Since Plato, philosophers have invested countless hours and words on the investigation of ethics. What makes something right or wrong? What do we mean by acting morally or immorally – or indeed amorally. Are good and bad fixed and objective facts, or just opinions relative to your culture, your religion, your circumstances, your place in … Continue reading Deus ex machina
This morning, I suggested that Admiral's proposed use of Facebook data to profile drivers and set insurance premium discounts might breach the General Data Protection Regulation. This afternoon, Facebook announced that they were blocking Admiral's app from using their data in this way. Coincidence?
Admiral, the car insurer, is today touting a new quotation system that uses Facebook data to profile drivers. Apparently Firstcarquote is designed to risk profile drivers without an insurance history in order to offer the "safer" ones a discount of up to 15%. Big brother? Thin end of a rather nasty wedge? Possibly, but what … Continue reading Admiral vs the GDPR – place your bets now
What is it? Despite the name, it’s not a feminine hygiene product. It’s the long-awaited replacement for Safe Harbour, the data protection scheme allowing data on EU citizens to be exported to the US for processing. You can read more on this blog about why Safe Harbour needed replacing. When does it take effect? It … Continue reading Privacy Shield – (some of) what you need to know
Bremain or Brexit? This isn’t a political blog, but it’s worth reminding ourselves of June 23rd’s implications for IT & cyber-security. Privacy and personal data Even if we leave the EU, we’ll still have to implement the General Data Protection Regulation, only to have to re-invent it later. If we want to trade with the … Continue reading In or out – the tech perspective
Internet pages taking a while to load? Struggling to pick up your email? Corporate Dropbox downloads taking forever? Quick – reboot the router; shout at the IT department; buy more bandwidth… Or you could have a look at what’s going on inside your network. Here’s are the top 4 reasons we find customer networks going … Continue reading Is your network running slow?
Facebook are in trouble again. You remember how a case brought by Max Schrems, an Austrian student, ended up bringing down Safe Harbour – the scheme that allowed EU citizen data to be sent to the US for processing? Well, now Facebook is being investigated by the German anti-cartel authority. The headline is that they … Continue reading A taste of things to come
Still chewing through the GDPR, so that’ll have to wait. In the meantime, more evidence that the nicest word we can use to describe the current state of data protection in Europe is…disconnected. First we have the European Commission desperately trying to reach an accommodation with the US on Safe Harbour after the European Court … Continue reading Left hand, right hand, other hand – what a mess!
The Safe Harbour problem isn’t going away. I know, I know, you’re bored now. TL;DR and all that. Well, sorry, but I find this stuff interesting, and you should too. Why? Because it looks like February 2016 is when things will get nasty. Nasty how? Expensively. It’s all still opinion, but after the Germans weighed … Continue reading Wake up! Safe Harbour is still dead. (Where’s your data – oh no, not more of this)
Encryption is shaping up to be one of the great philosophical debates of the technological era. It’s become a proxy for a wider debate about the rights of citizens, and the balance between liberty and security. The debate, and the issues, are real. But encryption is the wrong target. All we’re seeing is yet more … Continue reading Encryption – blessing or curse?
