Another refugee from Storify, this time I was asked for a comment on some research into mobile app IT security and identified the Operating System and physical proximity as the two key attack vectors.
The Digital Economy Act (again)
The Digital Economy Act 2010 showed the long term goal of the entertainment industry, they want to criminalise file sharing. At the time, individual acts of copyright infringement were civil acts and the copyright owners had to pursue them through the courts, one at a time. This is expensive, slow, uncertain and most importantly expensive, compared with the cover price of a CD or DVD. The DE Act did that, it also sought to automate the justice system and in order to do that it weakened innocent until proven guilty, by prescribing defences and also placed a charge on going to court to argue not guilty. It really was a shit piece of legislation. However, the Law stated that the costs of surveillance and discovery had to be shared by the copyright owners and the internet service providers. The Courts struck down this part of the Law, (see here … for more) …
A note on the coming GDPR
In a blog at my employer’s site I looked at how to become compliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Regulations are the Law in all the member states, and members of the European Economic Area. The article looks at the issues of consent, the new data subject rights, privacy by design, the meaning of adequate protection and new public accountability via the duty to report breaches and to appoint a professional data protection officer. …
The coming of the GDPR
Earlier this month I posted a blog on my Employer’s web site categorising what I see as the five key challenges, of recording consent, private by design, compliance record keeping, adequate technical protection and public accountability. …
Digital inclusions & democracy
25% of the UK population don’t have broadband, this is higher amongst the poor and the old; it generally costs more than the BBC Licence. Also not all internet users are Facebook users. Facebook (& other social media providers) cannot act as a guarantor of identity in government and political business, partly because they’re proprietary, closed source systems and thus users, citizens and judges do not know what the code does. Digital inclusion is still one of the key political issues to be addressed in the internet age, governments and political parties need to step very carefully when they use social media platforms as a means of understanding people’s views; this is before we consider the anti-democratic nature of survey’s and referenda, you can only answer the questions asked, usually in a binary or scalar fashion. It’s not good enough …..oh yeah & open source. …
More on Brexit
Many the implications of the vote to leave the EU has been exercising my mind. I have finally got my notes & thoughts to publish my initial views on the politics of the aftermath; this article attempts to limit itself to the events and thoughts of the first week after the referendum. I have published them as at the date I started my storify where I collected the sources I wanted to quote. This is because it is one of a planned series, I plan to follow up with a piece on immigration, one on Labour Party and Left unity and one on the mutation of capitalism and politics.
One of the reasons for my delay was that I was asked for a number of quotes in the IT trade press which took some writing time. I have posted the complete quotes as three articles in linkedin pulse, on Cybersecurity, Privacy & Trade and the single market, covering innovation, TTIP & Privacy and net neutrality. …
Here come de Judge
The highest levels of international judiciary have been busy over the last week, I report and comment on the Microsoft vs. FBI on linkedin Pulse, in an article called “Citizens Win”. It was quite simple in the end, the law under which the FBI was seeking search warrant powers was not on of the post 911 laws, but an earlier one and the US District Court says that the law grants no power of inspection abroad. The spooks are going to have to apply for an Irish warrant. In Europe however, Tom Watson’s & David Davies’s judicial review on DRIPA have reached the Advocate General. This reported by Tom Watson here, and by Glyn Moody here. Watson writes about the need for strong judicial review of the search warrants, and Moody brings up that mass surveillance can only be used in the fight against serious crime. …
The coming Chief Privacy Officer
I was asked to contribute to an article on the new legal framework surrounding Data Protection Officers (DPO). I was pleased they took what I consider to be one of the critical contributions I offered, that “Privacy by Design” is a requirements management problem. …
Natter’s going?
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. …
On the coming Robot Revolution
At the Real World Economics blog, Dean Baker argues that, those proposing the Reign of the Robots, have some evidence to find and that (US) economic policy makers are pursuing policies in direct contradiction to the implications of such an event. …