I’d like to offer up two very personal musings inspired by the process which led me to my new role.
Heather Burns
Announcement: I’m joining Open Rights Group
Some personal news: I’m absolutely delighted to be joining Open Rights Group, the UK’s fearless digital rights organisation, as their Policy and Scottish Campaigns Officer.
The world’s most dangerous tech project
It might be yours.
An imagined tech policy conversation in an English farmyard
A musing on the Piglet’s Code and the Online Farms Framework.
How to create a world as age appropriate as apple pie
One of the many problems I have with the UK government’s determination to build an “age appropriate” internet that will be the “safest place in the world to be online” is that this goal is entirely subjective and inachievable. It attempts to create internet regulation through undefined emotive rhetoric.
A tweet conversation this morning has spurred me to pour a cup of tea and share this story about what happens when “age appropriate” is allowed to become a subjective and politicised decision, nodded through by authority, about how information should be delivered – and filtered – to the young people who need it the most.
The Recovery Roadmap
I was honoured to be asked to write this report on the UK Tech Cluster Group’s Recovery Roadmap summit, ably supported by the UKTCG leadership team, showcasing their policy recommendations to support the tech sector’s role in the post-COVID recovery.
UX Podcast: Privacy privilege
Per and James discussed my article on privacy privilege on this week’s UX Podcast.
What the Schrems II ruling means for Brexit
I wrote in my Brexit blog about Schrems II, data protection adequacy, and pots calling kettles black. I was also quoted in Techcrunch, the Telegraph, and Digital Privacy News.
Quoted in Digital Privacy News
I spoke with Digital Privacy News about the German antitrust case which ruled that Facebook must allow users to opt-out of data sharing across its platforms.
Check your privacy privilege.
If you are a full time privacy professional in law or academia, understand that one of your fundamental beliefs about online privacy is wrong.
Brexit: where are we now?
I updated my Brexit side blog, so I did.
One perfect shot
Only a fellow Glaswegian, being Clicky Steve, could have composed this photo. It’s me nailing my conference talk in Paris three years ago today.
The three tests of internet regulation
Several years of watching Parliamentary hearings, participating in the shaping of legislation, and observing the politicisation of the fundamental rules of the open web have proven the old axiom: if you regulate the web as if only Facebook and Google exist, the end result will be that only Facebook and Google exist.
Book excerpt: Developing for privacy in the pandemic
The following is a draft of a postscript I’ve written for my upcoming book which probably shouldn’t wait until publication. It’s what you should know about developing to safeguard user privacy in the age of coronavirus.