Take Back Your Data

Something is happening right now that most people aren't paying attention to.

Governments around the world — including right here in the US — are quietly building the legal and technical infrastructure to monitor, gate, and control what you do online. And they're doing it under banners that sound reasonable: child safety, age verification, platform accountability.

California's AB 1043 is a good example. It requires operating systems to implement age verification at the OS level. Not websites — the operating system itself. Think about what that means: your computer, before you even open a browser, would need to verify who you are and how old you are. Every device. Every user. Every time.

And it's not just California. The UK's Online Safety Act. The EU's Digital Services Act. Australia's age verification mandate. KOSA at the federal level. The pattern is the same everywhere: create a legal requirement that can only be satisfied by building surveillance infrastructure into the platforms people use every day.

The Problem Isn't the Goal — It's the Architecture

Age verification laws like AB 1043 don't just verify age — they build identity-tracking infrastructure into the OS layer. Once that checkpoint exists between you and your computer, scope creep turns child safety tools into general-purpose surveillance systems.

Nobody is saying kids shouldn't be protected online. But the way these laws are designed, they don't just protect kids — they build an identity checkpoint between you and your own computer. Once that infrastructure exists, it can be used for anything. Age verification today, content filtering tomorrow, political speech controls next year. That's not paranoia — it's how every surveillance system in history has worked. You build it for one thing, and scope creep does the rest.

The people writing these laws are not technologists. They don't understand — or don't care — that you can't build an age-verification system without building an identity-tracking system. You can't gate access without logging access. The surveillance is the feature.

Your Data Is the Leverage

Surveillance-based compliance only works because your data already lives on someone else's servers. Google, Microsoft, and Apple will comply with whatever laws get passed. Moving your data to your own hardware removes the leverage and puts you back in control.

Here's the thing: all of this only works because your data is already sitting in someone else's cloud. Google has your email, your documents, your photos, your location history. Microsoft has your files. Apple has your messages. These companies will comply with whatever laws get passed because they have to — and because, honestly, they were already harvesting this data for their own purposes anyway.

The leverage is the data. If your data is in their cloud, you're subject to their rules, their compliance, their government partnerships. If your data is on your machine, in your format, under your control — you're not.

So We Built Cloud Scraper

Cloud Scraper is an open-source desktop app that exports your data from Google, Microsoft, and Apple accounts to your local machine in standard open formats. It is not a backup service or cloud sync — it moves your data off their servers and onto your hardware permanently.

Cloud Scraper is a desktop app that connects to your Google, Microsoft, and Apple accounts and pulls your data down to your local machine. Emails, contacts, calendars, files, photos — all of it, exported into standard open formats that you own.

It's not a backup service. It's not syncing to another cloud. It's taking your data off their servers and putting it on your hardware, where it belongs. Once it's on your machine, it's yours. No terms of service, no API changes, no compliance frameworks that some government mandated after you signed up.

Cloud Scraper is open source, runs on Linux (built with GTK4/libadwaita), and ships as a feature in OpenFactory builds. You can also run it standalone.

Why OpenFactory Exists

OpenFactory builds custom Linux operating systems with no telemetry, no vendor lock-in, and no surveillance. You specify what you need — development workstation, medical device, classroom computer — and get an ISO with exactly that software. Cloud Scraper extends this by letting you reclaim your data too.

OpenFactory started because we were frustrated with the state of operating systems. Everything ships with telemetry. Everything phones home. Everything wants you in a cloud ecosystem where you're the product, not the customer.

We build custom Linux operating systems. You tell us what you need — a development workstation, a medical device, a classroom computer, an AI research rig — and we build an ISO image with exactly the software and configuration you want. Nothing extra. No telemetry. No vendor lock-in. You own the image, you control what's on it, you decide what it connects to.

Cloud Scraper is the next logical step. It's not enough to run a clean OS if all your data is still sitting in Google Drive. You need the data too.

What You Can Do Right Now

Three immediate steps to protect your digital sovereignty: export your cloud data with Cloud Scraper, build a surveillance-free Linux OS with OpenFactory, and spread awareness about these laws. The window to act shrinks every year as new regulations take effect.

You don't have to wait for these laws to pass. You don't have to wait for the next data breach, the next terms-of-service change, the next government request for your records. You can start moving today:

• Export your data with Cloud Scraper — get a local copy of everything in your Google, Microsoft, and Apple accounts.
• Build your own OS with OpenFactory — a Linux system with the tools you need and none of the surveillance you don't.
• Talk about it — the biggest advantage these laws have is that most people don't know they exist. Share this post. Talk to your friends. The more people who understand what's happening, the harder it is to do quietly.

The window for this kind of thing is always smaller than you think. Every year, it gets a little harder to run your own infrastructure, control your own data, and opt out of systems designed to monitor you. The time to act is before you need to, not after.

We're building the tools. The rest is up to you.