by Jonathan Baker-Bates on June 23, 2013
Last week, my attention was drawn to the fact that people in Bulgaria were protesting on the streets against the appointment of Delyan Peevski as the chief of Bulgaria’s National Security Agency. Peevsky controls the larger part of Bulgaria’s media, has no prior experience with national security, and has also been linked to organised crime.
by Jonathan Baker-Bates on July 29, 2012
How about that for a boring title? But it’s something that bothers me quite regularly. Why is it that “asymmetric encryption” appears to be fundamentally beyond the understanding of anyone who doesn’t work directly with computers? It’s now become such an issue for me that I’ve written to my MP about it. But before you […]
by Jonathan Baker-Bates on November 22, 2009
It’s now clear that the government wants to control people’s use of the Internet, ostensibly on behalf of the media industry, but more likely in the longer term because (to paraphrase William Burroughs) control always needs more control. For a while now I’ve been thinking whether it might be time to tunnel my Internet traffic […]
by Jonathan Baker-Bates on October 28, 2009
I’m glad I’m not a full-time political activist, and just an armchair one instead, because I’d be beyond cynical by now if I were. As it is, today’s announcement that the UK will adopt the “three strikes” policy to copyright infringement leaves me merely livid. Livid that such a bone-headed, technically illiterate policy is being […]
by Jonathan Baker-Bates on March 21, 2009
Hello? Can you hear me? This might sound boring – a technicality. It involves industrial regulation, copyright and law. But it’s important, and we should all be at least concerned, if not angry, about what is now happening in the European parliament. What is more, time is running out and we need to act now. […]