Ian Brown 👨🏻‍💻

European strategic autonomy is in German hands As Berlin inevitably becomes the EU's dominant military power, its billions could either build or blur Macron's vision of European defense.

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

What a terrible take. As someone who engaged at a policy level with the ePrivacy Directive (& its predecessor 97/66EC), the ePD didn’t ’plaster the online world with pop-ups’. Privacy invading & eroding business models are responsible for that - biz could have chosen a different path

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...

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws 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 limi...

"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.

Starmer’s tech deal is a national security gamble – and ties us too closely to Trump The rest of Europe is working hard to move away from dependence on US technology – particularly when it comes to AI, writes Katja Bego. But the UK is moving the other way for quick cash and false prom...

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

Google Readies EU Offer After €3 Billion Fine, Skips Full Split Google will meet the European Union’s deadline to propose changes to its advertising technology business after a near-€3 billion ($3.5 billion) fine — but won’t include the full breakup the EU and…

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...

Creating an Independent Public Ledger of Credentials (PLC) Directory Organization | Bluesky The Bluesky Social app is built on an open network protocol that refers to each user by a unique Decentralized Identifier, or DID (a W3C standard). The most popular supported DID method was developed ...

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

Policing facial recognition is here to stay, risks included: What we need is a more honest debate The recent use of live facial recognition (LFR) by the Metropolitan Police at Notting Hill Carnival brought the new technology back under the spotlight; Dr Asress Gikay, Senior Lecturer in AI…

Why is it here to stay? I have seen no scientific evidence that shows that this is legitimate policing, but I have seen evidence of harms that it is causing and no serious debate on societal and democratic impact in the future policinginsight.com/feature/opin...

ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers A new contract with Clearview AI explicitly says ICE is buying the tech to investigate "assaults against law enforcement officers."

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.

Social media ban trial data reveals racial bias in age checking software: just how inaccurate is it? Young people from Indigenous and Asian backgrounds are more likely to be miscategorised as over the age limit and older people as underaged, analysis finds

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.

ANALYSE: Derfor holder Hummelgaards udsagn om kryptering ikke Justitsminister Peter Hummelgaard (S) hævder, at man kan lave undtagelser i kryptering, og at Apple og Meta kan, men nægter at hjælpe med at fjerne overgrebsmateriale med børn. Begge udsagn modsiges a...

"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)

Anti-Trump Protesters Take Aim at ‘Naive’ US-UK AI Deal Thousands marched in London to protest President Donald Trump’s second state visit. Among them were many environmental activists unhappy with Britain’s new AI deal with the US.

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...

Cybercriminals Have a Weird New Way to Target You With Scam Texts Scammers are now using “SMS blasters” to send out up to 100,000 texts per hour to phones that are tricked into thinking the devices are cell towers. Your wireless carrier is powerless to stop them.

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...

Moscow's interest in this autumn's Czech and Moldova elections 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.

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.

Let’s be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel Trump’s most brazen attack on free speech yet.

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 to M&S: our cyber policy blind spot In the wake of a cyber attack that has halted Jaguar Land Rover’s computer systems and production lines, Ciaran Martin, Professor of Practice in the Management of Public Organisations, argues that…

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 UK’s £31bn tech deal with the US might sound great – but the government has to answer these questions | Matt Davies The big firms making these pledges are not charities. We know there will be a quid pro quo; we just don’t know what it is yet, says Matt Davies of the Ada Lovelace Institute

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

Beijing says TikTok’s US app will use Chinese algorithm Security hawks have raised fears recommendation code could be manipulated to push propaganda

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...

The EU faces two existential problems. First: how can it tackle its so-called ‘competitiveness problem’ – its subdued rate of economic growth. Solving this problem requires better use of innovations, which – thanks to Europe’s poor track record on commercialising new technologies – are mostly foreign today. The second: how can the EU boost its technological sovereignty, so that it is less reliant on unreliable trading partners? This CERRE Issue Paper by Zach Meyers explores how the EU can reconcile these two priorities – just as the Commission is launching proposals for a European Competitiveness Fund, and a Cloud & AI Development Act, which aim to boost use of technologies like cloud and AI while supporting ‘sovereign’ technological solutions.

🚨 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