Big Brother – Postcards

The real problem with mass social media is: Gossip

November 13, 2020November 13, 2020 No Comments

So suggests Arnold Kling, and it explains the problem better than all the talk about ‘fake news’ and deleting bad content, and all that: The Internet, smart phones, and social media (ISS) have set human communication back about 20,000 years. That is, we now rely more on gossip than we have since we lived in […]

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Big Brother Covid-19 Pandemic Government

What’s really wrong about Dom’s lockdown trip

May 27, 2020 No Comments

Fintan O’Toole nails it: So why does his odyssey during lockdown produce a whole different kind of emotion? Because it reaches into the innermost experiences of millions of people. It cuts right through to the pain of a loved one dying alone, of grandchildren growing distant, of precious human bonds being forcibly severed. It grabs […]

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Big Brother Big Business Privacy

Surveillance Capitalism

February 11, 2020 No Comments

Councils are sharing your data in the UK with whoever wants it, basically (” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/04/councils-let-firms-track-visits-to-webpages-on-benefits-and-disability “). Wolfie Christl, a technologist and researcher who has been investigating the ad-tech industry, said: “Public sector websites and apps should not use invasive third-party tracking at all.” Johnny Ryan, the chief policy officer at the anonymous web browser Brave, […]

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Big Brother Big Business Food for Thought Society

“We are in an abusive relationship with our phones”

September 24, 2019 No Comments

This is an illuminating way of looking at what the relationship really is like between us and our smartphones, and more generally with the you-are-the-product companies that provide so many of the services we use on smartphones or other devices nowadays. What our smartphones and relationship abusers share is that they both exert power over […]

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Big Brother Department of Cruel and Unusual Rules Education Government

POD no longer compulsory

April 9, 2016 No Comments

Good news: As longstanding, longsuffering readers will be aware, for the past year and a bit, I have been arguing that the Primary Online Database (POD) was illegal. Though that argument has not come to a conclusion (and I expect it to be successful) the Department of Education has been forced into a series of […]

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Big Brother Freedoms Law Secret State

Big Data requires Big Laws

April 1, 2016 No Comments

There’s no such thing as being ‘offline’ anymore. It’s almost impossible, I’d say, to live any sort of normal life without having your data on some machine somewhere. And if you engage in any way with other people, then you use at least email, and probably some sort of social network. There’s no escape now […]

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Big Brother Big Business Government Internets

Post-Cyberspace

February 12, 2016 No Comments

Danah Boyd has an interesting piece on the Reality Distortion Field that is modern tech. Viewed through the original call of Cyberspace from 20 years ago, during the halcyon early days of the ‘net, it’s a glimpse into the future that awaits, and its not pretty. At first I thought I had just encountered the […]

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Big Brother Freedoms Privacy Secret State UK

Police speak to boy, 10, due to spelling error

January 31, 2016January 31, 2016 No Comments

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/20/i-live-in-a-terrorist-house-police-speak-to-muslim-boy-10-over-spelling-error As a result, the child was interviewed on 7 December by police and the authorities examined a laptop found at his family home. His family has since demanded the school and police apologise, according to the BBC. A cousin of the boy, who has not been named to protect his identity, said his relatives initially […]

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Big Brother

GCHQ does whatever the fuck it wants

February 20, 2015 No Comments

According to the latest Snowden documents, it seems that GCHQ have stolen the master encryption keys for a large chunk of the world’s SIM cards. This essentially means that they can decrypt more or less any phone call content, text message etc. Your phone is not private. AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal […]

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Big Brother

Nothing to hide? You still have everything to fear.

January 27, 2015February 13, 2015 No Comments

“It was early morning when the German police stormed the house of Andrej Holm and his family. Armed police searched the home for 15 hours and Holm spent three weeks in pre-trial detention. Andrej Holm is an urban sociologist. His crime? Well, he committed no crime, or no more than the rest of us. He […]

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Who?

Murf

The real problem with mass social media is: Gossip

What’s really wrong about Dom’s lockdown trip

Surveillance Capitalism

“We are in an abusive relationship with our phones”

POD no longer compulsory

Big Data requires Big Laws

Post-Cyberspace

Police speak to boy, 10, due to spelling error

GCHQ does whatever the fuck it wants

Nothing to hide? You still have everything to fear.

Category: Big Brother