How can intelligence agencies get independent advice?
The UK’s “National Cyber [?] Force” has for the first time published detailed information about its work. But how can such a clandestine agency get genuinely independent advice?
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Does data protection only protect individuals?
This is often a critique of data protection as a mechanism for AI regulation. But especially when combined with human rights and specific anti-discrimination law, how much of a gap does that leave?
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Blair’s scattergun plan to rebuild the British state
Whatever the wisdom of individual policy proposals in this new Tony Blair/William Hague-helmed report, its greatest failing to me is that it proposes redesigning the entire British state on a greater scale than the once-in-two-centuries civil service reforms of the 19th century which still largely prevail. In a rather scattergun manner…
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Twitter meets key hurdle for EU regulation
In July 2022, Twitter had 61.9m users reachable by advertisers in the 27 EU member states — passing the 45m user hurdle for designation as a Very Large Online Platform under the DSA, and potentially a DMA gatekeeper.
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German minister: EU must apply DMA, DSA and competition law to Twitter!
German minister: “The EU must put Twitter under direct supervision of the European Commission! I have written to the relevant Commissioners Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton today asking them to do so. This can stop the anti-competitive behaviour of Elon Musk on Twitter.”
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The inadequacy of the US Executive Order on Enhancing Safeguards For US Signals Intelligence Activities
The new US Executive Order does not change the fact the US authorities insist on carrying out indiscriminate, untargeted mass surveillance, also of EU persons and EU governmental and non-governmental entities, by means of bulk collection of data, without independent substantive judicial oversight or effective redress.
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Tools for the great Twitter migration
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is providing a great large-scale natural experiment on a number of aspects of interoperability, as tens of thousands of users at least partially switch to alternative services, particularly in the interoperable Fediverse. Can we turn the migration into a stampede?
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How Big-Tech Barons Smash Innovation
I enjoyed listening to Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke’s new book on competition policy and innovation more than I expected. How Big-Tech Barons Smash Innovation—and How to Strike Back is beautifully written and full of zingers.
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The proposed new UK data protection regime & the continuing UK surveillance regime
If the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is adopted as proposed, the UK data protection regime will be significantly less strict than – i.e., not “essentially equivalent” to – the EU GDPR regime, and undermine the EU regime.
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What’s up with interoperability?
Thanks to BEUC for organising a great symposium yesterday on digital competition reform. This was my five-minute introduction to interoperability.
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