Missed flights and more means something has got to give at the border

Greece is taking a flexible approach to introducing the European Union’s biometric Entry/Exit System (EES), after some British passport holders missed flights home following the system’s implementation on 10 April.

On 20 April, the Hellenic Police said it had started to fully deploy EES and Greece will use all necessary measures to manage traffic at border crossings in accordance with the regulations. The UK government updated its travel advice on the same day: “Greek authorities have indicated that they will not collect biometric data (fingerprints and photos) for UK travellers as part of EES” although passengers should “follow the advice of authorities on the ground”.

The Independent’s travel correspondent Simon Calder said EES regulations allow flexibility to suspend biometric data collection at specific places for limited periods of time, yet the European Commission does not expect blanket exemptions for citizens of specific countries for extended periods.

EES went live in October last year, causing launch-day queues at Prague’s international airport.

Many countries phased it in, but its use became compulsory on 10 April. Since then some Brits have missed flights due to border control delays caused by the system, including around 100 passengers due to take an Easyjet flight from Milan Linate to Manchester on 12 April and a smaller number trying to travel with Ryanair from Milan Bergamo to Manchester on 16 April.

“The issues some passengers have experienced are unacceptable and so we continue to urge border authorities to ensure they make full and effective use of the permitted flexibilities for as long as needed, so our customers’ travel plans are not impacted,” Easyjet said in a statement.

The airline will transfer passengers delayed by EES to other flights it provides for free, something it offered to a Register staffer and his family when they were delayed trying to fly from Paris to London Gatwick on 10 April. As replacement flights were not available until 15 days later, our vulture decided to catch a Eurostar instead.

Airport operator group ACI Europe and Airlines for Europe, which includes Easyjet, Ryanair and British Airways parent company International Airlines Group, said some passengers have waited two to three hours due to the system.

“Border control authorities must be allowed to fully suspend the EES when waiting times become excessive,” said the heads of the two organizations. “This is essential not only in the coming weeks, but throughout the peak summer travel season.”

As of 10 April, the European Commission said that EES had registered more than 52 million entries and exits, refused entry to more than 27,000 individuals (about 0.1 percent of those trying to enter) and identified more than 700 as security risks.

The EU has built a Travel to Europe app allowing those required to use EES to undertake some of the process in advance. However, so far only Sweden and Portugal are accepting its use. ®

Source: https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/04/24/greeces-flexible-approach-to-europe-biometric-entry-system/5224710

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The UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”), has fined Reddit £14.47 million for unlawfully processing children’s personal data. 

The penalty, covering a period from May 2018 to July 2025, stems from Reddit’s failure to implement effective age assurance mechanisms; Reddit instead relied on self-declaration, which the ICO deemed insufficient.

On Tuesday, the ICO announced it had fined Reddit, an American social news aggregation website and discussion portal, £14.47 (US$19.56) million for “serious failures in age assurance under UK data protection law” and so using “children’s personal information unlawfully.” 

In short, the fine was for failing to implement age verification on its platform as dictated by the UK’s Online Safety Act.  Or as Infowars put it, “Because Reddit let users self-declare their age at signup, a method the ICO called trivially easy for children to bypass, the regulator concluded Reddit ‘did not have a lawful basis for processing the personal information of children under the age of 13’. Children’s data was used ‘in ways they could not understand, consent to or control’.”

“The UK’s data protection regulator says it’s protecting children. What it’s actually building is a mandatory identity verification system that turns anonymous internet use into a surveillance exercise for every adult in the country,” Infowars said. 

Reddit’s self-declaration uses selfie-based age estimation or government ID upload, processed through the Peter Thiel-backed identity verification company Persona.

Related:  The master architect behind the technocratic takeover of the Trump Administration is Peter Thiel

Security researchers have recently found that Persona performs 269 distinct verification checks per user, facial recognition screening against watchlists, risk and similarity scores generated for each person, internet and government database searches for potential matches, financial data checks and multiple forms of biometric analysis on submitted selfies.

“To use Reddit without restrictions in the UK, you now submit your face or your government credentials to a third-party surveillance system. The ICO calls this progress. It looks more like an identity profiling operation that happens to include an age check,” Infowars noted.

Persona’s privacy policy indicates that they extend surveillance and profiling of users even further – and since users of Reddit will be unaware that Persona is being used, Reddit users are unknowingly submitting to Persona’s “privacy policy.” 

