This week:
3 – The UK government may ban ransomware payments
2 – What did GDPR ever do for us?
1 – Tech billionaires want to ‘overthrow democracy’
3 – The UK government may ban ransomware payments
“The UK government is considering a targeted ban on ransomware payments for all public sector bodies and critical national infrastructure.”
Summary: The UK government has proposed a ban on ransomware payments by public sector organisations, including the NHS, schools, and local councils. This move aims to make these entities less attractive to cybercriminals. The proposal also includes mandatory reporting of ransomware incidents to ensure victims are advised on alternative methods to recover from an attack and to disrupt such attacks.
So what? At face value, banning ransomware payments seems like a sensible idea. But if a hospital gets attacked and it has no way to recover its systems without paying the ransom, should they be legally prevented from doing so?
Source: Graham Cluley
2 – What did GDPR ever do for us?
“A US lawsuit filed on behalf of LinkedIn Premium users accuses the social media platform of sharing their private messages with other companies to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.”
Summary: LinkedIn is facing a lawsuit in the US, where it faces accusations of using its users’ personal data for AI training purposes and only revealing the fact a month later. Apparently, users could then opt out, but this didn’t address any data already used in this AI training. LinkedIn denies the claims. Apparently, the personal data of LinkedIn users in the European Economic Area (EEA), UK, and Switzerland was not included in this training activity. Coincidentally, the EEA, UK, and Switzerland have meaningful data protection laws.
So what? Apart from protecting us from the data slurping desires of tech giants, what did GDPR ever do for us?
Source: BBC
1 – Tech billionaires want to ‘overthrow democracy’
“The technology that was intended to free us has become the tool of our own oppression.”
Summary: Pedro Sánchez, the Prime Minister of Spain, has come out fighting at Davos this year, accusing social media’s tech billionaires of having a complete disregard for the democracies that enabled them to generate their wealth in the first place. Recent announcements by some of these billionaires to reduce their current abysmal attempts at fact-checking only reinforces the PM’s point.
So what? Every line in this short article is worth reading, even if you don’t listen to the full speech (available here). So, rather than summarise his talking points, I’ll just provide one more quote: “The owner of a small restaurant is held accountable if their food poisons customers [..] Social media tycoons should be held accountable if their algorithms poison our societies.”