Following a class-action lawsuit over Google’s handling of user data in its Chrome browser’s “Incognito” private browsing mode, the search company will expunge “billions of event-level data records that reflect class members’ private browsing activities” improperly collected before January 2024. It also updated its Incognito landing page to highlight that even Google can discern your activities in private browsing mode. Additionally, the company will be required to delete data that makes users’ private browsing data personally identifiable, such as IP addresses.

On Tuesday, the High Court in London granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange another hearing on his extradition to the United States, averting — at least temporarily — a press freedom catastrophe. While we’re glad that Assange isn’t being immediately extradited, the threat to journalists from the Espionage Act charges against him remains.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company engages in monopolistic practices over the smartphone market, preventing competitors by degrading the experience of communicating with non-Apple users in its products. iMessage features prominently in the suit, with the DOJ alleging consumers are disincentivized to leave its “walled garden” and so miss out on unique features built into the iMessage protocol, including end-to-end encryption between Apple users.

Most analyses of Monday’s Supreme Court argument in Murthy v. Missouri, the case about government pressure on social media content moderation, agree that the justices are likely to rule that the government can influence platforms’ moderation decisions. But when it comes to alleged threats to “national security,” some justices seemed willing to let the government go even further by coercing — or even requiring — takedowns.

We recently shared news of Mozilla’s partnership with data removal service Onerep. Through a service it calls Mozilla Monitor Plus, Onerep is designed to automatically scan for personal information on data broker websites. But journalist Brian Krebs has found evidence that the founder of Onerep, purveyor of anti-data broker services, himself created dozens of data broker services. Read more.

Public records and freedom of information laws are fundamental for government transparency. But when journalists fight for access to wrongfully withheld records at the state and local level, the public is paying the price, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Over the past year alone, local governments have paid journalists at least $1.6 million in attorneys fees — all of which was financed by taxpayers — following public records lawsuits.

Under the new European Union law, the Digital Markets Act, Meta is required to allow interoperability between third-party chat software and its WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger apps. These tools offer end-to-end encryption using the Signal protocol, the strong encryption specifications pioneered by the Signal encrypted messaging app.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed his support this week for the PRESS Act, the strongest shield bill Congress has ever proposed. One of the most important things reporters can do is write about the PRESS Act in news reports or editorials, and non-journalists can help spread the word with op-eds and letters to the editor. Read more in our newsletter.

Both in the U.S. and abroad, governments are capturing encrypted connections that pass over the public internet and saving them for later use. Within years or decades, post-quantum computers could meaningfully shorten the amount of time required to unscramble encryption, allowing attackers to read previously private messages. So a growing number of organizations, including Apple, are preparing for attacks like these with post-quantum encryption. Read more in our newsletter.

Earlier this month, NYPD officers violently tackled journalist Reed Dunlea and arrested him while he attempted to cover a pro-Palestinian protest for his podcast. In a letter to the Brooklyn District Attorney calling for the charges to be dropped, FPF wrote that "arresting reporters is a crude form of censorship." Read more in our newsletter.