In the latest episode of the @plutopia.io #podcast we interview @susansegfault.bsky.social Ben Collier about his new(ish) biograophy of the Tor Project: plutopia.io/ben-collier-...

A very good book on the history of an important privacy tool.

Had a lovely time on the Plutopia podcast talking about my book - Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy. Listen here: plutopia.io/ben-collier-...

Honestly feel like Labour on immigration is a political and moral crisis with potentially scary consequences

While they’re at it, they could pay more attention to the human rights problems with their Additional Measures proactive technology proposals. @douwekorff.bsky.social’s consultation submission here, referencing my blogpost as ‘typical British understatement’ 😀. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I actually don't really care if AI is useful/interesting/good for some things in education actually - it is besides these things clearly a big problem already that maybe need listing yet again:

Jamie Buchan, Sarah Anderson, and Katrina Morrison have published a 'Criminal Justice in Scotland' textbook 📚🍷📖👏 I had the joy of chairing their well attended book launch today. It has gone straight onto #Criminology Uni reading lists. 🔗 www.routledge.com/Criminal-Jus... @kmmorrison.bsky.social

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU. Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Hey look www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Has this all be throught through. In short, this has all the makings of another fiasco like the Post Office scandal. People will be wrongly denied access to basic services, employment, and other aspects of day to day life when this all breaks down.

On the BritCard - in theory better government systems are a great idea, but implementing it requires very high levels of management competence to cope with the ambition and complexity; the costs will correspondingly be very high.

Systems like this need real institutional legitimacy to work.

netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/26/t... great overview of the history and evidence on ID cards by Wendy

The other countries where this kind of digital ID has been implemented are far smaller, and don’t have our appalling track record of expensive government IT disasters.

There are absolutely real cybersecurity risks as well - not least, from the people with legitimate access to the system. For example, every year more than half of the prosecutions under the Computer Misuse Act are of serving police officers caught misusing their access to police databases.

Linking together all these different government systems and databases and tying them to a single point of truth about you - the obsession of the Tony Blair Institute - is going to be incredibly complicated, and is a disaster waiting to happen.

This isn’t just about ID - most people have some form of ID, and digital ID systems can be designed well and preserve our privacy and basic rights. It’s about the particular design of this system and what they want to achieve with it.

Nominal popular support for SOME kind of digital ID v different to support for this specific system brought in by this specific government. Would be interesting to see if the polling being thrown around for ID card popularity is the same in a month once the policy irrevocably associated w/ Starmer.

When combined with the ‘sex-based’ papers please approach being trailed by Streeting for public institutions, this has the potential to be a massive further clampdown on access to public life for trans people in the UK

Also important to ask - how will trans people, ever the punching bag of this govt and the assembled UK press, be represented in this single point of truth about the data self?

On why the #UK #LabourParty is increasingly looking like an arm of US platform capitalism...

Also important to ask - how will trans people, ever the punching bag of this govt and the assembled UK press, be represented in this single point of truth about the data self?

It’s Labour’s conference week, so the Government is announcing digital ID cards and re-announcing its politically-controlled centralised database of all of your medical notes. medconfidential.org/2025/single-...

Also hard to see a ‘Brit card’ going down particularly well in the devolved nations.

The attempt to link this to a nationalist and frankly racist border politics in particular is liable to simultaneously double down on the anti immigrant rhetoric of Reform and conspiracist far right narratives playing off the real issues of UK surveillance overreach.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... This is an extremely dangerous idea to propose right now. We can argue on civil liberties and privacy aspects, but the one thing systems like this need is institutional legitimacy, something that the UK’s media and political elite have been torching in recent yrs.

The Tor Project has joined the Rust Foundation as an Associate Member! Read the announcement to learn more about our investment in the Rust Project: rustfoundation.org/media/rust-f...

