michael veale

The proposed social media ban, the EU KIDS Act, is perhaps the most chaotic law I have ever read! New paper: Are EU Kidding Me? Notes from a Poorly Drafted Social Media Ban. files.michae.lv/papers/veale_areEUkiddingme.pdf In the spirit of the proposal I have stayed offline and read no takes.

Centre for Technomoral Futures

fun fact — france keeps trying to pass laws to ban this watching-the-watchers tech

MapQuest@mapquest.com

The Roads Have Eyes! 👁️ Turn on the Surveillance Layer in Map Options to see known license plate readers from Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), Genetec, Axis Communications, Axon, Leonardo (ELSAG), Neology, Rekor, PlateSmart, Ubicquia, Verkada, and other outdoor surveillance cameras.

michael veale reposted

@technomoralfutures.bsky.social

📢 New Speaker Announced! 📢 We are thrilled to let you know that Prof @michae.lv will be joining us for Technomoral Conversations: AI and the Future of Fundamental Rights! 📅 Tuesday 3 November 18.00 – 19.30 📍 Edinburgh Futures Institute & online 🎟️ Register & more info: edin.ac/3TjcS9j

edin.acTechnomoral Conversations: AI and the Future of Fundamental RightsIn this fireside chat, we will hear from Javier Ruiz Diaz, tèmítópé lasade-anderson, Haylea Campbell, Prof Michael Veale & Dr Zeerak Talat!

blog.cloudflare.comContinuous accountability for Verified botsIdentity alone doesn't guarantee a bot will behave responsibly. We are introducing a system to continuously evaluate whether Verified bots honor site preferences, like robots.txt and HTTP 429s, ensuring they remain accountable over time.

cloudflare outlines how it will monitor the bots it allows through its anti bot systems over time for good behaviour blog.cloudflare.com/verified-bot...

michael veale reposted

The Register

@theregister.com

Spyware vendors found a way to make targeted ads even worse

theregister.comSpyware vendors found a way to make targeted ads even worseIsraeli adtech outfit allegedly helped spyware vendors infect phones while enjoying Google's seal of approval

michael veale reposted

404 Media

@404media.co

So ChatGPT lets basically anyone target ads to people simply based on email, phone number, or unique phone identifier. @josephcox.bsky.social tried it and successfully ran an ad about how humans are reading your ChatGPT prompts in like 5 minutes. Read more: www.404media.co/how-chatgpt-...

ucl.ac.ukHigh-Dimensional Data LawThis Inaugural Lecture will be delivered by Professor Michael Veale

I am giving my inaugural lecture as Professor of Technology Law and Policy @laws.ucl.ac.uk on 26 Nov, in-person & online. The topic: 'high dimensional data law' — how data protection is (or is not) coping with text, images and complex 'content' generally. Registration: www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/...

'Are EU Kidding Me?', my critique of the EU KIDS Act, the EC's chaotic social media ban, is now forthcoming in the excellent Georgetown Law Technology Review. It's updated w/ some extra bits here files.michae.lv/papers/veale... (You can also respond to the consultation: ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet...)

michael veale@michae.lv

all bluebook errata are my own (but structurally the fault of the bluebook hegemony)

michael veale reposted

Ben Green

@benzevgreen.bsky.social

The first copies of Algorithmic Realism: Data Science Practices to Promote Social Justice have arrived! It's pretty surreal to hold a physical copy after years of staring at Word docs and PDFs. The book comes out next week, so get your preorders in now! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205570...

i also don't have linkedin (no law needed, i can deny myself an account at all ages) so anyone who wants to post this there is more than welcome to...

ec.europa.euEuropean Commission - Have your sayEuropean Commission - Have your say

European Commission seeking feedback on this proposal here if anyone wants to submit their thoughts ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet... thanks for the heads-up @joix.bsky.social

As a preview - loot boxes banned everywhere EXCEPT games - age estimation techs have impossible tech requirements - U-15s have 1 hour daily limit on strava & spotify - accidental age rating obligation for all kindle ebooks - 14 yos on work experience can only use slack through a parent's account

30 Aug

if the president decided to rename another country via EO, would google implement it for US users? where does google draw the limit?

reut.rsBosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, convicted of genocide, has died, Serbian TV reportsBosnian Serb general ‌Ratko Mladic, who was serving a life sentence ⁠for genocide in the bloody 1992-95 war in Bosnia, has died ‌in ⁠the United Nations detention centre in The ⁠Hague, Belgrad...

27 Aug

note, when radovan karadžić (president of republika srpska, also convicted of war crimes in bosnia and sentenced to life) dies, if he does not move prisons he will die on the Isle of Wight where he is being held

Reuters@reuters.com

Bosnian Serb general ‌Ratko Mladic, who was serving a life sentence for genocide in the bloody 1992-95 war in Bosnia, has died ‌in the United Nations detention center in The Hague, Belgrade's Informer TV reported reut.rs/3Sd1MSL

nos.nlUber schond rechten chauffeurs, AP legt megaboete van 825 miljoen opUber zou chauffeurs hebben geschrapt via automatische systemen, zonder dat er een mens bij te pas kwam.

21 Aug

uber fined 825m EUR for violating GDPR by dutch DPA re deactivation of drivers‘ accounts nos.nl/artikel/2627...

