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@naomicfisher on screen time
Unrolled When parents talk to me about gaming and screens, it’s always about fear. ‘Will they get addicted?’ they ask me. ‘I can’t control my own use, how can a child do it?’. There’s so much fear that we have no time to talk about the benefits. So here are some of the things I
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All Watched Over By Filters Of Loving Grace: GCHQ’s Holistic, Sociotechnical , “Thoughts on Child Safety on Commodity Platforms” end-to-end #encryption #ghost #NCSC #ghostProtocol
nb: links will be updated in this blog to point at the paper and supporting material, as/when such become apparent Well, it finally landed, and I can’t say that I am terribly surprised: Ian Levy and Crispin Robinson have produced a 70 page document which blends describing the processes of identifying and investigating online child
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Watch this space: GCHQ / NCSC soon to publish Version 2 of “Ghost Protocol” appeal for backdoors in end-to-end secure, encrypted messenger software
The worst-kept secret in British encryption circles should be launched later this week: GCHQ are due to publish Version 2 of their much-vilified “Ghost Protocol” messenger-software backdoor. Rumours I’ve heard suggest that it’s going to be a stinker. There’s a fat white paper which takes the old “Principles for a More Informed Exceptional Access Debate”
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Don’t buy Rhino Pro Milk Pitchers from Rhinoware / Rhinowares / Rhino Coffee Gear — this bad experience does not bode well for their products
May 2020 and I decided mid-lockdown to cheer myself up with a new milk pitcher, from UK distributor CoffeeHit, for £12 (i.e. £10 + VAT) It was a nice pitcher, felt like quality material, a bit heavy, nice and shiny, and I used it sporadically over the next 2 years… until a few weeks ago
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A Civil Society Glossary and Primer for End-to-End Encryption Policy in 2022 — #privacy #surveillance #messenger #interoperability #encryption #endtoendencryption @WhatsApp @SignalApp
A few weeks ago it was with great delight that I accepted a request from Privacy International to write a report for them, to share my perspectives on the technical aspects of end-to-end encryption with a specific focus upon helping civil society organisations better understand these aspects when considering policy. We came to an agreeable
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The dangerous subtext within the concerned-dot-tech “Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy”
Back in 1991 I published an open-source password cracking tool which defined the state of the art for the next 5+ years, so much so that echoes of it can be found in all major password crackers of today. Some folk criticised me for doing this, choosing words like these to do so: I know
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Things which are legal offline, should be legal online — e.g. having a conversation without state surveillance; by @alecmuffett licensed CC-BY-SA
I — Alec Muffett — created this image and coined this (admittedly fairly obvious and likely to be unoriginal) phrase, and I am licensing this image under CC-BY-SA terms.
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Messenger Interoperability: pushing for conformity, destroying functional diversity, enabling abuse and dangerous monocultures
There’s a genre of jokes about a city-slicker visiting the countryside, asking for directions and being told “…if you want to get there, I wouldn’t start from here.” This is where we are today with messenger interoperability. Not only is there no way to fix it, but also any attempt to mandate delivery of full
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Breaking Up “Ma Zuck” — how a generational divide amongst #DigitalRights #CivilSociety regarding #Messenger #Interoperability imperils the deployment of end-to-end encryption as a platform solution … for everyone
Personal Introductions This is the kind of essay which — hopefully — will draw people who ask “who is this author, and what are his interests?” — so I thought I’ll spend a moment up front to explain. I’m Alec, and since approximately 1990 I have worked to highlight, combat or change laws which seek to
Fediverse reactions
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Two threads on Twitter regarding online surveillance: it happens because our governments demand it
Thread 1 Nokia appears to have been instrumental to the operation of Russia’s surveillance infrastructure. Everyone in that article asking why Nokia was allowed to sell these services. And of course the company’s answer is “Western countries demand the same capabilities.” This is an underappreciated component of the surveillance debate. When folks in the US/Europe