transformational change for the better," said David Segal, Executive Director of Demand Progress, "but it can also be used for the extraction of sensitive private information and manipulation towards the benefit of large corporations or for social control by governments. The major online platforms are facing a reckoning: How they respond in this moment will help determine whether the utopian vision that inspired so many internet pioneers and users stands a chance of becoming a reality, or whether companies will ignore the public interest turn the internet against its users towards the end of private benefit."
"This is a watershed moment for the Internet," said Evan Greer, Deputy Director of Fight for the Future (pronouns: she/her), Millions of people now understand how their data can be weaponized and used against them, and they are demanding change. Cambridge Analytica is just the tip of the iceberg, and this problem doesn't begin and end with Facebook. If the largest tech companies take the steps outlined in the security pledge, it will change the course of human history for the better, and protect billions of people's basic rights."
"It's time that companies take steps to ensure that using their products doesn't mean that users have to sacrifice their rights," said Neema Singh Guliani, ACLU legislative counsel. "The way companies treat data can affect whether you are wrongly excluded from job or housing ads because of your gender, targeted for dubious financial products, or have your security compromised. Many companies have for too long ignored their obligation to treat data responsibly, prevent information from being used to discriminate, and provide users' full control over how it is handled."
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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Over 800,000 Kids Thrown Off SNAP Since Passage of GOP's Big Ugly Bill: Analysis
"Millions losing SNAP, including children, is an emergency that Congress needs to fix now, before more people are hurt."
Jun 23, 2026
An analysis updated Monday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that millions of people, including more than 800,000 children, have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since Republicans’ 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect.
In total, CBPP estimates that "SNAP participation nationwide fell by more than 4 million people (10%) between the law’s July 2025 enactment and March 2026," with declines "especially pronounced" in Arizona, which has seen enrollment fall by more than 50%.
CBPP finds that, in 13 states with available data, 808,000 children have stopped receiving SNAP assistance since July, which it notes "accounts for nearly half of the 1.7-million-person decline among people of all ages in those states."
The number of people losing access to SNAP is projected to grow in the coming months given that the budget law's biggest changes to the program won't take effect until next year, writes CBPP.
"Starting in 2027, most states will have to pay between 5 and 15% of SNAP benefit costs, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars a year in many states," explains CBPP. "And the amount a state will have to pay will be based on current error rates, factoring in errors that states are making today."
These drastic funding changes "may incentivize states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it means delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people," the center adds.
Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst at CBPP, commented that the latest data shows that the changes made in the GOP budget law appear "to be driving far greater harm than many anticipated," as "states have raced to minimize their exposure to these massive new costs."
"Many people who remain eligible for SNAP on paper—including kids—are losing the benefits they need," Bergh emphasized. "Millions losing SNAP, including children, is an emergency that Congress needs to fix now, before more people are hurt."
Tahra Hoops, director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, described the GOP's SNAP cuts as "disastrous," with "kids losing much needed food assistance thanks to policies that are cruel and ineffective."
Hoops also provided historical context to the rapid drop in SNAP enrollment.
"The last time SNAP participation fell this sharply, this fast was after the 1996 welfare reform law," Hoops explained. "That cut took 2.2 million people off food assistance over 8 months. We are already seeing almost twice the damage and the unemployment rate has remained flat."
Policy analyst Michael Linden described the impact of the GOP's budget law on the SNAP program as "the Memorial Reflecting Pool of keeping kids from going hungry," a reference to President Donald Trump's calamitous attempted renovation of the iconic pool located near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
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“By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future," said the commission's head.
Jun 23, 2026
About 30% of those killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, 2023, have been children, according to a United Nations inquiry on Tuesday, which found the "deliberate" targeting of kids to have furthered a genocide against Palestinians.
The report, authored by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, follows a previous finding in September that Israel's actions in Gaza constituted genocide.
"The deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza," the commission said.
Between the start of Israel's military campaign in October 2023 and the "ceasefire" agreement in October 2025, the report found that more than 20,000 children were killed, while more than 44,000 were injured. Among those killed, more than 5,000 were under the age of five, more than 1,000 were under the age of one, and more than 400 were newborn babies.
The report highlights documented instances in which Israeli forces directly fired upon children, with medical professionals testifying that they treated kids with "direct gunshot and sniper wounds, often to the head and abdomen." One sample of 168 children killed by gunshots found that 73 were shot in the head and 22 were shot in the chest, which the commission argued was evidence of intentionality.
"Based on the clustering of injuries and the targeted body parts, I assess that the Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice—a different body part being targeted on different days… There is a very clear pattern that suggests this is a deliberate aiming of different body parts [of children]," one doctor told the commission.
They also cited dozens of cases of children being targeted by snipers and quadcopters. The report quotes one Israeli soldier who appeared anonymously in a documentary about the war and described operating drones like a video game.
"The drones, in my opinion, are what most dehumanize the other side," he said. "You see everything on a screen. You drop the bomb. It feels like a game. You can sit in some basement of a house, safe, with your helmet off, scratching your balls, half-dressed, and kill Palestinians.”
The report also argues that the deaths of children in airstrikes were not mere collateral damage, as Israel often asserts, but the foreseeable result of Israel's use of high payload weapons against densely populated areas, which resulted in massive numbers of civilian casualties.
"These deliberate attacks wiped out entire families across two or three or even four generations, with the Israeli security forces fully aware that children would be present and that children, with their small, fragile bodies, have a higher chance of death and serious injury in such attacks," the report said.