21 Aug

disappointed that out of the huge number of digital sovereignty conferences, none have yet centred the lived experience of actual sovereigns

theguardian.comSainsbury’s store pauses AI scanning after false shoplifting accusationSupermarket chain says ‘human error’, not its Facewatch technology, to blame for ejecting a customer

sainsbury‘s pauses AI shoplifting detection face scanning from Gordon’s Wine Bar spin out surveillance company Facewatch after incorrect customer ejection www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

have not seen anyone note that, in relation to AI SynthID text watermarking: all methods deployed by AI firms rely on private keys for security so no cheap/local/private detection. EU AI Act guidelines say it should not be this way, it should be local/interoperable. the deployed methods are not!

when google says it 'open sourced' synthid, it did (and had a paper in nature some time back) but it of course didn't open source its specific private key

404media.coWe Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training FacilityWe placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

given Amazon provide the 'Sidewalk' infrastructure that makes Tile trackers work via Alexa and Ring devices as detectors, they don't exactly have a leg to stand on when investigative journalists slip an AirTag in a book

Emanuel Maiberg@emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social

We put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

michael veale reposted

Emanuel Maiberg

@emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social

michael veale reposted

Alex Hern

@hern.bsky.social

daringfireball.netAnthropic’s ‘Watermark’ Text Adulteration in Claude Is a Perversion of WritingIt’s unacceptable for a tool to sacrifice an iota of clarity, coherence, meaning, quality, etc. for the purpose of embedding hidden clues within the text to suggest its provenance. The idea that anyth...

I’m convinced, upon rereading, that this simply misunderstands how either or both of how LLMs or watermarking works daringfireball.net/2026/08/anth...

I've updated UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws — it now features ~40 EU instruments as well as Irish & UK digital laws; what cites each article/para/sub para from a db of 6.5M cases, statutes, decisions, guidance, pending CJEU preliminary rulings & more homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...

homepages.ucl.ac.ukSources

Details on the data sources and citing countries covered here homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law... with the most data from France, Germany, UK, EU, Ireland, Estonia, Austria, Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Finland, Slovakia, ECHR, NZ & Sweden, and admin decisions/guidance from others.

degrees.asu.eduContent Creation - BA | Degree Details | ASU Degree SearchTurn your creativity into content that connects with audiences. Learn to create powerful video, podcasts and social media content that builds engaged audiences and uses analytics to understand what wo...

14 Aug

media is a hugely important thing to study, it’s dismal to reduce it to ‘content’ degrees.asu.edu/bachelors/ma...

11 Aug

i see government is taking its online presence seriously in this troubled digital age, passing GDS responsibility to the minister in charge of ‘ceremonials’ (ie remembrance day parades) and tourism.

Gavin Freeguard@gavinfreeguard.com

According to @dsonic.bsky.social over on The Other Place (h/t a civil society colleague), the DCMS ministerial briefs have been announced Steph Peacock (who shadowed data/digital infrastructure in opposition) gets GDS, not Ian Murray (who had been minister for GDS while at DSIT)

michael veale reposted

Jonty Wareing

@jonty.bsky.social

10 Aug

I always suspected a UK government would eventually reverse course on "coding in public". So I've been backing up all government code. For six years. Today I finally generated a report on what has been deleted. Its much worse than I realised. github.com/uk-gov-mirro...

michael veale reposted

Inside the Black Box

@itbb.bsky.social

Replying to @michae.lv

The default is the consequential part. Scraping consent has operated as opt-out-if-you-knew-to, so silence became permission. Cloudflare now turns silence into reservation at a chokepoint covering over 20% of domains, changing the baseline for sites that never expressed a view.

meta fears a google 'glasshole' style catchy moniker situation for their unpleasant new tech. perhaps it's time to strike fear into their corporate partner and make 'raybanned' a verb?

This post is unavailable.

Cloudflare (>20% of all domains) has started automatically implementing DSM Dir art 4 rights reservation (ie copyright/TDM objection to scraping) for all sites that do not have a robots.txt file. They also adding purpose fields to robots.txt unilaterally. developers.cloudflare.com/bots/additio...

this is quite a big deal and ramps up potential liability. it also is a move to put pressure on Google to split Googlebot into search and training (allowing people to block training but allow search).

they are also attempting to extend legal interpretation (potentially) with their 'use=reference' category, which their docs indicate is says allows you to index, make an excerpt and link back, but does NOT give permission to summarise.

restofworld.orgWhy India asked GitHub to geoblock Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat code - Rest of WorldJack Dorsey’s Bluetooth messaging app surged during India’s internet blackout — and the government’s response suggests a new tech battleground.

6 Aug

on protest and bluetooth mesh networking apps - india attempts to restrict source code to stop people circumventing internet shutdowns restofworld.org/2026/india-g...

if i were in the lords i would submit a private members bill to remove " (Text with EEA relevance)" from the end of the titles of all assimilated EU law

UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws now includes *pending preliminary references & AG Opinions* for all EU laws. Currently updates weekly. Based on Eurlex data which is a bit later to update than CURIA data (if you can even find it on the new website...) homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...

michael veale@michae.lv

You can now access many more digital laws, not just the GDPR, at the UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws page: EU: GDPR, DSA, DMA, AI Act, UCPD, NIS2 UK: OSA, DPA18, ...+ Each article/para/recital, links to what-cites-it in int'l cases/statutes/guidance homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...

Did you even KNOW that the AI Act already has two pending preliminary references? Don't hold back your curiosity folks... homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...

yahoo.comSpaceX rocket stage believed to have slammed into MoonA four-tonne piece of a SpaceX rocket was believed to have unintentionally crashed into the Moon on Wednesday, a collision that posed no danger to Earth but is expected to leave behind a lunar crater....

$SPCX was, indeed, going to the moon www.yahoo.com/news/science...

so much talk about the EU AI Act, but so little talk about the California AI watermarking provisions, SB 942, (extremely similar to the AIA) which became enforceable on the 2nd August