Category: introduction

— 10 min read — A Court Scene Imagine a scenario in which the newly-independent UK is summoned to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to explain why it thinks UK national security laws and practices are consistent with EU law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The UK has to attend the hearing…

— 11 min read — I am a political animal, and so cannot tear my eyes away from the ongoing saga of the US Presidential Election. The most extraordinary (in the true sense of that word) aspect to it is that there is now a significant faction in the US willing to undermine the reputation…

— 16 min read — There is a lot of discussion at the moment about where and how online services store the data of users from different countries. A common thread is concern that the governments of countries where online services have their headquarters may use their legal powers to access the personal data of…

— 6 min read — Reading the recent stories about the UK government wanting to invest to create UK tech champions reminds me of a conversation with a BT (British Telecom) executive some years back. This person had been with BT for many years and seen how they had not been able to capitalise on…

— 12 min read — The heated debate going on in the US about postal voting prompts me to reflect more widely on voting mechanisms and the use of technology. This is not strictly speaking about the regulation of tech so much as about how tech can be used in a political context, which I…

— 10 min read — I shared some thoughts about how a UK misinformation regulator might work last week and received some useful feedback from people who think a lot about these things. This has prompted me to take a step back and explain in this post why I proposed this kind of body by…

— 3 min read — People sitting inside President Trump’s campaign right now must be laughing. If they produce something outrageous and push this out through their social media channels, then they seem always to be able to “win”. On a normal day, the content goes out to the audience of supporters they have built…