“[Persona’s privacy policy] says it may collect identifiers, device information and geolocation data from third parties, including data brokers, marketing partners and ‘publicly available sources…such as open government databases’,”  Infowars highlighted.

Adding, “Reddit says it doesn’t see photos submitted to Persona and only receives a user’s verification status and provided birthdate. What Persona builds from everything else is outside Reddit’s control and, apparently, outside the ICO’s concern.”

The fine is the largest ever issued by the ICO for breaches of children’s “privacy.” The decision considered the number of affected children, the potential harm, the duration of the failings and Reddit’s global turnover. Reddit has announced it intends to appeal the ruling.

The Register asked Reddit to comment.  A spokesperson said: “Reddit doesn’t require users to share information about their identities, regardless of age, because we are deeply committed to their privacy and safety. The ICO’s insistence that we collect more private information on every UK user is counterintuitive and at odds with our strong belief in our users’ online privacy and safety. We intend to appeal the ICO’s decision.”

The appeal is worth watching because Reddit has identified something the ICO has not answered: how does forcing mass biometric data collection protect privacy?

In its announcement of the fine, the ICO said it “is keeping Reddit’s processing of children’s personal information under review as part of ongoing work focusing on online platforms that primarily rely on self-declaration – an area of focus for the ICO.” And, “[the ICO] will continue to work closely with Ofcom, which has responsibility for enforcing the Online Safety Act, to ensure the efforts are coordinated.”

Reddit is not the only platform being “reviewed” for breaches of children’s “privacy.”  The ICO is investigating the age-assurance practices of at least 17 platforms “popular with children in the UK,” including Discord, Pinterest, and X. The diagram below, published by the ICO, illustrates the pervasiveness of the UK government’s attempt to control online discourse worldwide in the name of “children’s safety.”

Source: https://theexposenews.com/2026/02/26/ico-fines-reddit-over-14-million/

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A Washington state trial court has shot down local municipalities’ effort to keep automated license plate reader (ALPR) data secret.

The Skagit County Superior Court in Washington rejected the attempt to block the public’s right to access data gathered by Flock Safety cameras, protecting access to information under the Washington Public Records Act (PRA). Importantly, the ruling from the court makes it clear that this access is protected even when a Washington city uses Flock Safety, a third-party vendor, to conduct surveillance and store personal data on behalf of a government agency.

“The Flock images generated by the Flock cameras…are public records,” the court wrote in its ruling. “Flock camera images are created and used to further a governmental purpose. The Flock images created by the cameras located in Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley were paid for by Stanwood and Sedro Wooley [sic] and were generated for the benefit of Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley.”

The cities’ move to exempt the records from disclosure was a dangerous attempt to deny transparency and reflects another problem with the massive amount of data that police departments collect through Flock cameras and store on Flock servers: the wiggle room cities seek when public data is hosted on a private company’s server.

Flock Safety’s main product is ALPRs, camera systems installed throughout communities to track all drivers all the time. Privacy activists and journalists across the country recently have used public records requests to obtain data from the system, revealing a variety of controversial uses. This has included agencies accessing data for immigration enforcement and to investigate an abortion, the latter of which may have violated Washington law. A recent report from the University of Washington found that some cities in the state are also sharing the ALPR data from their Flock Safety systems with federal immigration agents.

In this case, a member of the public in April filed a records request with a Flock customer, the City of Stanwood, for all footage recorded during a one-hour period in March. Shortly afterward, Stanwood and another Flock user, the City of Sedro-Woolley requested the local court rule that this data is not a public record, asserting that “data generated by Flock [automated license plate reader cameras (ALPRs)] and stored in the Flock cloud system are not public records unless and until a public agency extracts and downloads that data.”

If a government agency is conducting mass surveillance, EFF supports individuals’ access to data collected specifically on them, at the very least. And to address legitimate privacy concerns, governments can and should redact personal information in these records while still disclosing information about how the systems work and the data that they capture.

This isn’t what these Washington cities offered, though. They tried a few different arguments against releasing any information at all.

The contract between the City of Sedron-Woolley and Flock Safety clearly states that “As between Flock and Customer, all right, title and interest in the Customer Data, belong to and are retained solely by Customer,” and “Customer Data” is defined as “the data, media, and content provided by Customer through the Services. For the avoidance of doubt, the Customer Data will include the Footage.” Other Flock-using police departments across the country have also relied on similar contract language to insist that footage captured by Flock cameras belongs to the jurisdiction in question.

