Serious Privacy & Data Protection (he/him) 🏳️🌈🍍🇪🇺
@igrobrien.seriousprivacy.eu
Data Protection Dungeon Master. Speaker, Consultant, Trainer, Voice Actor - available for interesting projects! Just a boy, standing in front of a world, asking it to prevent data harms. This is a personal space. www.seriousprivacy.co.uk
Whoever is in charge of autocorrect at Apple - changing “I” to “AI” everytime I type it is not helpful. “I“ is such a fundamental word and to have to go back and change it is annoying and frankly terrifying…
Hey team - if you get a moment check out the board game! Kickstarter in October, sign up for news now! seriousprivacy.co.uk/the-board-game
serious privacy Ltd
The home for Serious Privacy Ltd, Our mission is simple: Use Data. Balance Innovation. Prevent Harms.
seriousprivacy.co.uk
Is the ICO is without a head. But its problems run deeper 🚧 The regulator has taken its hands off the wheel by failing to enforce data protection law for a long time. As the search for a new Commissioner gets underway, the ICO needs a fundamental reset that puts our rights first. Read our blog ⬇️
Wanted: Government to fix the ICO
Following the conclusion of an internal HR process, the Information Commissioner is on garden leave, before his final exit.
openrightsgroup.org
The ICO needs an overhaul of its regulatory and enforcement posture. The government has an opportunity to restore effective oversight of data protection rule. It's essential for trustworthy public sector delivery, innovation that benefits workers, and a digital economy that works for the public.
Good news www.yahoo.com/news/us/arti...
Windsor Town Council votes to turn off automated license plate readers
As more communities across Connecticut consider the use of automated license plate readers, one town has decided it's done with them for now. The Windsor Town Council made its community the first in ...
yahoo.com
Tom Dudchik@ctcapitolreport.bsky.social · 3w ago'Do You Know Where Your Data Is?' WINDSOR becomes first town in CT to turn off Flock Safety cameras... https://go.ctcapitolreport.com/3SZhuRq
Another thing I wrote. The UK has allowed some serious changes to be made to #DataProtection without full parliamentary scrutiny. seriousprivacy.co.uk/our-blog/f/h...
Have We Missed the Secretary of State in the Room?
TL;DR "The most significant changes to UK data protection law over the next decade may not come from Parliament…they may come from the Secretary of State."
seriousprivacy.co.uk
@seriousprivacy.eu is heading for 300 episodes… So… Ask us anything! Reach out to podcast@seriousprivacy.eu or send us an audio note and we can address your question in the pod!
Wow. Former UK Information Commissioner‘made jokes about paedophiles and sex with Smurfs’. Staff describe John Edwards as being ‘unusually powerful and unaccountable’ as an internal investigation reveals evidence of bullying and innapropriate language www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
Data watchdog boss ‘made jokes about paedophiles and sex with Smurfs’
Staff describe John Edwards as being ‘unusually powerful and unaccountable’ as an internal investigation reveals evidence of bullying and innapropriate language
thetimes.com
1. Today, brave brave John Edwards ran away. To thank the UK Information Commissioner for all the fish, here are FIVE EPIC FAILURES he's made during his tenure. Or, to paraphrase his own words, the five best attempts at humor that were inappropriate. Thread below 🧵 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
ICO boss John Edwards announces resignation following investigation
Edwards has been the boss of the data watchdog since January 2022, and said he had made inappropriate attempts at humour.
bbc.co.uk
Just thinking about the stupid, bad, something-must-be-done policy-by-vibes teen social media ban and sharing this excellent piece by @jamesrball.com again for those who missed it the other day www.jamesrball.com/p/a-teen-soc...
A teen social media ban is an admission of total and utter failure to govern online spaces
The UK government is currently calling for steps that fall short of a teen social media ban. Here's why it shouldn't take the next step.
jamesrball.com
Neither Save The Children nor the NSPCC supports a government child safety policy. Usually, that would be the end of that policy. But for some reason it's always different rules when it's internet.
Alec Muffett@alecmuffett.bsky.social · 2mo agoI know nobody cares what's happening on Twitter nowadays, but if you are following #socialmediaban you need to see what @savechildrenuk.bsky.social posted over there: "If ministers want to make the online world safer, the answer is not simply keeping children off platforms. Save the Children"
Once more for people at the back. **surveillance ≠ safety** …Tapping the sign…
banning infinite scroll for minors is a good example. infinite scroll is bad and designed to keep you enganged longer. make that shit illegal. bring back pages or something. idk. figure it out
social media that's bad for minors is obviously bad for adults too. crazy to me that the move seems to be to just accept that and ban minors rather than regulate the obvious design patterns that were put in there on purpose which make it harmful to its users
You know, it’s almost as though the bans are more about a massive data grab/surveillance apparatus for all adults online than any real concern over harms caused by the platforms! Huh!
jenny tightpants@jtp.bsky.social · 2mo agosocial media that's bad for minors is obviously bad for adults too. crazy to me that the move seems to be to just accept that and ban minors rather than regulate the obvious design patterns that were put in there on purpose which make it harmful to its users
A German court this week determined that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews in a ruling that could impact all AI search engines and chatbots known for their poor paraphrasing.
Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google
Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry.
arstechnica.com
RIP The Internet 1996-2012 We never knew what we had
1. The UK Information Commissioner stepped aside from his role this February. Under John Edwards' tenure, the ICO performed so badly that nobody noticed his absence until late April. This is why @openrightsgroup.org are launching a campaign to reform it. 🧵 www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/the-ico...
The ICO isn’t doing its job – why the data watchdog needs to be reset
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is currently missing its Commissioner, after unspecified HR complaints about John Edwards.
openrightsgroup.org
this excellent essay on structured data and relationships of care is extremely my shit and probably some of yours too
Rachel Coldicutt@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 2mo agoI have written a slightly unhinged newsletter about forms buttondown.com/justenoughin...
Show me some evidence that AI is changing something positively. All I’m seeing is the negative ramifications, enshitification, job loss, data capture, IP theft… Eech. What are we doing?
Our statement on the UK gov't's demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification & content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. signal.org/blog/pdfs/20...
signal.org
learning to manage money, learning about participating in society, learning about voting - everyday life &learning is done to a large extent online these days and kids need to learn to navigate that with appropriate supervision and guidance. Cutting them off from "social media" is a blunt instrument
Banning children from social media is not the answer, UN warns <yup news.un.org/en/story/202...
Banning children from social media is not the answer, UN warns – platforms must be made safe by design
Blocking children from social media is no substitute for making platforms safe in the first place, the UN human rights office warned Friday, as it issued a 10-point framework urging governments and te...
news.un.org
In June 1979, 9 nations voted together for Europe for the first time. 180 million voters. One shared ballot. A triumph of post-war European integration and the start of a project about what European democracy should look like. 47 years on, it's still going strong. #ProtectWhatMatters
My belief (hope?) is that these folks are all overplaying their hand and a serious revolt against all this invasive tech is coming very soon. It’s hard to look at their role in how things are and view it as a net positive.