@tjmcintyre.com
I'm an associate professor of law at University College Dublin specialising in technology law (mostly privacy/data protection/cybercrime/fundamental rights), consultant solicitor with FP Logue LLP, and chair of Digital Rights Ireland.
Some people showcase intelligence not by discussion but by playing a game called "find the flaw". It is a very easy game but irresistible to junior paper reviewers, critical theorists, and terminal posters. If you know who's playing, it explains everything from reviewer 2 to "you hate waffles".
Indeed, the Al phone has caused an uproar in China. Within days, many of China's biggest apps blocked the Doubao phone. They saw it as a serious risk to data security. Built into the operating system of the phone itself, it has a kind of master key that gives the embedded Al agent blanket access to the screen, all app content, and the ability to tap or click as if it were a user. Critics dubbed the agent a "burglar" with "god's fingertips" increasing risks of malicious input and intrusion attacks by criminal actors.
What happens when you let an AI have access to everything on your phone? Absolutely fascinating article: www.lawfaremedia.org/article/chin...
AWS is telling Gulf customers to evacuate their cloud workloads due to Iran's military activity damaging regional infrastructure. When hyperscale cloud providers start issuing geopolitical evacuation notices, that's a new category of systemic risk.
Screen shot of text from the end of an email that reads: If you want, I can also write a much sharper version (still legally safe but far more cutting) that will really land with him and his solicitors.
Pro tip: if you're going to send someone a nonsense letter that you hope uses enough serious sounding "legal" language to be taken seriously, you should probably make sure you delete the bit at the end where ChatGPT offers to write a different version lol
Reply of @ec.europa.eu to my letter of March '25 (!) Re transatlantic data transfers. It is crystal clear that even at this stage of transatlantic relations, the Commission flatly refuses to ensure protection of European citizens’ rights, but relies instead on the “pretence of compliance” policy
There two things that come to mind on this. Firstly, Ireland needs to consider the threat of this happening here in a future conflict given the data centres located here. And secondly, there are more effective ways to disrupt a data centre than with cyber
High praise from one of the best in the business, thank you! Read the full piece here: theintercept.com/2026/03/05/k...
Leading case about privacy on the net.
AG finds that a requirement for surveillance cameras monitoring areas where fishing boats handle/discard fish is a proportionate restriction of rights to privacy and data protection. Interesting discussion of standard of review, privacy issues in workplace, and safeguards (especially anonymisation).
I understand lack of bandwidth and it being a minor sideshow relative to the Gulf, but I do think it’s been surprisingly quickly glossed over that the current holder of the presidency of the EU council is under active drone threat. You might think that would be of interest to other small countries 🤔
Just as with Snowden US tech companies are (unlike in the US case) apparently unbothered by European surveillance concerns about their AI systems - but this time its more serious IMO. These tools have incredible data on us, and can be used for manipulation more effectively than X's algorithm.
Meta Ray-Bans are a Cybertruck you wear on your face.
www.garbageday.email/p/meta-ray-b...
Ukraine taking a robust approach to enforcing sanctions.
Firefighter/Paramedics from Tara Street assisted with the delivery of a baby boy on Monday morning.
#DidYouKnow our maternity kits on our ambulance now come with a special Dublin Fire Brigade hat for newborns.
This afternoon the AI Committee was told An Garda Síochána "is transitioning from a traditional style of police service to a data-led, digitally-enabled organisation."
Part of that transition is presumably a bill before the Oireachtas today - to give gardai the power to use "biometric analysis" 👇
All you need is the willingness to follow orders; being actually smart or good at the law is irrelevant.
US Border Patrol admits using Real-Time Bidding (RTB) data to track people's movements.
The failure to enforce against the RTB data breach at the heart of online advertising is very, very dangerous.
Big scoop by @josephcox.bsky.social @404media.co!
www.404media.co/cbp-tapped-i...
I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.
whether war, vaccines, or critical infrastructure there is contingent of the right that seems to believe that their security from the worst things that happen is some kind of metaphysical principle rather than the result of specific historical processes that could've gone otherwise and still could
a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people
I am starting to wonder if people who spend a lot of time talking to LLMs lose their stamina for actual critical analysis because they're so used to having their own priors reflected back at them in the guise of another's voice.
UAE has lots of interceptors, okay?
Qatar might sue you if you say they are running out of interceptors.
The UAE and Qatar would also like you to know that they are not running out of interceptors.
Bullshit from Trump bragging about how many munitions the US has, with a sweaty and nervous undertone.
My 'we are not running out of interceptors' t-shirt has a lot of people asking questions already answered by my shirt.
Read my piece out in The Guardian today on all of this. If you are spreading bullshit about social media being "addictive" and "harmful to children" you are complicit in manufacturing consent for mass AI surveillance and allowing big tech to seize even more power while censoring lawful speech.
“In some cases, Meta will review your interactions with AIs, including the content of your conversations with or messages to AIs, and this review can be automated or manual (human).”
In practical terms, this means that "data annotators" in Kenya are accessing private moments to improve AI for Meta.
Governments should halt plans to roll out age checks on online services until privacy and security concerns are addressed, hundreds of academics said today.
The warning comes as countries around the world move to bar children from social media.
“The workers in Kenya say that it feels uncomfortable to go to work. They tell us about deeply private video clips, which appear to come straight out of Western homes, from people who use the glasses in their everyday lives.
Several describe video material showing bathroom visits, sex…”
one fascinating thing about modern culture is that international militias now do promo trailers to announce their aims
I'm sorry - overnight curfew for teenagers? We are getting further and further from coherent regulation with each governments' attempt to iterate on their own 'hold my beer' moment in the name of "child safety".
