This was due to it being state policy at the time to punish unmarried young mothers with the same drug which was used to chemically castrate Alan Turing. It is scary how few people know about this. heatherburns.tech/2026/02/02/t...

Fascinating case study here for anyone interested in open justice and data protection.

I regret to inform you (and especially @cyberleagle.bsky.social) that the hackneyed fallacy of “the internet is an unregulated Wild West” is doing the rounds again, today, yes *after* the OSA. news.sky.com/story/beth-r...

NEW: CBP signs a new deal with Clearview AI to access its scraped image database for "tactical targeting," including efforts to “disrupt, degrade, and dismantle” networks of people labeled security threats.

"...she has met with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under longstanding hate speech laws, and boasted online of sanctions against critics of hate speech and disinformation..." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Today I am reading two books that I requested from the university interlibrary loan service *on Saturday* and that is one hell of a full service library. ❤️

A UK student in the US went to a protest for five minutes. ICE subpoenaed Google for his private details. Google complied. theintercept.com/2026/02/10/g...

Are you a Palestinian wanting to move to the UK for a Law Master e.g. our LLM/MSc Law, Technology and Innovation? The University of Strathclyde offers 2 scholarships www.strath.ac.uk/studywithus/...

Hi there DSIT, I don't see the part in this press release which says "are your parents influenced by toxic content? New government campaign supports families to talk to older relatives about harmful online content". Did you forget it somewhere? Or something? /s www.gov.uk/government/n...

And now you can't organize the Revolution on Discord like they did in Nepal. That's the point of this. Privacy is the bedrock of your Civil Liberties and Discord just took itself off the table as a tool for any social movement upholding those liberties.

It’s still early in the year but we have a contender for the absolute worst writing of 2026.

…as per my skeet from earlier today, here’s a reminder that the original intention of the UK’s “age appropriate” legislative push (AADC & OSA) was to circumvent US §230 and regulate content, not regulate design features.

Live and learn, kids. Live and learn. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

And here we have the exact weaponisation of the term "age appropriate" that I warned would happen when it became official policy in 2019.

Glasgow 👊

Ultimate white lady feminism: Epstein files document how leader of US anti-misogyny org "Time's Up" had steered Epstein on how to launder his reputation <after> his conviction for soliciting child prostitution. And orchestrated by someone I knew long ago, Joi Ito. 🤮 pagesix.com/2026/02/05/h...

Whilst a kid who grew up with me for a mum is … not representative of GenZ as a whole, this week said uni student swapped OneNote for Obsidian, G suite for Proton, deleted Instagram, and bought a Kobo to decant her Kindle. Next on her hit list is Spotify. They get this, far more than their elders.

Peter Mandelson has tried to gag the press. We will not let him

to me this is one of the craziest things in these texts. Epstein set up meetings with board members of Open Society Foundation, the Soros group, dangling his money but using the meetings as intelligence gathering opportunities. He would then pass on strategy tips to Bannon, to help him destroy OSF.

This morning someone has caused me to recall this delightful Parliamentary debate, on young people being so obsessed with screen time that “that they resort to theft, blackmail and vice to obtain money to satisfy their addiction”. Check the date. hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1981...

🔴 BREAKING: Labour Together paid controversial PR firm £30k to investigate journalists who were digging into how its undeclared funding Reporters from Sunday Times, Guardian and other outlets targetted *And* Morgan McSweeney knew about it Full story: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

Oh look, posh luvvies dreaming up a brand partnership around saving children. That would never happen. /s news.sky.com/story/emails...

While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot. I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

"If Mandelson's links to Jeffrey Epstein disqualifies him from holding power, why does the company controlled by Epstein's business partner and co-owner retain access to the UK's most sensitive national security infrastructure?" Peter Thiel. Jeffrey Epstein. Palantir. The UK Government.

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions! This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

If you DM me on this app I have to switch my VPN to another country to read it, to "protect children", but I spent my lunch break reading about a threesome between Andrew, Epstein, and a 14 year old which apparently multiple security services knew about for years. My patience is officially done.

We wouldn't know about the Home Office's TCN to Apple if it hadn't been leaked to Joseph. Someone please pick him up.

I trust you, but your AI agent is a snitch: Why we need a new social contract. We’re chatting on Signal, enjoying encryption, right? But your DIY productivity agent is piping the whole thing back to Anthropic. Friend, you just created a permanent subpoena-able record of my private thoughts...1/

I started the day answering a journo query about banning teenagers from social media/smartphones to protect them from harmful content, and this article demonstrates just one of the problems with that idea far more than I ever could. Two problems, actually. 🤮 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

In 2009 I had an encounter with a wealthy VIP so sleazy that I kept both the receipts and the grudge, for the inevitable day when he became national news leading to his trials and imprisonment. See Gordon Brown, keeping both the receipts and a grudge from 2008? Crabbit Scottish people FTW. 🤨🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿👍

we need every grain of sand in the gears. every single one.

I wrote some words for TechCrunch about how Homeland Security is using administrative subpoenas, which aren't subject to judicial oversight, to seek data from tech giants about Trump critics and anonymous accounts of ICE trackers. Featuring really great reporting by Bloomberg & Washington Post.

If governments were serious about respecting the innocence and dignity of children, they'd ban sharenting instead, like France has (and as GDPR does implicitly). But the inability to access that content also means they're unable to exercise those and other rights against their parents and others.

Anyway, speaking of ...parenting. I've written a blog post about what's happening in the world right now, and what on earth it has to do with Alan Turing. It's a bit heavy, so consider yourself warned. heatherburns.tech/2026/02/02/t...

I still think it was a huge mistake that we didn't immediately make that sort of content illegal

“I want a social media ban to protect my daughters” - celebrity currently on a coordinated publicity tour of putting her daughters on every tv talk show, tv channel, social media story, and celebrity magazine in the UK, without their consent

Ad targeting at its most banal: because I was in Parliament again last week, I’m now getting this sponsored ad everywhere from a well-known outfit that basically helps people to buy gongs.

don't mind me, just finding lots of bread crumbs showing Epstein and the League of Pederasts were a driving force in pushing transphobic hate. This email was sent in October 2014, at the start of the current anti trans political campaign and astroturphing.

note to self: “Scheiße” by Lady Gaga is not Monday morning productivity music

Incredibly good work from @techpolicypress.bsky.social - an inventory of the known AI and data surveillance arsenal being used by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. www.techpolicy.press/dhs-ai-surve...

This turned out to be an excellent suggestion (Happiness is working in a university library with one million books)

"Ethicswishing (in tech) is the belief that if you are committed to being ethical and understand technology, then you are well-equipped to build technology for social good." Or "Ethics can never work if you do the fucking around but someone else does the finding out." Robin Berjon, on July 15, 2024

reposting with alt text for accessibility: Sight in San Francisco (from a friend)

Yesterday, five-year-old Liam and his dad Adrian were released from Dilley detention center. I picked them up last night and escorted them back to Minnesota this morning. Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack.

One book you all absolutely must read is “Conspiracy” by Ryan Holiday, which was so gripping that I read it without standing up in lockdown. It lays out how the Thiel/Gawker suit was their dress rehearsal for everything we are living through now, ten years in advance.

Women of Britain, I am only going to say this once. A cross-body bag is meant to drape elegantly over your frame and rest naturally at your hip. A cross-body bag is not meant to be stretched taut over a puffa coat, wedged at a geometric angle under your boob. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

My kid spent the morning porting all her university course notes from Proprietary Format AI Enshittified Notetaking App to E2EE Open Format No AI Notetaking App. #ProudMum 🥹