The contract language notwithstanding, officials in Washington attempted to restrict public access by claiming that video footage stored on Flock’s servers and requests for that information would constitute the generation of a new record. This part of the argument claimed that any information that was gathered but not otherwise accessed by law enforcement, including thousands of images taken every day by the agency’s 14 Flock ALPR cameras, had nothing to do with government business, would generate a new record, and should not be subject to records requests. The cities shut off their Flock cameras while the litigation was ongoing.

If the court had ruled in favor of the cities’ claim, police could move to store all their data — from their surveillance equipment and otherwise — on private company servers and claim that it’s no longer accessible to the public.

The cities threw another reason for withholding information at the wall to see if it would stick, claiming that even if the court found that data collected on Flock cameras are in fact public record, the cities should still be able to block the release of the requested one hour of footage either because all of the images captured by Flock cameras are sensitive investigation material or because they should be treated the same way as automated traffic safety cameras.

EFF is particularly opposed to this line of reasoning. In 2017, the California Supreme Court sided with EFF and ACLU in a case arguing that “the license plate data of millions of law-abiding drivers, collected indiscriminately by police across the state, are not ‘investigative records’ that law enforcement can keep secret.”

Notably, when Stanwood Police Chief Jason Toner made his pitch to the City Council to procure the Flock cameras in April 2024, he was adamant that the ALPRs would not be the same as traffic cameras. “Flock Safety Cameras are not ‘red light’ traffic cameras nor are they facial recognition cameras,” Chief Toner wrote at the time, adding that the system would be a “force multiplier” for the department.

If the court had gone along with this part of the argument, cities could have been able to claim that the mass surveillance conducted using ALPRs is part of undefined mass investigations, pulling back from the public huge amounts of information being gathered without warrants or reason.

The cities seemed to be setting up contradictory arguments. Maybe the footage captured by the cities’ Flock cameras belongs to the city — or maybe it doesn’t until the city accesses it. Maybe the data collected by the cities’ taxpayer-funded cameras are unrelated to government business and should be inaccessible to the public — or maybe it’s all related to government business and, specifically, to sensitive investigations, presumably of every single vehicle that goes by the cameras.

The requester, Jose Rodriguez, still won’t be getting his records, despite the court’s positive ruling.

“The cities both allowed the records to be automatically deleted after I submitted my records requests and while they decided to have their legal council review my request. So they no longer have the records and can not provide them to me even though they were declared to be public records,” Rodriguez told 404 Media — another possible violation of that state’s public records laws.

Flock Safety and its ALPR system have come under increased scrutiny in the last few months, as the public has become aware of illegal and widespread sharing of information.

The system was used by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office to track someone across the country who’d self-administered an abortion in Texas. Flock repeatedly claimed that this was inaccurate reporting, but materials recently obtained by EFF have affirmed that Johnson County was investigating that individual as part of a fetal death investigation, conducted at the request of her former abusive partner. They were not looking for her as part of a missing person search, as Flock said.

In Illinois, the Secretary of State conducted an audit of Flock use within the state and found that the Flock Safety system was facilitating Customs and Border Protection access, in violation of state law. And in California, the Attorney General recently sued the City of El Cajon for using Flock to illegally share information across state lines.

Police departments are increasingly relying on third-party vendors for surveillance equipment and storage for the terabytes of information they’re gathering. Refusing the public access to this information undermines public records laws and the assurances the public has received when police departments set these powerful spying tools loose in their streets. While it’s great that these records remain public in Washington, communities around the country must be swift to reject similar attempts at blocking public access.

Source:  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules-data-captured-flock-safety-cameras-are-public-records

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In 2016, the Blackpool Council approved a fluoridated school milk plan.  All Blackpool primary school children in Years one to six are now able to have fluoridated milk as part of the school breakfast scheme.

Under this scheme, each participating child receives milk that contains 4.2 ppm of fluoride every school day.  This is in addition to the fluoride added to water supplies that fall below 1 ppm.

In the US, the safe limit in water was deemed to be 0.7 ppm – until a court ruled last week that 0.7 ppm poses an unreasonable risk of reducing IQ in children.

It’s free – no cost to parents,” the Blackpool Council states promoting its fluoridated milk for school children.  Adding, “It’s safe to drink.”

It re-emphasises that it’s safe to drink in bold type in the very next sentence:

In 2016, when Blackpool Council first approved the plan, the BBC noted: “Under the fluoridated milk scheme, each 189ml carton will contain 0.8mg of fluoride – the equivalent of 4.2 parts per million.”

