personal
Yesterday, just for a while, I broke. Without going into detail (others deserve their privacy), personal stuff has been unremitting and draining the past month and more. A bunch of work deadlines collided in September. The outcome: a relentless grind of sleeplessness and toil that never seemed to diminish, or
dataprotection
The Court of Appeal’s decision to uphold an appeal against South Wales Police’s use of facial recognition software has all kinds of interesting facets. But the interplay between its findings on the equality implications of facial recognition, and the rights we all have under GDPR, may have significant
ethics
“All politicians lie,” so they say. No; all human beings lie. What matters is what lie, when – and what it does to your ability to choose. I’m a sucker for a series. By which I mean a sequence of books (for preference) or a good serialised TV show. Genre,
dataprotection
That’s torn it. The CJEU says Privacy Shield, the deal which lets EU companies send data to the US, is no good. Not only does this cause huge problems for everyone using Apple, Google, Microsoft and about 5,000 other firms – but it also foreshadows real problems for the
coronavirus
I know plenty of risk management experts. I’m not one. But I know enough to know that mask-wearing when indoors with other people is a no-brainer. Not to mention just the decent thing to do. I’ve spent a fair amount of time wrestling with risk assessments, mostly to
Bribery
When people claim the UK is “clean” (usually while denigrating somewhere else) it always makes me angry. Because corruption creeps in everywhere, and never more so than where when people are convinced it doesn’t exist… Imagine the following synopsis of a news story: * A property developer in a legendarily
encryption
A quick hit here to memorialise two privacy-related bits of news: a German court bans Facebook from tracking you elsewhere, but US Republicans try – again – to ban encryption that actually works. Like many people, I barely use Facebook. And when I do, I only do so when using Incognito (Chrome)
family
Father’s Day is bittersweet. Sweet, because my wife and daughter are blessings past compare, proof if any were needed that God, fate or the universe can forgive our failings and give us a life far better than we deserve. And bitter because I no longer have a father to
competition
I’ve been using Apple products my whole adult life. But that doesn’t make me a cheerleader. And on the very day a competition investigation was announced, Apple did something so apparently boneheaded that they‘re rightly being called out. I do have a slim legal figleaf for writing
coronavirus
Some time last week – and it may have been up for longer, but I haven’t checked – several people on Twitter started commenting on NHS England’s privacy notice for the Test and Trace programme. And oh sweet Jesus, it’s a fail. What’s worse, in the current environment,
apps
Ten days ago, I wrote about Scrivener. I said I thought it might help me get through a book project with a tight deadline. Boy, did I understate things. I think I’m in love. So that’s (nearly) it. 25 days and some 30,000 words later, the first
apps
Amid deadline hell, I’m doing what geeks always do to procrastinate: try out new stuff. But two new toys are actually pretty tasty… I feel guilty. Not only am I weeks behind in writing stuff about PDFs and bundles (page numbers. Oh dear…), but I’m also whingeing about