This week’s column is about the Home Office’s alleged new plans to keep a centralised record of the nation’s communications traffic data:
Can you “persuade others of the benefits of proposals or the value of a particular interpretation”? Then perhaps the recently advertised position of senior information officer at the Home Office’s new Intercept Modernisation [...]
Categories: newstatesman, politics, surveillance
This week’s Reboot column is on The Best of 2600: a Hacker Odyssey:
“That evening he unpacked his books from London. The box was full of things he had been waiting for impatiently: a new volume of Herbert Spencer, another collection of the prolific Alphonse Daudet’s brilliant tales, and a novel called Middlemarch, as to which [...]
Categories: censorship, law, newstatesman
This week’s New Statesman column is on sousveillance:
Watching Amy Winehouse lash out at Glastonbury this year (YouTube brings out the worst in me), I was surprised by the number of cameraphones the star had thrust in her face by the front row of the Pyramid Stage crowd. When your fans start treating you as badly [...]
Categories: newstatesman, surveillance
Digging this new theme (Thanks, James!). Because my New Statesman column doesn’t have a dedicated RSS feed, I’m going to do my best to post links to my columns here, so those who wish to can keep updated.
Here’s this week’s column, on touching up your holiday snaps (see one such touched up snap, right):
My youth [...]
Categories: newstatesman, silly
This week’s column at the New Statesman is a reaction to all the silly season stories calling for a complete ban of Facebook/YouTube/the internet.
Some people are so quick to judge. At the beginning of August, the national treasure that is Sir Elton John was reported, albeit by that other great national treasure, the Sun newspaper, [...]
Categories: media, networks, newstatesman, openrightsgroup, politics
A few weeks ago, I was having tea and cakes with a friend, talking about the usual stuff – Second Life, DRM, the BBC’s iPlayer. Together we came up with a rather implausible train of thought, which said friend dared me to turn into a piece for my New Statesman column. I think it’s turned [...]
Categories: business, copyright, law, media, newstatesman
Okay, it’s happened again – I have a new job and I’m not blogging. Sorry.
This is just a quick post to prove I still exist, and its theme is funny drawings on the web. I keep getting sent links to xkcd – this one cracks me up. And here’s a link to my favourite [...]
Categories: newstatesman, opendemocracy
I’m pleased to announce that as of 15 January next year, I’ll be joining the Open Rights Group as their new Executive Director!
Suw Charman, ORG’s outgoing Exec Director, has just posted the announcement on the ORG website. I’m looking forward to working with her, ORG’s Ops Manager Michael Holloway, and the incredibly diverse and talented [...]
Categories: freeculture, law, media, newstatesman, opendemocracy, openrightsgroup, politics, surveillance
openDemocracy will shortly be publishing my interview with Andrew Gowers. In the meantime, the New Statesman have put up my latest column – what to buy a geek for Christmas. Of course, if you’re a real geek, you will have ordered all your presents online by now, so treat it as a little light relief:
“I [...]
Categories: games, newstatesman
Stef Magdalinski got in touch to let me know that following my NS piece about MPs playing the system on TheyWorkForYou.com, he was invited to go head to head with Emily Thornberry MP on BBC Radio 4’s Today in Parliament. Steve Bowbrick has the mp3.
This week’s NS column is on e-voting, with a mini-interview from [...]
Categories: newstatesman, politics