Regarding the upper tolerable intake limit, the World Health Organisation estimates it is calculated as 0.1 mg/kg body weight per day.  This upper limit relates to fluoride from all sources, including toothpaste.

In a 2010 European Union Science Committee document, the estimated upper tolerable intake limit for children aged between 8 and 14 years is 5 mg/day, extrapolated from the estimated upper limit for adults.  The upper tolerable intake limit for children aged between 4 and 8 years is estimated at 2.5 mg/day.  As noted by Fluoride Action Network, for children younger than 4, between 60% and 104% of their recommended daily limit of fluoride (0.7 mg) is obtained from toothpaste alone while brushing their teeth twice daily.  The upper tolerable intake limit for 2 and 3-year-olds is 1.3 mg daily – they get 0.7 mg from toothpaste and then you add the fluoride intake from its many sources including water and milk.

As the European Union Science Committee document demonstrates, it is complex and impossible to calculate anyone’s total daily fluoride intake with any accuracy.

Each child participating in the scheme receives a carton of 189ml of fluoridated milk.  Therefore, each participating child is given milk containing 4.2 parts per million (“ppm”) of fluoride every school day.

A 2022 policy paper for the UK government stated, “In some parts of England the level of fluoride in the public water supply already reaches the target concentration of water fluoridation schemes (one milligram per litre (1mg/l)), sometimes expressed as one part per million (1ppm)), as a result of the geology of the area. In other areas the fluoride concentration has been adjusted to reach this level as part of a fluoridation scheme.”

The policy paper continued, “The World Health Organisation recommends a maximum level of 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per litre of water (mg/l) [or 1.5 ppm].”

In addition to the 1 ppm of fluoride in drinking water, the Blackpool Council is adding 4.2 ppm to breakfasts for children participating in the school breakfast scheme.

For comparison, in the US, the recommended safe level of fluoride in water is 0.7 ppm.

As Libertarianism UK noted, the US safe limit of 0.7 ppm was lowered in 2015 from the previous 0.7-1.2 ppm range.  The Department of Health and Human Services lowered the safe limit because it was decided the higher limit of 1.2 ppm was a potential danger.

It’s not only Blackpool council risking the health of children.  At the end of its webpage, Blackpool Council notes that “a successful fluoride milk scheme has been operating in Manchester for a number of years.”  We couldn’t find a start date for when Manchester began distributing fluoridated milk to schools.  But we assume children in Manchester have been given the same unsafe 4.2 ppm of fluoride in each carton of milk for “a number of years.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, the Federal Court in California ruled on Tuesday that adding 0.7 ppm of fluoride to water poses an unreasonable risk to children’s intelligence.

Last month, the long-delayed final report from the US National Toxicology Programme (“NTP”) confirmed that there is a large, consistent and reliable body of scientific research linking fluoride to reduced IQ.

After the release of the NTP report, it was expected that Californian Judge Edward Chen would issue his final ruling for a case brought against the US Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”).

For nearly a decade, Food & Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network and others have been in a legal battle with the EPA after the EPA denied their petition against local water utilities adding fluoride into water supplies.

Last week, on 24 September, Judge Chen issued his ruling. He ruled that fluoridation of water at 0.7 mg/l “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.”  0.7 mg/l is the equivalent of 0.7 ppm.

Judge Chen noted that the finding does not “conclude with certainty” that fluoridated water is “injurious to public health” but does find there is “an unreasonable risk of such injury” and the EPA cannot ignore the risk.

Related: EPA Lawsuit, Fluoride Action Network and US Department of Health and Human Services report confirms fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ in children

Federal Judge Rules Fluoride is a Neurotoxin in Historic Lawsuit

Fluoride poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children, according to a US federal court.

By Derrick Broze as published by The Last American Vagabond

On Tuesday a federal court in California found that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrammes per litre “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.”

The new ruling issued by Judge Edward Chen noted that the finding does not “conclude with certainty” that fluoridated water is “injurious to public health” but does find there is “an unreasonable risk of such injury.” This risk is sufficient to require the EPA to enact a regulatory response, Chen wrote.

The decision is the latest ruling in an eight-year legal battle between the US Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) and the Fluoride Action Network (“FAN”). The lawsuit began following the EPA’s 2016 decision to deny the plaintiff’s petition under the Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”). The first phase of the trial took place in summer 2020 via Zoom and the second phase of the fluoride lawsuit concluded in February in San Francisco.

