Blair: tech is “apolitical” 🙄
Tony Blair is STILL maddeningly naive about technology, declaring it “apolitical” even while telling the growing number of governments his “non-profit” advises tech will “change everything” 🫠
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Author: Ian Brown
GDPR under-enforcement by regulators is a warning for the DMA
Prof. David Erdos has shared his latest (excellent) research showing i) little UK GDPR enforcement, ii) a worrying gap with formal law expectations & iii) limited accountability for this. I hope the European Commission is not going down the same route with the Digital Markets Act.
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32 European police forces attack encryption (again)
Over 30 European police forces have (yet again) attacked the increasing deployment of end-to-end encryption. This is how powerful policy stakeholders (like law enforcement and big business) often win arguments. They never, ever give up, repeating the same arguments ad nauseam — over decades if necessary — regardless of any evidence which emerges.
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Will Draghi/Letta “competitiveness” reports reshape EU tech regulation?
Forthcoming reports for the EU by two former Italian prime ministers, “Super” Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta, are likely to be very influential on the next European Commission and Parliament. Here are some potentially far-reaching tech regulation-related comments they’ve made so far.
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Mixing civil service expertise and management roles
Both the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority, and the European Commission’s Competition DG are looking for very senior “digital” experts for senior management roles. Unfortunately I think it’s a mistake to combine the two, as very few people have experience of both.
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My evidence to the European Parliament on the DMA’s third-party app/app store provisions
This morning, I’ve been giving evidence to the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee on the Digital Markets Act (which the committee led on). Alongside Epic Games, we discussed the provisions requiring “gatekeeper” tech firms (currently, Apple, Google and Microsoft) to enable users to install apps from outside the gatekeeper’s own app stores.
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Why is Wikimedia (still) blocking contributions via VPNs?
Wikimedia has blocked anyone using Virtual Private Networks, including Apple’s Private Relay service, from editing pages — even when logged in 😬 It’s easier to block wiki-vandals if they can’t easily hop from one IP address to another. But it means anyone using a VPN to protect their privacy — including Tor and Apple’s Private Relay — is collateral damage.
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Auto-translation and view diversity
What I’m missing most from Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn and X is auto-translation. Manual translation doesn’t work well in a scrolling feed model, because you’re less likely to pause on foreign language posts to manually translate them.
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End-to-end security does not require identical endpoints
I hesitated even in linking to this preposterous article. But its definition of ‘end-to-end’ encryption as requiring ‘identical endpoints’ is not one I’ve seen before (and my PhD title literally includes the phrase!)
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Does the DMA require direct app downloads?
Android, iOS and Windows have all been designated as gatekeeper operating systems (OSes) under the Digital Markets Act. Does this mean they must support direct installation of third-party apps?
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