Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. Additionally, he has a tech entrepreneur background and loves good whisky and fast motorcycles.
There is an ongoing discussion whether we should fear governmental intrusion into our privacy more, or corporate carelessness with our private data more. This is a false framing of the…
People who defend today's mass surveillance tend to claim that the collected data on everybody's private communications and movements won't be abused. History tells us that they are horribly and…
When we talk of privacy online, it is easy to narrow the discussion to something that can be described as "anti-wiretapping". But privacy is a much more diverse and important…
People sometimes ask if I prefer transparency over privacy, as a society can't have both. The premise is wrong. It's a sliding scale, and perfect privacy for the individual citizen…
Angela Merkel is outraged that the United States has wiretapped her phone. However, she expresses no concern for her fellow 82 million Germans, nor for her fellow 500 million Europeans…
Throughout the western world, politicians appear keen on eliminating cash as a concept. There are many reasons on the surface - preventing armored car robberies, combating organized crime, making money…
Tracking is moving offline as computers get smarter, and face recognition technology is gaining steam rapidly with distributed systems. There are already prototype glasses that identify people in your field…
I'm currently attending a very dynamic entrepreneur conference in Barcelona, and one thing that stands out among entrepreneurs and investors is that everybody is feeling the onslaught on people's right…
Privacy and anonymity are two different concepts. They are both increasingly necessary as we get increasingly wiretapped and tracked, legally so or not, and it's important to understand why they…
This week, the Swedish Police was caught red-handed keeping illegal databases of Romani people and their kinship - no criminal history, no suspicion of crime, just Romani descent. This event…