Notices by Ian Brown (1br0wn@eupolicy.social)

🤢 “#Zuckerberg, in short, turns out to be a giant man-baby suffering from a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people overestimate their own cognitive abilities.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/13/careless-people-by-sarah-wynn-williams-review-zuckerberg-and-me

‘Of course, Trump is a vandal. But in tearing down the status quo he does no more than confirm the obvious — that the elite coalition that favoured US global leadership has lost its political grip. If Europe wants something it likes to call a “rules-based order”, it will have to make it for itself.’
https://on.ft.com/3Fc9TIb

Trump DoJ antitrust chief nominee Gail “Slater embodies the unlikely alignment of progressives who support tough antitrust enforcement and a new generation of populist conservatives helmed by vice-president JD Vance, who has called for the break-up of Google.”
https://on.ft.com/4hfVYOu

The UK Home Office (interior ministry) appears to have forgotten entirely about the "independent" Technical Advisory Board #TAB whose advice it legally must take when #Apple appeals its secret order ("Technical Capability Notice” leaked to the Washington Post) to compromise #iPhone/ #ADP security worldwide to enable future surveillance by the UK 🤡🤡
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366619028/Apple-British-techies-to-advise-on-devastating-UK-global-crypto-power-grab

‘Yakoob has paid “substantial” damages and costs for his publication of the video, removed the posts and agreed not to post them again. It is thought to be the first case of a political “#deepfake” — images or video edited or generated using #AI — being subject to a legal settlement in the UK.’
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/i-doorknocked-for-labour-then-racist-deepfake-ruined-my-life-fn6xxc5dc

#TikTok “cannot necessarily make Taiwanese youth identify with the Chinese nation or agree to unification with #China”, says Eric Hsu, a researcher at the Taiwanese think-tank Doublethink Lab who is working on the first systematic survey of TikTok’s impact on Taiwanese society. “But it can probably lower their apprehension towards China and their will to resist.” 🧐 #Taiwan
https://www.ft.com/content/e25ee12b-3a4a-4a15-bd5e-0f5fb410e856

“Much of the debate about #Huawei has centred on the question of whether the firm is an arm of the Chinese government… the question is irrelevant…because all communications companies, of whatever nationality, do their government’s bidding when it comes to security; and if tensions between two countries are on the rise, governments understandably want to keep each other’s firms out of their communications networks.” 💯
https://www.thetimes.com/article/46a37c19-f517-4173-bca3-268d7bfb2a7c?shareToken=a1c29d3f75e322f6f6cb0787138ca863

A 🇬🇧 government spokesman said that “technology now makes it possible for digital identities to be more secure than physical ones, but we remain clear that they will not be made mandatory.”
https://www.thetimes.com/article/cb6eca06-d9af-42c5-a17e-b1e18d9ea8d3?shareToken=e0352c26aff24b938569401d30fa8348

#Relx ‘now holds 290mn US unique identities, 13bn names and addresses, 8bn vehicle records, 9bn device records, and 3bn digital identities. That is a lot of data, never mind the 16bn keyboard, mouse, sensor and touch transactions that it processes annually. About 80% of its revenues come from the US, where privacy laws are looser than in Europe.’ #GDPR
https://on.ft.com/426chd5

German Greens MEP @alexandrageese@bonn.social defined the problem as follows: “Elon #Musk chatting with #AfD leader Alice Weidel on X is covered by freedom of expression. His algorithmic manipulation, [which] is intentionally flooding German X timelines with far-right propaganda and drowning out progressive content, is not.”
From: @alderik
https://eupolicy.social/@alderik/113786022258085595

‘The [#CrowdStrike] incident has heightened scrutiny from regulators and business leaders over the extent of access that third-party software vendors have to the core, or kernel, of Microsoft’s #Windows operating systems. Bugs in the #kernel, such as CrowdStrike’s faulty update, can quickly crash an entire system… “If anything, the migration that results from this incident might be away from Microsoft, not CrowdStrike,” [Forrester analyst Allie] Mellen said.‘
https://www.ft.com/content/e98e0d35-38f4-476e-bd22-7f74162df5b4

I wonder how far the EU#DSA actually requires some of this function… 🧐
From: @lauren
https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren/113765893216167618

“Usually without people noticing, the [proposed smart] traffic lights make contact with apps on the mobile phones of road users. In this way, the traffic lights can collect personal information about people on a large scale,” the Dutch Data Protection Authority said.
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/amsterdam-abandons-smart-traffic-lights-amid-privacy-fears-l97g6rmtc

“The #Maga crowd and the globalists disagree not only on immigration, but on defence, employment and free speech. This is a coalition whose most significant overlap was a desire to take down the previous government. Now that they have, I think it’s unlikely they’ll come together on anything else.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b7694d70-2c5a-4531-b8d0-446ee12a489a

“Some people who are not terrorists are very good at creating terrorists, wittingly or unwittingly. When you’ve got people with very large online followings who are capable of generating #extremism and the ­government isn’t doing anything, that is incredibly dangerous.” -Former UK counterterrorism policing lead Neil Basu 🧐
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/05/curb-extremism-now-or-face-new-terrorist-threats-labour-warned

‘Pellant was among several women targeted by Bates. He stalked them online by trawling their social media accounts and used their images for deepfakes. He also published their addresses, phone numbers and work details on porn and swingers websites.’
https://www.thetimes.com/article/aeb574cd-5b28-4207-9500-070fe80088f1?shareToken=4cc7711526bf109d863919133e1b8d09

‘Generative #AI tools such as Pencil offer clients the prospect of cheaper marketing, with [#Brandtech CEO David] Jones reckoning that big companies will be able to “cut their content creation costs by at least 50 per cent over the next three years”. His hope is that “smarter companies” will use the money they save to invest in more advertising to stay ahead of their competition.’
https://www.thetimes.com/article/f236c70b-50ee-4f8c-9f6d-ca4df98174e2?shareToken=57f047fc5ea69adfb3bdc942696087a6

‘UK officials are studying ways to price #NHS patients’ data to streamline the sale of information to companies and researchers, as part of proposals to mine the value of the health service’s vast store of information.’ 😳
https://on.ft.com/405cDOy

“The idea of large multinational companies profiting off the back of the NHS is not palatable for many people, and the notion of direct data selling doesn’t go down well with the public,” Prof. Cathie Sudlow said. Her report warned “undue emphasis on [selling data] damages trust” in the system.

👀 ‘the [#Britcoin Bank of England] project, which would mark one of the most ambitious overhauls in the way 🇬🇧 consumers can use money in generations, has been thrown into doubt over concerns about user privacy, the costs of creating the technology, and the spread of conspiracy theories about central banks controlling people’s access to their finances‘
https://www.thetimes.com/article/712877a5-4868-4251-8753-3aeed10583b9?shareToken=ea7e60d469dab743986ecbdda2c2e083