Anyone who works with flows, logs and other sources of information to protect network and information security should already be familiar with Recital 49 of the GDPR, where European legislators explained why that was (subject to a risk-based design) a good thing. Now the European Commission has published its draft of the replacement Network and […]
Category: Articles
Thoughts on regulatory and ethical issues relating to the use of technology in education and research
Categories
Data Breach Shanty
To celebrate my 500th blog post, here’s another sea shanty: What shall we do with the stolen data? What shall we do with the stolen data? What shall we do with the stolen data? Early in the morning. Way-hey the fines are rising Way-hey the fines are rising Way-hey the fines are rising Early in […]
Categories
Beyond the Future of Assessment?
A fascinating discussion session with colleagues who worked on Jisc’s “Future of Assessment” report. When that was written, in the first months of 2020, its intention was to look at how things might change over the next five years. Little did we know… When the pandemic hit, suddenly many of things we had expected to […]
Categories
ePrivacy Regulation: one step closer
After four years, and nearly three years after it was meant to be in force, the EU Council of Ministers has finally agreed on a text of the proposed ePrivacy Regulation. This isn’t the end of the process: before it becomes law the Council and European Parliament have to agree on a single text. That […]
Categories
Adequacy Shanty
Inspired by Gavin Freeguard’s National Data Strategy Sea-Shanty, and in homage to the shanty-makers (I’ve worked the North Atlantic on small ships), here’s my “Adequacy Shanty”… Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish data, Farewell and adieu to you data of Spain, For our UK law may be judg-ed inadequate, And we may never see […]
It seems easy to come up with new ways we might re-use data we already have. But harder to work out, in advance, whether an idea is likely to be perceived as unethical, intrusive, or just creepy. In a recent paper – “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (of Data)” – I explored […]
Categories
Using Social Media: is it ethical?
In a chat at the DataMatters conference I was asked about the ethics of universities and colleges using social media providers to contact students. In breaking down that question, I think it illustrates a continuum: the more we interfere with individuals’ own choices of what and how to use, the more thinking we need to […]
Categories
WHOIS access and the NIS2 Directive
The European Commission’s proposed update of the Network and Information Security Directive may revive discussions about access to WHOIS data. When a domain name is registered, contact details are typically requested for various purposes, including billing, administrative and technical questions. For most of the history of the DNS this ‘WHOIS’ data – including names, postal […]
Categories
How to become an expert phish-spotter
We’ve all been trained how to spot phishing emails: check the sender address, hover over links to see where they go, etc. But that’s a lot of work and mental effort. And, given that most emails aren’t phish, almost all wasted. So can we do it better? A fascinating paper by Rick Wash looked at […]
The latest report on ICO sandbox participation contains a rapid pivot, and some useful discussion of the “public interest” justification for processing. Back in mid-2019, NHS Digital was awarded a sandbox place for a system for recruiting volunteers into clinical trials (the actual conduct of trials is out of scope). A few months into 2020 […]