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By Simon Davies As loathsome as Donald Trump’s policies (rabid prejudices) may appear to be, it would be wrong to sanctify Hilary Clinton by default. The bottom line is that both leading candidates have a terrible track record on privacy. This should come as no surprise. Anyone who has lived through the inaugurations …
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By Simon Davies Last week I published a post that questioned whether Europe’s data consent regime was any longer sustainable. The response to this blog was interesting. Rather than being pilloried by colleagues, I received overwhelming positive comments, both privately and on Twitter. Many took the view that consent was becoming meaningless, and that either …
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Last week – to a surprisingly muted public reception – Apple became the latest addition to a growing club of companies that have adopted greater transparency in their dealings with government agencies. In this article Paul De Hert (VuB-LSTS & UvT-TILT) and Dariusz Kloza (VuB-LSTS) outline the growing trend to transparency and argue why such information …
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By Simon Davies Social networking sites with a combined membership of hundreds of millions of users are refusing to allow members to delete their profile data, in violation of the privacy laws of dozens of countries. Concerns about this denial of user rights was first raised by Privacy International (PI) in 2006 when the organisation …
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By Simon Davies The US government has a lot of explaining to do about the role of its oversight Privacy Officers in the NSA affair. In short, these watchdogs appear to have done nothing, but have entirely escaped media and political scrutiny. In theory, privacy oversight over NSA-related matters rests with the CPO’s of the …
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By Simon Davies The Privacy Surgeon today launches its new audio interview series “The Privacy Channel” in which we explore a range of key issues with some of the world’s most influential leaders of thought and policy. Our aim isn’t just to discuss privacy with defenders and experts, but also to engage with those who …
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By Simon Davies The French privacy regulator CNIL has found Google to be in breach of national law and has given the company three months to comply. The ruling comes days after Sweden’s data protection authority issued a prohibition on public sector use of Google Apps. The national authorities of Spain, Germany and Holland have …
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By Simon Davies Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has repeated claims that Google is up to its neck in the machinations of the White House Administration. This claim raises some critically important questions. Speaking this week via video link to the 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art Assange warned “Google wants to ingratiate itself in the …
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By Simon Davies Last week a California start-up – Lambda Labs – announced that it is about to release a face recognition app for Google Glass. With this simple innovation the wearable technology has been transformed from a cool gizmo into a privacy quagmire. Facial recognition is a digital “biometric” technique that scans a face …
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By Simon Davies Last Saturday, Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, had an interesting comment piece published in Britain’s Guardian newspaper that caused some readers to choke on their breakfast cereal. The article was placed as a response to recent revelations that Google has for years evaded the payment of UK taxes. With irony mischievously dripping …
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