Colin Perkins

The computers will cease screaming. All will be quiet for a while. With the unease of a quiet toddler, you just know something is about to happen and it's not good.

A policy for the use of LLMs in government is much needed 👇

Age verification: what's the harm? | Girl on the Net explains Age verification has hit the UK, people need to upload ID to see 'adult' content. What's the harm in laws like this, if they protect children? Let's see.

#AgeVerification: what's the harm?

In which I distill a lot of casual pub chats I've had with friends into a layperson's guide to the #OnlineSafetyAct. What it is, the problems it causes, and why you should definitely care.

www.girlonthenet.com/blog/age-ver...

Accordingly, I'd argue that if politicians find LLMs useful, governments should run private instances of the models, trained in a known way with known data, such that the limitations and biases of the model can be quantified. They shouldn't use ChatGPT or similar public services. 6/6

You also have no way of knowing whether the LLM you're interacting with is the same as that provided to other users of the service or whether it has been modified to provide targeted disinformation to affect your decisions – modifying a service to target a high-value individual is possible. 5/

Second, as a user of these services you have no way of knowing how they were trained, what data was used in their training, and what biases they may have as a result. You don't know whether the responses they give are aligned with your values or based on accurate data. 4/

Further, the authorities in the jurisdiction where the LLM hosting company is based, and where the data centre running the particular LLM instance used, can also request access. Encryption cannot protect here, since the request must be decrypted before it can be processed by the LLM. 3/

First, due to the way these technologies work, the company operating the LLM unavoidably has access to the questions asked and the answers the LLM provides. That information is potentially sensitive even if it's not directly related to national security. 2/

Putting aside the debate about the value that LLMs may provide, there are strong arguments that politicians, or others in senior leadership or policy setting roles, should not be using public cloud-based LLMs. 1/

"Plagiarism-as-a-Service"

This is a cracking long read.

Your occasional reminder that VPNs are just someone else's internet connection and are riddled with their own risks. If you're going to use a consumer VPN, at the very least use a paid-for one that might be a bit less likely to collect loads of data and sell it on.

“to honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”

We are pleased to offer a number of Diversity Travel Grants to support early-career academics and PhD students to attend the IRTF meetings co-located with the IETF-124 Meeting in Montreal, Canada, in November 2025. More details at irtf.org/travelgrants/

Application deadline: August 1st

Excellent set of talks at #IETF123 on measuring and understanding the impact of AI crawler traffic on websites and to what extent crawlers respect opt-out mechanisms such as robots.txt datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/123/...

Dunno, but I’m quote-boosting this article without reading it 🤷‍♂️

Given that we’re in a time when the US is laying the groundwork to declare information about basic human reproduction and contraception to be “age inappropriate” - but hey, it’s not like I warned about that several years ago in a job that couldn’t afford to extend a 12 month £28k contract.

The Applied Networking Research Workshop 2025, co-located with IETF-123 in Madrid, will take place on Tuesday, July 22nd. I will feature a keynote by Laurent Vanbever and exciting paper presentations.
Check out the program here: irtf.org/anrw/2025/pr...

The Coseners’s House

Once more at the Cosener’s House coseners.net/coseners-2025/

All credit to the shop in Glasgow city centre this morning playing Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” into the street at volume - only 175 shopping days to go!

"Three Thoughts on AI Governance" and how it relates to Internet governance csperkins.org/standards/20... #IGF #IGF2025

We are pleased to offer a number of Diversity Travel Grants to support early-career academics and PhD students to attend the IRTF meetings co-located with the IETF-124 Meeting in Montreal, Canada, in November 2025.
More details at www.irtf.org/travelgrants/

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology - Nature An analysis of research papers and citing patents indicates the extensive ties between computer-vision research and surveillance.

New paper hot off the press www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We analysed over 40,000 computer vision papers from CVPR (the longest standing CV conf) & associated patents tracing pathways from research to application. We found that 90% of papers & 86% of downstream patents power surveillance

1/

Silent conferences: all the benefits of a full day video conference – with added travel!

IGF Norway 20 Years

I’m in Oslo for the UN Internet Governance Forum, starting tomorrow. If you’re also attending, please do join me, and my colleagues from the IAB and Internet Society, on 24 June for Networking Session #138 "Tech & Policy: Building Bridges in Internet Governance" csperkins.org/standards/20...

Oslo harbour on the day of the summer solstice. Calm blue-green water, featuring a dark-hulled boat moored at a wooden dock in the foreground and several tall sailing ships with masts anchored throughout the harbor. Buildings line the waterfront under a clear blue sky.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Solstice

Why Effective Digital Governance Begins with Understanding the Internet Itself Effective digital governance begins with understanding the layered systems that make it possible. Technical coordination keeps the Internet running, Internet governance shapes how we use it, and digit...

“Why Effective Digital Governance Begins with Understanding the Internet Itself” - a useful reminder, ahead of #IGF2025 next week, on why it’s important to be clear about the difference between the Internet, and uses of the Internet, in policy discussions labs.ripe.net/author/hisha...

Sad news - RIP

We are hiring at @uniofstandrews.bsky.social! If you know anything about computer networks and fancy working somewhere with a nice bunch of colleagues and a nice bunch of beaches (see my photo evidence at bsky.app/profile/tnhh...) then please see www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...