September Roundup

Autumn roared in. The Public Services Card rolled on despite one minister admitting in a roundabout way that there is no legal basis for what’s currently happening and another cooing softly that the thing which should have been done before the project started many years ago will certainly be done “very soon”. Massive amounts of…

August Roundup

August was a busy month as the already cracked veneer on the surface of the Irish state’s shambolic data acquisition and sharing projects shattered further. We were treated to a senior government minister denying she was splitting hairs while attempting a precision distinction between ‘mandatory’ and ‘compulsory’. Elsewhere it was (bad) business as usual for…

July Roundup

Please ensure you’re sitting comfortably folks as this was quite a month, both at home and abroad. 1. The Central Statistics Office Really Wants To Track You In one of the stranger privacy stories we’ve yet seen in this country, the Irish Times reported that the Central Statistics Office desperately wanted to build a comprehensive…

Just Some Light Tracking? That Could Cost You [KitBit 17.9]

The folks making sweeping wrongheaded decisions about large amounts of personal data gathering, storage and manipulation often appear to forget what’s behind the additional rows they want in their database to make their lives easier. People are behind the rows. Data is not the new oil, or any other natural resource analogy you can find in…

You Want To Do What Now? [KitBits 17.8]

As reported in the Irish Times by Elaine Edwards on Monday, the Irish Central Statistics Office has spent the best part of the last decade attempting to get its hands on mobile telephone data from visitors to the state and Irish travellers abroad, despite being told, essentially, to please stop by the office of the…

June Roundup

Unfortunately there was quite an amount of data daftness on display last month. 1. EU Proposes to Mandate end-to-end encryption; UK still trying to break it In May the US Senate approved the use of encrypted messaging app Signal for staff. A European Parliament committee followed suit in June in a draft proposal “that will enforce end-to-end…

April Roundup

This month brings some revealing peeks behind a few data curtains and an exploration of the soft soothing language of sharing with partners and keeping it all in the family (of companies). 1. Facial Recognition, As It’s Happening We’re essentially building an IT backbone, which can allow TSA or potentially air carriers or any other…

Find My Phone [Video]

Some slightly unsettling Sunday morning viewing. The tracking device in your pocket knows an astonishing amount.

Tube Tracking Lessons Learned [KitBits 17.3]

Gizmodo obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act relating to the tracking of commuters’ phones and other devices on the London Underground last November and December and did a thorough write up, complete with pretty heat maps and pictures. The whole piece is worth reading carefully, but here are a few points for anyone…

Are You Really Going To Install That? [KitBits 17.2]

If you’re at all active on social media there’s a very strong chance you saw a few fancy anime up selfies floating around in your feeds recently. These are made using an app called Meitu, which has mushroomed in popularity in the west over the last week or two. There’s a lot more to Meitu…