I'm quoted in the Irish Times on the risks of travelling to the US once it starts demanding 5 years of social media data for visa waivers. TL;DR - if you must travel to the US and don't want to risk ending up in an airport cell, preclearance is your best option.

Christmas present to self: a trio of freshly typeset and footnoted editions from the master of the 1920s and the 2020s, from the delightful almabooks.com

We need to start talking about the radicalisation of the older generation by the internet: perhaps we should have upper age limits on social media like Facebook, or an age-related ban on owning mobile phones.

UK PSA: a lot of supermarkets are giving away unsold bags of Christmas veg for free today.

The sequel we never got, but the sequel we deserved.

Because Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are no excuses for putting up with someone else’s crap 👍

I received a Christmas email from Amsterdam with the subject line “a message to pass on” and it stopped me in my tracks; it should stop you too. This is where we are.

If the US wants to sanction an EU Commissioner for work he did to restrict the spread of extremism in the EU then that is a decision that must have consequences, incl reciprocal denial of visas - not least for the leaders of tech companies who lobby the White House to undermine the EU / EU law

My solidarity to @thierrybreton.bsky.social @imranahmed.bsky.social #ClareMelford #AnnalenaVonHodenberg und #JosephineBallon just sanctioned by the US government for their speech. What kind of freedom of speech needs visa sanctions?

Referring to your own daughters as The Girls, with a capital G, to distinguish them from “girls” with a small g which means something quite different, is peak As The Father Of Daughters behaviour (and yes I have seen that kind before).

What are the chances the White House demands that the video gets hash-matched for designation as terrorist content, for enforced takedowns wherever it appears. Yes this is how my brain works.

For many, the end of the year is an opportunity to catch up on reading or to purchase books as gifts. In 2025, a number of authors joined the Tech Policy Press podcast, providing fresh insights into how technology interacts with people, politics, and power. Check out the list:

60%. Christ. This is flat out negligence. Who is organising the class action?! ( Yes I know the difficulties in UK) @ravinaikawo.bsky.social

Meanwhile, the UK’s equivalent of the Dutch SyRi scandal (excessive data sharing and surveillance of benefit recipients, resulting in flat-out wrong and occasionally batshit errors) has been met not with government resignations but with a shrug. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

In 2026 may you have the brass bollocks of the Tory/Reform broadsheet which demanded and promoted the Online Safety Act (To Protect The Children) for years, then switched teams the moment it became law under Labour to declare it woke authoritarian censorship. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12...

The rhetoric in support of the original Online Safety Bill routinely equated in-scope services with social media, but to see it in print in an actual amendment is a new low.

Isn't it funny, though, that after a year of Trump and America in general worshipping AI as the second coming, whilst brute force-attacking it onto every government system and data record imaginable, the one thing they could not and would not magically sprinkle AI onto was a drive full of PDFs. 🤔

We are proud to see our Guide on International Law and Surveillance being used to develop this great Human Rights Surveillance Assessment Toolkit: mindfulrights.rf.gd/human-rights...

Not sure what it says about me that my line of work requires me to frequently delve into the worst horrors of what is left of humanity, online or offline, and I'm resilient enough to cope with it, but even in redacted black box form, the Epstein files photos make me want to vomit.

@benwhitelaw.bsky.social please tell me you introduced @mmasnick.bsky.social to the phenomenon that is Pat Butcher

You're going to laugh when I say I'm starting to take notes for a post on "what to expect from the JD Vance presidency" so that I can roll it out immediately when it's needed, and then you're going to think about it and you're going to stop laughing.

A memo from AG Bondi has given federal law enforcement marching orders to go after anti-government groups, alarming legal experts and former FBI agents who say it could jump-start deep surveillance aimed at political opposition. Archive, no paywall: archive.ph/FEub4

It's been my favourite weekly newsletter for a while, so I find it quite funny that the most read article on Internet Exchange this year was by, um, me. I bring the chaos. internet.exchangepoint.tech/our-5-most-r...

"Le Monde was able to pinpoint the identities, home addresses and daily routines of several dozen people working for sensitive official entities" including French intel, military, nuclear weapon bases, power plants. Digital advertising is a security threat, exhibit X. www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/ar...

"The government signposts end-to-end encryption as a threat, but what they fail to consider is that breaking it would be a threat to our national security too." Our CEO @jemimahsteinfeld.bsky.social on the urgent need to protect end-to-end encryption: www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-priv...

Latest 'annual stats' message arrives from Life360 app and JFC absolutely not OK on any level.

I did a class project with Hamza last year and I’m genuinely chuffed to see he went on to do this, which is a far better use of technology than any startup woo-woo. Come to Strath, we do things differently.

Michael de Adder, The Contrarian

Interesting background on Paul Doyle, who drove his car into the Liverpool parade www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/art...

Not only is LinkedIn pushing another year of gamified "year in review" AI-generated American rah-rah wankery, but they won't show it to you unless you download the mobile app, which is loaded with adtech and trackers. It's the bingo full house of enshittification.

This week I made a difficult professional decision by recalling a line from "Two Cathedrals" and this is a very fine hill to die on.

One of the reasons I and many others fought for so many years about the legal speech provisions of the OSA is because we saw this coming from miles away. Don’t say “but this is over there”, because the contagion is going to spread here too. jessica.substack.com/p/what-count...

Today the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation pointed out that the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 could be used to accuse e2ee messaging providers of being agents of a foreign state engaged in hostile activity against the UK. Please don't give them any ideas. 🤦‍♀️

@paulfscott.bsky.social the 2024 IPC annual report is being dumped in Parliament this afternoon as they all dash out the door for winter recess

This is indeed very special. I just had to redo my make up reading it after the tears rolling down with laughter.

I can't believe I have to say this, but please do not take revolutionary OPSEC advice from YA novels Cory Doctorow wrote almost twenty years ago.

This is ... um ... this is how grandpa goes from the Christmas dinner table to the care home by New Year's Eve.

The absurdity of UK policy gets much easier to understand when you remember that most policy suggestions are the outcome of a vendor's sales pitch. www.ft.com/content/0ef7...

In memory of Rob Reiner, please enjoy my favourite Wikipedia entry of all time, which is Former Members of Spinal Tap. Any time I need a laugh, I pull it up. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_...

This is why we cannot and must not rely on US tech giants. Amazon is among the worst but none of them is safe. They are all instruments of the Trump regime.

The thing about banning young people from social media is that they won’t be able to livestream their own murders, and that is a deliberate part of the plan.

this Guardian cartoon. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

*You call it "your" social media, we call it our immigration police.

Kids, wake up. New Network State just dropped.

The first story here is a superb lesson on strategies to use to get a policy victory, fast. No apologies for the subject material, because that’s half the point. jessica.substack.com/p/catch-kit-...

You know what truly felt like an act of resistance in these days, was ordering physical books directly from an independent publisher.