"The Israeli security forces continued and repeated these attacks over a two-year period, without amending targeting criteria or selection of weapons, while child casualties mounted," it continued. "This indicates that such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional."
Adding to evidence of intentionality, the report said, was the direct targeting of neonatal and maternity care centers, which it said "directly endangered" the ability of newborn babies to survive and contributed to miscarriages and birth defects. In the first half of 2025, Gaza experienced a 41% decline in live births compared with the same period in 2022, the report found.
The report notes that numerous Israeli politicians have explicitly justified the targeting of children since the early days of the genocidal onslaught.
On October 9, 2023, Nissim Vaturi, the deputy Knesset speaker, called on the army to "Erase Gaza... Do not leave a child there. Expel all the remaining ones at the end." In January 2025, he said, “Gaza is full of terrorists and every child born there is already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.”
Amid Israel's attack on the Al-Shifa hospital in July 2024, Israeli Knesset Member Amit Halevi stated that the hundreds of babies in its maternity ward were "all born terrorists."
This was part of a “systematic and complete destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza,” the report said, that fell heaviest on children. Attacks on pediatric hospitals forced sick and injured kids into smaller facilities without the necessary supplies or pediatric staff.
Israel's restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, meanwhile, turned survivable injuries into ones that caused death or permanent disability. Doctors said children were forced to undergo "horrific amputations" without anesthesia, while others who'd suffered burns and other traumatic injuries were left without painkillers.
The destruction of medical infrastructure, the report said, was not incidental. It said Israel had "operational plans and procedures for attacking healthcare facilities.” The result, it said, was preventing Palestinians' “capacity and possibility to heal, recover, and live.”
The report points out that since the ceasefire went into effect, more than 100 children had been killed and hundreds more wounded as of mid-January, with many being shot near the so-called "yellow line" that marks the edge of Israel's occupation area in Gaza, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been gradually advancing forward.
Israel dismissed the findings of the commission, rejecting what it called a “second defamatory advocacy report."
“Israel dismisses this libelous sham,” it said in a statement and added that while “every child deserves protection,” the report ignored “the brutal tactics of Hamas.”
Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the UN commission, said, "The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces."
“Even after the October 2025 ceasefire," he said, "children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”
Beyond Gaza, the commission reported that Israeli forces have killed more than 200 children in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, 2023. Hundreds more have been detained, often without any charge, and many have been subjected to systemic mistreatment in detention, including the deprivation of food and medical care, torture, and sexual abuse.
“Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight,” said Muralidhar. “The destruction of their health, education, and development is irreversible.”
“The protection, care, and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” he continued. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”
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"Stop fossil fuel giants from turning up the heat on our planet—and make them pay for the damage they are causing," one campaigner told lawmakers.
Jun 23, 2026
Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Belgium, and other European countries were under red-alert warnings on Tuesday as an alarmingly early heatwave continued to scorch the continent, underscoring the threat posed by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.
Météo-France, the country's official meteorological administration, said Tuesday that "further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year," as "sunshine continues to dominate across France, maintaining oppressive and exhausting heat throughout the country." In recent days, France has recorded dozens of deaths linked to the extreme temperatures, including two were children who died in a hot car and 40 people who drowned seeking relief from the heat.
“Heat is hurting children across Europe," Matilde Angeltveit, senior adviser and global climate advocacy lead at Save the Children, said Tuesday. "It affects their health and it is disrupting their education and the impact can sometimes be long term. This should be a joyous time as many children across Europe wrap up the school year, but for many it is not."
Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service said that while the ongoing heatwave is "remarkable for occurring so early in the year, this event is consistent with Europe’s rapid warming and with the increasing frequency and intensity of heatwaves already observed in summer."
"Europe is the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising by approximately 0.56°C per decade since the mid-1990s, more than double the global average," Copernicus noted.
Reuters observed Tuesday that Europe "was the continent furthest above its historic temperature norm on Monday."
"Heatwaves are no longer freak weather anomalies. They are now a recurring crisis inflicting suffering, claiming lives and fracturing our health systems and infrastructure," said Hans Kluge, European regional director for the World Health Organization, which estimates that extreme heat has killed more than 200,000 people across Europe over the past four years.
Campaigners said the current heatwave marks the latest evidence of governments' failure to rein in the fossil fuel industry, which has raked in massive profits this year thanks to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
"This isn’t a natural disaster," said Aaron Regunberg, director of the Climate Accountability Project at the US-based advocacy group Public Citizen, which declared in response to the European heatwave that oil giants "have blood on their hands."
"The fossil fuel industry’s pollution and decades of deception about the impact of burning fossil fuels has spurred this extreme heat, which has already killed multiple people," said Regunberg. "Decades ago, scientists at Exxon were discussing with other oil companies research connecting climate change with ‘suffering and death due to thermal extremes.’ These companies knew of evidence that their conduct would cause these harms, and orchestrated campaigns of climate denial to undermine that evidence. They should be held accountable.”
Areeba Hamid, the co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said political leaders "need to stop winging it on extreme weather and start treating it as the security and public health challenge it is."
"When classrooms become ovens, care homes overheat, transport starts to buckle and workers are forced to toil in dangerous temperatures, it’s clear the country isn’t ready," said Hamid. "Adaptation alone won’t be enough. Ministers must also stop fossil fuel giants from turning up the heat on our planet—and make them pay for the damage they are causing."
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