Technology Pill
Find out how technology is reshaping our lives every day and explore the new powers of governments and companies.
Episodes
This week we're talking to Martha Dimitratou from ReproUncensored, and PI's own Sarah Simms about the international landscape for reproductive rights, and including barriers to access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion; and how big tech are collaborating with or supporting tactics to make access to healthcare harder.
Links
- Learn more about Repro uncensored: https://www.reprouncensored.org/ (incident form)
- R...
This week we speak to Jen Persson, Director of Defend Digital Me, about the technologies being deployed in schools in England and Wales.
Links:
- Read more from Defend Digital Me: https://defenddigitalme.org/research/
- PI's work on Securitising Education: https://privacyinternational.org/campaigns/securitising-education
- 25 Years old - The Database State report: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/database_state/
- 5 safes principl...
This week we're talking to Gus about his experience being targeted by the Russian government, how it felt at the time, and then how it felt when he found out the government may be trying to undermine the tool he uses to keep himself and his family safe.
Read more about Privacy International's challenge against the UK's secret TCN powers.
Join us this week as we discuss stories that have been in the news that we're still wondering about, obsessing about, and are as confused about as you are.Links* 2G phone networks are being shutdown; read the Rest of World story - PI's Low Cost Tech research - Listen to our podcast on connectivity and vertical mergers
* Google anti-trust case and potential break up; read the Washington Post story ...
This week we're discussing the 2024 incident in which a malformed update of CrowdStrike Falcon caused 8.5 million computers running Microsoft Windows to crash.
Links
- Read our in-depth article about what happened and what it tells us about the security and robustness of the modern internet
- Find more about the 911 outages across several US states
- CrowdStrike's own review of the problem
- Our podcast on the XZ exploi...
This week we're speaking to Eduardo from Transparencia Electoral about modern elections all over the world that they've observed, and Vladimir from R3D about the 2024 elections in Mexico. We find out more about the technologies that are at use in elections all over the world.
Links
General
- PI's technology, data and elections checklist
This week we're talking to Peter Bloom from Rhizomatica and Lũa Cruz from IDEC about internet connectivity, what drives social media companies to expand into internet provision, and what an earth is going on with Starlink in the amazon rainforest.
Links:
- Read PI's research: https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/5409/decoding-vertical-tech-integrations-why-do-they-matter
- Learn more about Rhizomatica: https://w...
This week we're talking about facial recognition in the UK. Our research shows that members of parliament (MPs) don't know as much as they should about facial recognition use in the UK. So, what is going on? And what do MPs need to be aware of?
Links:
Write to your MP: https://pvcy.org/endofprivacypod
Our previous research about how much MPs know about facial recognition: https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/5155/uk-mps-asle...
This week we take a deep dive into the issues around the rights and privacy of the global disability community in the digital age.
We're joined by Rosemary Kayess - Vice Chair of the UN Committee on the Convention of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities, and the Disability Discrimination commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Marc Workman - CEO of the World Blind Union (WBU), and Heba Hagrass - UN Special Rap...
This week we're talking to Matthew Hodgson, one of the founders of Matrix - a network for secure, decentralised communication, and CEO/CTO of Element - a communications platform built using Matrix, about the regulatory environment matrix lives in, the difficulty of and the passion for interoperable communications at matrix, and the complications of building an encrypted communications platform both technically and in this day and a...
This week we're talking about a backdoor inserted into a popular Linux file compression tool, which had the potential to massively undermine the security of vast swathes of the internet. What happened? How did it happen? And how was it thwarted?
Links
- Andres Freund's Mastodon - where he revealed the backdoor: https://mastodon.social/@AndresFreundTec
- Read more in Ars Technica's article about it: https://arstechn...
Welcome to the last of our short series on encryption. This week we're just talking amongst ourselves, luckily Gus is an expert on encryption - having been working in and around the encryption debate since the '90s.
Links
- Read more about PI's work on encryption here: privacyinternational.org/learn/encryption
- Matt Blaze and crypto.com: theverge.com/2018/7/6/17540818/crypto-com-domain-matt-blaze-monaco-mco-cry...
This week we speak to Ioannis, a senior lawyer at PI, about his and his colleague's work on the landmark case protecting encyrption at the European Court of Human Rights: Podchasov v. Russia.
The case dealt with a Russian law obliging telecommunications service providers to indiscriminately retain content and communications data for certain time periods, as well as a 2017 disclosure order by the Russian Federal Security Se...
What do you know about cryptography? Have you ever wanted to get a better understanding of some of the maths behind encryption? This week we speak to Ed, a Senior Technologist at PI, about some of the history and basics of encryption. Find out more about encryption:
- Computerphile on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@Computerphile) is a computer science professor with a range of useful and accessible videos on encryption
This week we speak to Mark Nelson, a car mechanic and father of five, who has been forced to wear a GPS tag by the Home Office for the past 20 months, and his lawyer Katie Schwarzmann of Wilsons Solicitors. The pair have been challenging the Home Office's ongoing imposition of GPS tracking on Mark in the courts and are now awaiting a judgement. We explore the legal case, the ways the tag hasn't worked for long periods of ti...
This week we talk about good things (or good-ish things) that you might have missed from 2023!
Links
Companies getting disciplined
- Ovulation Tracking App Premom Will be Barred from Sharing Health Data for Advertising Under Proposed FTC Order https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ovulation-tracking-app-premom-will-be-barred-sharing-health-data-advertising-under-proposed-ftc
This week we have a think about generative AI. After a concerning Guardian article about deep fake scams, we ask the question: did we really understand the risks when we started a podcast?
The audio clips featured in this podcast episode are the intellectual property of Smart Energy GB (Clip 1), Kim Kardashian (Clip 2), the Hollywood Reporter (Clip 3) and Lucasfilm Ltd (Clip 4). All rights are reserved to their copyright owners.
O...
This week we speak to competition expert Dr Deni Mantzari about competition, monopoly, and regulation. Are big tech companies monopolies? And if they are is that a problem?
Since we recorded this podcast there has been an update on the Microsoft Activision merger: https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23796552/microsoft-activision-blizzard-cma-approval-uk
Links
- PI competition page (our "very influential work"): http...
This month we speak to Dr Leonie Tanczer about her work looking at tech abuse: the use of “everyday” digital systems (computers, smartphones, apps) to coerce, control, and harm a person or groups of individuals. This is increasingly prevalent in the context of domestic abuse - around 85% of victims and survivors in the UK have been subjected to some form of tech abuse.
Links
- Refuge's Tech Safety resources: https://r...
In this episode we chat with Ben Wizner - Edward Snowden's lawyer, and the director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project - and Caroline Wilson Palow - PI's Legal Director about what it was like to be knee deep in the legal and policy responses to Snowden's revelations, holding British and US intelligence agencies to account for secret powers.
Additional audio from The Guardian and from Channel 4 News vi...
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