Ian Brown 👨🏻‍💻

📸 Fedi-news! You can follow my new @pixelfedapp.bsky.social photo-sharing account at @1br0wn.pixelfed.social.ap.brid.gy (thanks to the always-awesome @ap.brid.gy)!

An age-old French nightmare — that of growing German military might — is resurfacing in a new form. As Berlin inevitably becomes the EU’s dominant military power, our expert @mijrahman.bsky.social explains how strategic autonomy is now in Germany’s hands: @politico.eu

Great thread from Kevin on the airport cyber attacks - “corporate centipede” and “welcome to 1998” being my favourites ENISA - the EU’s cyber security agency - now saying it’s ransomware www.reuters.com/business/aer...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

I wrote a similar piece in Slate last year--granted, it was pre-election but the specter for what an authoritarian regime could do with the massive police surveillance apparatus at its fingertips has been hanging over us for awhile.

My new piece in @the-independent.com on the UK's tech prosperity deal: The deal does not only leave the UK even more dependent on US tech companies, it also once again shows how out of step the country is with tech sovereignty debates in the rest of Europe. www.independent.co.uk/voices/starm...

jesus christ. transport regulators need to get their acts together.

Although of course disappointing to see that MI6 haven’t done their homework - it’s Tor, not TOR @torproject.org

New: Google will meet the EU’s deadline to propose changes to its advertising technology business after a near-€3 billion fine — but won’t include the full breakup the EU and industry rivals have previously pushed for: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

excited to share that we are following through on our earlier commitments and putting together an independent+neutral organization to house the DID PLC system, includes the directory service

A friendly reminder that use of Clearview AI's tech is highly restricted if not banned in many parts of the world like the EU, UK, Canada, and Australia. It's been repeatedly fined for contravening these country's laws. www.404media.co/ice-spends-m...

It's also dismaying that ICANN, which (cl)aims to be globally inclusive, admits it's catering to the US admin's anti-DEI stance. This, despite many calls over the years that it move from USA to a jurisdiction like Switzerland, with a legal framework specifically supporting independent int'l orgs.

A good reminder why the current US administration's anti-DEI stance - & US-based Big Tech's widespread adoption of that - means it's more important than ever to nurture the development of tech & tech companies outside the US, so tech truly can meet the needs of a diverse world.

"If the EU ends up legislating [about encryption] on a technically incorrect basis, we could be left with a law that neither protects children nor citizens' right to privacy – but instead makes everyone more vulnerable" @moltke.bsky.social writes. www.dr.dk/nyheder/vide...

If you had been in Brussels and paid between 800-1200 EUR you might have heard that 👇

DCC 2026 -- our annual competition conference bringing together researchers, policy experts and practitioners -- is accepting paper submissions until October 13. Get those fingers typing ...

We need much more stringent rules about when it is acceptable to film people (and we also need the tech execs pushing these products to be brutally exiled from society)

I covered the protests in London against Trump for @wired.com. Protesters aren't convinced by the AI deal from US tech giants: They want to know what the UK is giving them in exchange for up to $45bn in investment and where the power for data centers will come from www.wired.com/story/climat...

NEW: Criminals are using "SMS blasters"—a version of cell-site simulators used by police to surveil phones in a certain area—to flood people nearby the devices with scam texts. @mattburgess1.bsky.social reports www.wired.com/story/sms-bl...

In Moldova, authorities estimate the Kremlin will spend €100m — €31 per registered voter — to influence the outcome. In the Czech Republic, Kremlin-linked outlets are pumping out more content each day than the country’s major news outlets combined.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

Jaguar Land Rover joins the list of high-profile cyber-attack victims, with production and services disrupted. Is it time to rethink our approach? 🚨 Prof @ciaranm.bsky.social argues operational resilience–not just data breaches–is the real frontline.👇

What if one could automatically monitor what politicians promise and enhance the ability to check, at scale, whether they deliver? Pledgetracker, by @fullfact.org and researchers, tries to retrieve relevant evidence and reduce human verification effort. Read their preprint here: lnkd.in/ec5gHYV9

The headlines — £31bn in investment, new jobs, faster medical treatments — sound almost too good to be true. What are we giving up in return? Me in @theguardian.com on today's US-UK Tech Deal: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New piece countering hype on terrorist use of Gen AI. Adoption has been slow and its impact minimal, in contrast with criminals (where the impacts have been immediate & significant). But, we should anticipate an increase in adoption, largely in line with broader societal trends in future

The law, if that matters anymore, says that TikTok must relinquish Chinese control over the algorithm. After nearly a year of delay, China is still going to control the algorithm. www.ft.com/content/550e...

🚨 New CERRE Research 🚨 📘Can the EU reconcile #DigitalSovereignty & #Competitiveness? ✍️ By @zach-meyers.bsky.social This is the first issue paper in a series of forthcoming publications under our newly launched EU Competitiveness Forum. Read it here 🔗 tinyurl.com/sjcf7u86

#speirgorm #spéirgorm

Musk is inciting violence on London's streets.Tommy Robinson is financed by US tech bros. These are all very direct attempts to destabilise the British state. Starmer needs to stand up to this. A government that doesn't defend its country's values against these blatant attacks is not doing its job.

VPNs must not face the chop 🚫 Next week the Lords will debate whether VPNs undermine the Online Safety Act. Banning or blocking VPNs will shatter security and free expression in a self-defeating attempt to make the unworkable workable. Read our briefing ⬇️ www.openrightsgroup.org/publications...

Ofcom investigates 22 more porn sites under new age-check rules www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet... press release with links to case summaries Expansion of anti-porn campaign under UK's Online Safety Act, including one site where Ofcom hasn't identified the provider. #censorship #openweb #techpolicy

NEW: “Minutes after right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at an event in Utah on Wednesday, far-right influencers and extremist communities lit up social media with calls for violence against the left.” @davidgilbert.bsky.social reports www.wired.com/story/far-ri...

"using the ability of end-to-end encryption to reclaim that previous baseline expectation of privacy and ephemerality that we used to have in our communications, no matter how inconsequential and innocuous they are, is something that would benefit us all as a society." @riana.bsky.social

New: HHS has told all employees that they should start using ChatGPT, continuing the administration's AI-ification of everything, its trust in tools that hallucinate, and the general sense that getting things right is not important or worth trying to do: www.404media.co/hhs-asks-all...

We compiled our vids and overviews on interoperability into one post: platformable.com/blog/Interop... Interoperability is an essential component of open digital ecosystems that makes it easier to collaborate and for all orgs to participate

beware of people who want to "protect" the children but are vehemently opposed to empowering children, giving them information so they can have agency, teaching them about consent, and actually listening to them

The Extraction Imperative: that the highest purpose of business lies not in creating value but finding novel ways to take more money and intangible assets from everyone else; i.e., achieving full use of every iota of market power.

Protecting young people online is a shared responsibility. Here’s how Bluesky is approaching new age assurance laws with pragmatism and flexibility. bsky.social/about/blog/0...

This is the actual value the Data Act brings @daphnek.bsky.social www.reuters.com/business/ret...

Read Brian Honan’s expert Op-Ed piece warning against the returning ChatControl laws, which Ireland is supporting at the EU Council, despite us balancing huge amounts of our economy on the security of the very tech industry it would most attack. www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

This is a good analysis, I think. Notwithstanding the general trash fire, there are some poor decisions being made in US tech policy around AI (and also crypto) that the UK is choosing to lock itself into by taking this C20th view of progress