That’s no moonshot.

1 September 2023
UK policy

Friday funnies abounded this morning, as a tech lobbying organisation published a blog post that is probably going to get somebody fired:

One line in their piece jumped out at me and a lot of people too:

“If we can put a man on the moon, we can prove your age online without putting your privacy or personal data at risk.”

Now, leaving aside the dubious reasoning behind comparing tech regulation in 2023 to the American moonshot campaign of 1963-1969,

There’s something important to be said about that sentence – something that has very apt parallels for our own issues today, including the internet regulation debate it tried to reference.

There’s even a lesson to teach. A positive one.

And guess what, I’m going to teach it, because, as I have mentioned here a few times before, I am a space geek. Always have been. Always will be.

So if you waft space geekery in my general direction, hoo boy, I am activated. This is my happy place. Strap in, folks, I’m coming in hot.

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Is it me you’re looking for?

15 July 2023
Musings
Street art, Northern Quarter, Manchester, autumn 2022

I have had quite a few requests from folks, and followers, who want me to join this or that social media app so that they can keep in touch with me, as the birdsite degrades further by the day.

I’m starting to feel like a broken record on my answer to their questions, so for anyone looking for me:

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How it started

30 June 2023
Privacy

When I was a university student in the 90s, I bought a housekeeping manual which I still have, and still use. It’s one of those books that tells you the right way to do laundry, how to set a table, how to mend your clothes, how not to accidentally kill yourself with fire, and that sort of thing. The book is very 1990s, very American, and very middle class – let’s face it, I have never needed to know the proper way to clean a chandelier – but that somehow adds to its charm. (Do buy a copy if you’d like to experience it.)

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Understanding Privacy is now on Amazon

28 June 2023
Privacy
sneaky peeky

A brief admin announcement: after some difficult but necessary soul-searching on both our parts, Smashing Magazine has today made the ebook version of Understanding Privacy available on Amazon.

Here’s a button, because I like playing with this theme’s shortcodes.

Get Understanding Privacy on Amazon

That link goes to the American Amazon site. If you try it in your own, it should work in your own currency; for example, I can see it on the UK site in the king’s own sterling here. Try changing the .com in the URL to your national TLD.

Of course, you can still order the ebook version, or the ebook + gorgeous hard copy version, on Smashing’s own site.

If you’re new to my book, you can get to know it here.

You gotta do what you gotta do

Obviously I have very mixed feelings about this tough but necessary decision to “go corporate”.

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The cavalry have arrived. But not for long.

20 June 2023
Policy / UK policy
Vegetable sprouts

Breaking my blog hiatus – my brain really is in a sludge, folks – to expand on some recently tweeted thoughts.

In recent weeks I have been blown away by the outstanding advocacy work that two brilliant digital rights professionals have been doing to defend privacy and freedom of expression, here in the UK, within the UK’s current legislative and political context. Read More

Unlock door. Open door. Go outside.

22 May 2023
Musings
A locked hiding place I spotted hidden in a forest. I wonder who has the key.

First, a quick admin note for my dear readers, all three of you. As may be obvious, I’m on a blogging hiatus. In addition to being physically and mentally flat, the little bit of energy I do have has been appropriated by the Jobcentre. (For those outside the UK, that’s the place I have to visit weekly to prove that I’m legitimately looking for work in order to receive just enough unemployment benefits to eat and do nothing else.)

So, yes, I have nothing to say and no energy to say it with. So don’t expect my usual erudite drivel for a while.

But. That being said.

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Greatest hits, b-sides, and unfinished demo tracks: or, all my blogging on the Online Safety Bill

17 April 2023
UK policy
A still frame from the film "The Post" showing an old printing press, loaded with type blocks which say "free to publish"

Ahead of the Online Safety Bill’s return to the Lords, Graham Smith has published a blog post aggregating his six years of blogging on the Bill’s provisions, its legal consequences, and its unintended outcomes.

As all good law and policy bloggers do, he also shares his thoughts on what these years of government’s defiant determination to make a bad law, out of bad policy, might mean for British statecraft in general, well beyond the Bill’s stated objectives.
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On Snowballs, Napoleons, and sharks

6 April 2023
ex-oss / Musings
BBC Radio 4 header image for the "A Very British Cult" podcast

The UK, which will take any scrap of comfort it can get right now, got a delicious treat yesterday out of nowhere: the team behind the Missing Cryptoqueen podcast, aka podcast crack, dropped a whole new series on a whole new topic. This time they have taken on a very unsavoury phenomenon which many of us, including myself, encountered in our formative years of running a business: and it is about time someone did.

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Freaking out about TikTok on your work phone? You should look closer to home.

8 March 2023
Privacy
Map of European countries doing TikTok bans, from Politico

One of the biggest stories in tech policy, right now, is that governments all over the world are banning TikTok on government devices. There are concerns about Chinese state access to the information on those devices, and on wider systems, enabled by TikTok’s background software.

I won’t go into the full details here, but here is a well-balanced podcast on the issue, if you need to get up to speed; Politico even have a handy tracker for Europe.

As always, I Have Opinions on this, and for good reason.

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