Natter’s going?

natter

Natter it would seem is dying. As a last, maybe penultimate change they propose to remove messages from the system after 24 hours. This is too much for me and many others as well. I first took up with Natter because I was attracted to the discipline of the ultra short message; it was three words at the time. I thought I might experiment with anonymity, but choose not to since I had another goal. I sought to use Natter as an ultra-micro blog, and for this I need permanence. I was hoping for RSS or ATOM so I could integrate it into my web spore using Sam Ruby’s planet venus, but it wasn’t to be. …

Safe Harbour

Last month the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled the US Safe Harbour treaty to be insufficient for European data protection law purposes. How important this is, is subject to debate. One of the principles of European Data Protection law is that personal and confidential data must be “adequately protected”. The CJEU has stated that the US Safe Harbour agreement offers insufficient and uncertain protection to European personal data. …

Software safe for all

I made a storify about VW having been caught using software to cheat on emissions regulation. This impacts their rights to do business in some jurisdictions and their customer’s tax liabilities in others. It also raises the dormant yet critical question as to how do we as citizens know that software is telling the truth.

 

See also this, on this blog – “pragmatic radicalism’s top of the policies on the digital revolution“ …

More reasons to be doubtfull

More reasons to be doubtfull

I had reason to read the Register’s front page this morning and came across these three IT Security and e-voting gems. Firstly the New Zealand Government uses NSA surveillance tools to spy on the a number of APAC governments to help in their campaign to win one of the World Trade Organisation’s elected positions. Secondly the Australian ivote’s practice system has been compromised in such a way that cast votes can be infected. This project was lead by Vannesa Teague and Alex Halderman; Teague has previously spoken of the inherent weakness of [ei]-voting., not a fan it would seem. And thirdly, CISCO’s CTO gives up on security, or at leas that’s what the Register reports as a headline; the comments by Hartman, CISCO’s CTO are more nuanced but he definitely proposes that devices cannot be secure, and need to be monitored against change and current and future threats, and how do you do that in the home. …

Labour & Digital

Trefor Davies of trefor.net commissioned and published an article by me on the state of the politics of digital and its likely impact on the General Election. In the article I classify the issues around citizenship and economics. Obviously the manifesto has not been published and so prediction of its content is not easy. Regular readers will know that I am a supporter of both the Open Rights Group and Privacy International. I have also served on NESSI, the EU’s internet/I.T. R&D project incubator.  I am hopeful on the issues of citizenship, unsure on copyright and intellectual property laws and expect a good offer on digital government. …

The EU D.P. Regulations falls at the hurdle

The EU D.P. Regulations falls at the hurdle

Glynn Moody, of course,  at TechDirt, syndicates the EDRi scoop about the final stages of the new EU Data Protection Regulation exposing the National Governments’ role in weakening the current legislation which have completed their 1st & 2nd stages. The EDRI have published a document called “Broken Badly” which contains their critique of the Council’s behaviour and positions because they weaken the rules around consent (both authorisation and purpose), corporate sanctions, duty to notify breaches, and the problematic one stop shop for jurisdiction. Correspondence to Chris Grayling I suppose. …

On the economics of copyright

On the economics of copyright

When looking at the furore surrounding Julia Reda’s report to the European Parliament’s JURI committee, I am coming to the conclusion that those of us who argue for a fairer, more pro-consumer copyright settlement have won the economic arguments. The massive focus on the tiny change in duration reinforces this. All arguments I have had recently with proponents of the current settlement have rapidly moved from public good arguments to the issue of equity in investment, and the moral failure to compensate creators for their speculative investment.  …