While Judge Chen did not tell the EPA what the response to the ruling should be, he did rule that the EPA cannot ignore the risk.

The EPA must now initiate a rulemaking process to determine what regulation they will implement to lower or eliminate the risk posed by water fluoridation. The EPA is likely to appeal the decision, but could also drag out the rulemaking process for years.

The Fluoride Action Network believes the most effective way to eliminate this risk is to end water fluoridation and ban the practice altogether.

“In our view, attempts by the EPA to appeal or delay this ruling will only result in harm to hundreds of thousands of additional children, particularly those whose families are unable to afford expensive reverse osmosis or distillation filtration of their tap water,” wrote Stuart Cooper, Executive Director for the Fluoride Action Network.

Judge Chen’s ruling includes several strong statements which make it clear his court has no doubt water fluoridation is causing harm, even at the levels currently recommended by US health agencies. These statements conflict with the claims of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and lobbying groups like the American Dental Association.

“The Court finds that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per litre (“mg/l”) – the level presently considered ‘optimal’ in the United States – poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children,” Chen wrote.

Chen goes on to note that “there is little dispute” regarding the hazard fluoride poses to human health.  “Indeed, EPA’s own expert agrees that fluoride is hazardous at some level of exposure,” the judge acknowledges. “And ample evidence establishes that a mother’s exposure to fluoride during pregnancy is associated with IQ decrements in her offspring.”

Judge Chen’s statement regarding fluoride exposure during pregnancy reinforces statements made by multiple expert witnesses presented by the FAN during the trials.

One such witness was Dr. Howard Hu. In February, Hu told the court that babies in the third trimester typically pull calcium from the mother’s bones as they develop their skeletal structure. If a mother is receiving fluoride this will be stored in her bones. When her child begins pulling minerals from the mother it will also receive fluoride via the placenta.

Following his testimony to the court, Dr. Howard Hu confirmed to The Last American Vagabond that he believes fluoride is a neurotoxin.

“Yes. I would say that, in my view, the evidence is quite persuasive that there is a negative impact of fluoride exposure on the neurodevelopment of children, particularly the research that’s been coming out in prenatal exposure,” he said.

If you are unable to watch the video above on Rumble, you can watch it on Voluntary Tube HERE.

Judge Chen acknowledged that there is uncertainty as to the precise level at which fluoride becomes hazardous. However, he also stated that even with this uncertainty “the risk to health at exposure levels in United States drinking water is sufficiently high to trigger regulatory response by the EPA under Amended TSCA.”

In response to the ruling, FAN’s attorney, Michael Connett, said, “The Court has done what EPA has long refused to do: applied EPA’s risk assessment framework to fluoride. It’s a historic decision.”

Connett also stated that while the EPA’s rulemaking process begins, policymakers ought to ask, “Should we really be adding a neurotoxicant to our drinking water?”

Censored Report From the NTP Released in August

The ruling comes on the heels of the release of a long-delayed and censored report from the US National Toxicology Programme (“NTP”).  The NTP report found “moderate confidence” that fluoride exposure is “consistently associated with lower IQ in children”

The NTP is run by the US Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate, evaluate, and report on toxicology within public agencies, and is headquartered at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (“NIEHS”).

The NTP’s final report was a factor in Judge Chen’s ruling, with Chen writing, “Notwithstanding inherent difficulties in observing effects at lower exposure levels… scientists have observed a statistically significant association between fluoride and adverse effects in children even at such “lower” exposure levels (less than 1.5 mg/l).”

The NTP’s final report, also known as a monograph, reported that 72 studies examined the “association between fluoride exposure and IQ in children,” and 64 of those studied found “an inverse relationship associated between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.”

Of the total 72 studies, the NTP considered 19 of those studies to be “high quality”, and of those high-quality studies, 18 “reported an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.”

Even among another 53 studies which were considered to be “low-quality” the NTP found that “46 of the 53 low-quality studies [88%] in children also found evidence of an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children.”

The NTP report has been the source of controversy over the last couple of years as it became clear that elements of the US government were seeking to prevent its release.

Now that the final ruling from Judge Chen has been released, time will tell if local, state and national governments outside of the United States listen to the rulings and warnings, or continue to ignore the scientific data and allow the poisoning of their own populations.

Source:  https://expose-news.com/2024/09/28/us-court-rules-that-fluoride-added-to-water/

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