Labour’s plan for compulsory digital ID risks creating a more authoritarian state. Under constant surveillance, we would have to pass through digital checkpoints just to live our daily lives — with even more barriers for minorities, migrants and the digitally excluded.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... This is an extremely dangerous idea to propose right now. We can argue on civil liberties and privacy aspects, but the one thing systems like this need is institutional legitimacy, something that the UK’s media and political elite have been torching in recent yrs.

netwars.pelicancrossing.net/2025/09/16/r... lovely review of Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy from Wendy Grossman

If you're interested in critical research on criminal justice then I cannot recommend this free event on Oct 7 - launch of a new critical textbook on criminal justice system in Scotland by three amazing academics - highly enough. Sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-launch...

Although of course disappointing to see that MI6 haven’t done their homework - it’s Tor, not TOR @torproject.org

To take a break from doom, gloom and lengthy blogs that require deep research I wrote about ten #hacker #movies you've probably missed. Share it out if you can, it would be a great way for people to sidle into the #history of #hacking in an accessible way. realhackhistory.org/2025/09/19/t...

www.bbc.com/news/article... if this seems a bit odd, it’s useful to know that for a long time the most popular site on the so-called Dark Web was Facebook! Lots more about this in my book - Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy available here mitpress.mit.edu/978026254818...

When a mix starts with hear an ethereal far away voice saying: “no process is universal… viscous, unravelling structures… your mind searches to find patterns to sustain… we need one another” you know you’re about to hear the hardest shit imaginable.

Given that "unfunded" here presumably means "not third-party funded" (research, after all, is usually part of an academic's job description and a part of what they receive their salary for), this sounds like the government wants to shunt a bunch of Higher Ed. employees onto teaching-only contracts.

"Hobbyist" is a truly breathtaking choice of phrase. It encapsulates a profound sense of contempt for the labour of academics in the UK, who already have to navigate an underfunded system dominated by precarity and overwork. "Knows the price of everything but the value of nothing" springs to mind

After 25 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cindy Cohn is stepping down as executive director. In a WIRED interview, she reflects on encryption, AI, and why she’s not ready to quit the battle. www.wired.com/story/eff-ci...

Lecturers and other staff at the University of Edinburgh are set to begin a five-day walkout in a dispute over plans to cut £140 million from the university’s budget

If you want to do more than just oppose big commercial publishers that, claims of Open Access that hide massive APCs, then support independent, genuinely #OpenAccess academic journals like Surveillance & Society. #AcademicSky For a list –send additions to me!– see: ubisurv.net/2024/09/04/r...

Since surely we are taking an evidence-based approach to assessing AI’s value, and in light of last week’s MIT study showing similar results for businesses, we will now be halting the ‘put AI into everything everywhere always’ campaign? *listens in earpiece* oh no

There are four main arguments for AI in education: 1. Efficiency, saving teachers time 2. Equity, making education inclusive 3. Improving outcomes by personalizing learning 4. It's inevitable Is it true? Nope. Micro 🧵

New- with details and analysis www.computerweekly.com/news/3666300... #encryption #Apple @jessicashurson.bsky.social @susansegfault.bsky.social Thanks to @bernardkeenan.bsky.social

To explain this photo a bit more: back then, most programming was done on paper (sometimes on special coding sheets), then punched onto cards/tape, then fed into a mainframe to be tested (& if necessary debugged). Counterintuitively, needing LESS computer time was the mark of a better programmer!

Steve Shirley escaped the Holocaust as a child & went on to found one of the earliest software startups. The really impressive part? She employed women programmers who had been pushed out of the workforce after having kids, & allowed them flexible, family friendly, work from home jobs—in the 1960s!

I spoke with @histoftech.bsky.social about AI hype, how tools are used to amass power and reshape systems, expertise, and more! www.fastcompany.com/91384078/not...

UK government simultaneously replaced expert advice on technology with tech company “consultants” and displaced their civil servants’ experience and expertise into AI models… It’s a disaster & an absolute gift to the tech vendors…

This is just nonsense from a man who has repeatedly shown he doesn't know the first thing about his brief and doesn't care to learn Me verifying my age does not stop any child accessing any content. Me using a VPN does not allow any child to access content. There is no causal relationship here