The European Court of Justice’s bombshell

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This morning’s Observer column:

On Tuesday, the European court of justice, Europe’s supreme court, lobbed a grenade into the cosy, quasi-monopolistic world of the giant American internet companies.

It did so by declaring invalid a decision made by the European commission in 2000 that US companies complying with its “safe harbour privacy principles” would be allowed to transfer personal data from the EU to the US.

This judgment may not strike you as a big deal. You may also think that it has nothing to do with you.

Wrong on both counts, but to see why, some background might be useful….

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LATER This is a truly extraordinary moment. Lots of interesting and informative stuff about it on the Web, including this piece by Julia Powles and this NYT piece by Robert Levine.

And this from Edward Snowden:

Snowden_tweet

So what happens next? My colleague Nóra ní Loideain has passed me this reassuring note:

Christopher Graham, UK Information Commissioner, said on 8 October at a meeting at Dentons [a law firm]: “Don’t panic. Safe Harbor is not the only route for international transfers. We are coordinating our thinking with other DPAs across the European Union.” The 28 DPAs which form the EU Art. 29 Data Protection Working Party met in their International Transfers sub-group on 8 October, and this group’s plenary will discuss the issue on Thursday this week, on 15 October.

Which means … what, exactly??

Why some software can’t be a black box

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This morning’s Observer column:

For anyone interested in what is laughingly known as “corporate responsibility”, the Volkswagen emissions-fraud scandal is a gift that keeps on giving. Apart from the company’s Nazi past, its high status in German life, its hitherto exalted reputation for technical excellence and quality control, and its peculiarly dysfunctional governance, there is also the shock to consumers of discovering that while its vehicles are made from steel and composite materials, they are actually controlled by software. We are already close to the point where that software may be more valuable than all the physical materials that make up the vehicle, and, if Apple and Google have their way, that imbalance is set to grow.

Volkswagen’s chicanery was discovered by good, old-fashioned analogue detective work…

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Ad-blocking and the future of the Web

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This morning’s Observer column:

There is, alas, no such thing as a free lunch. What’s even more depressing is that there is no such thing as a free internet service. Most people nowadays probably understand that in relation to, say, social networking services, if the service is “free” then the users (or, more precisely, their personal data) are the product. But this also applies to stuff that you haven’t signed up for – websites that you browse, for example. The site may be free to view, but there’s often a hidden cost.

One part of that cost comes from surreptitious tracking of your browsing habits by outfits that sell that information to advertisers. (If this is news to you just install the Ghostery browser extension to see who’s monitoring your browsing.) The other cost comes from ads that are placed on a webpage either directly by the site owner or as the outcome of a real-time auction that goes on in the depths of the internet.

And as the web has evolved, and more of our lives conducted online, internet advertising has steadily increased. It’s now at the stage where it’s really annoying…

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Algorithmic-driven markets and the future

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This morning’s Observer column:

‘When a true genius appears,” wrote Jonathan Swift, “you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” We need to update this for our age: whenever a really new technology arrives, you can tell it by the fact that most right-thinking people think it’s a scam.

Thus, to the average person the idea of a “cryptocurrency” like Bitcoin seems daft. I mean to say: a “currency” that was invented by a geek; is not backed by any bank or government; has no central authority; and operates on the basis of a public ledger that is secured by arcane cryptography. It has to be a scam, doesn’t it? Well, actually it doesn’t – but it would take more space than is available here to explain why. The point is that most people can’t see the point of cryptocurrencies, which, paradoxically, is why they are interesting.

On the other hand, most people – non-geeks as well as geeks – can see the point of Uber, the cab-hailing service that is causing such turmoil on the other side of the Channel (and occasionally over here too). You download an app to your smartphone. When you need a cab you launch the app and it shows you on a map where the nearest available cars are, and you hail the nearest one. Within three to five minutes it shows up. And when you arrive at your destination, you don’t pay the driver: the fare is charged to your credit card. QED.

Compared with currencies, therefore, Uber seems pretty comprehensible…

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