Glyn Moody is a freelance journalist who writes and speaks about privacy, surveillance, digital rights, open source, copyright, patents and general policy issues involving digital technology. He started covering the business use of the Internet in 1994, and wrote the first mainstream feature about Linux, which appeared in Wired in August 1997. His book, "Rebel Code," is the first and only detailed history of the rise of open source, while his subsequent work, "The Digital Code of Life," explores bioinformatics - the intersection of computing with genomics.
A couple of weeks ago, this blog looked at the use of smartphones to track people so that contact tracing can be carried out to slow the spread of Covid-19.…
For obvious and justified reasons, the coronavirus pandemic dominates the news currently. One of the latest developments is that India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has put his entire country on…
It seems extraordinary that it was only a month ago that this blog wrote about the new coronavirus, also called Covid-19. At that time, it was not yet clear whether…
Facial recognition crops up on this blog more than most technologies. That's in part because the underlying AI is advancing rapidly, boosting the ability of low-cost systems to match faces…
A couple of years ago, Privacy News Online wrote about a new kind of surveillance, taking place in the workplace. The aim of these systems back then was to keep…
Two and a half years ago, this blog warned about the Internet of "listening, eavesdropping, spying things" that were starting to become more popular. Today, smart speakers are found in…
The situation concerning the Covid-19 coronavirus is serious, although it is not yet clear whether it will develop into a pandemic affecting billions of people worldwide. The story so far…
The speech by US Attorney General William P. Barr hardly seems earth-shattering. But buried within its business-like announcement of the indictment of four Chinese military hackers, there is the following…
Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has just announced two new GDPR inquiries. One of them concerns Tinder, as a result of "concerns raised by individuals both in Ireland and across…
A couple of weeks ago, a story in the New York Times put facial recognition, and the serious problems it raises, firmly into the mainstream. It concerned the start-up Clearview…
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU's top court, has played a key role in protecting privacy in the digital age, in Europe and beyond. In…
As previous posts have noted, the Internet of Things is being widely embraced in the form of so-called "smart speakers" and other devices. That's despite the fact that few of…
Last month, this blog wrote about governments around the world continuing to trial facial recognition systems, and the growing concerns this is provoking. There's one area in particular where facial…
The transfer of personal data lies at the heart of much of online activity. Since many of the leading online companies were founded and have their headquarters in the US,…
A new Pew Research Center survey confirms what readers of this blog already know: many people are deeply worried about the routine tracking of their activities online: A majority of…