David Banisar

Powered by unicorn tears so only needs yearly charge.

sorry cant find the original (really bad looking!) 1999 version online but wayback machine has 2002. web.archive.org/web/20030501...

Data Protection Update and Map - 2026 2025 was again a busy year for data protection globally, with both positive and negative developments. Several countries adopted new laws, improved existing laws, or introduced new bills and initiativ...

3. Full details (and better looking graph!) at

www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-p...

Bar chart showing growth of data protection laws from 1970s until 2025 in five year segments, from under ten to 170+. Line showing new laws adopted in those period increasing each period.

2. A bonus graph for this year, the growth of #dataprotection from the 1970's until today in 5 year chunks. Drop on end is because only one year 2025-29.

Data Protection Map update for International Data Protection Day. As of the end of 2025, 172 countries and self governing jurisdictions around the world have adopted comprehensive data protection legislation. Five countries adopted comprehensive data protection for the first time in 2025.

Freedom of Information is all grown up - it turns 21 this year!

Join us for a one day conference to celebrate, scrutinise, and share everything around #FOI in the UK: pretix.eu/mysociety/fo...

Guardian Animal Editor

The British state is addicted to secrecy - we need to fight back Our politicians and officials are using public money to keep citizens in the dark, says Heather Brooke

🔴"FOI is the democratic canary in the coal mine. When official information flows freely, it signals that power is shared. When it’s withheld or delayed, it signals the opposite: power concentrated in the few."

Vital by Heather Brooke on Democracy 4 Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/why-the-br...

NCND for personal data – a qualified exemption? [reposted from my LinkedIn Account] I’ve been known to criticise First-tier Tribunal (FTT) judgments in the freedom of information jurisdiction. By contrast, this one is superb. In it, the FTT dism…

On my personal blog: FTT rather dismantles @ICOnews on both the facts and the law in this remarkable FOI judgment. Will the ICO have to rewrite their section 40 NCND guidance? informationrightsandwrongs.com/2025/11/29/n...

Scam ads on Meta in UK likely worth more than all online news advertising Meta likely made more than £600m from fraudulent UK advertising in 2024.

Scam ads on Meta in UK likely worth more than all online news advertising. Meta probably made more than £600m from fraudulent UK advertising in 2024 pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/sc...

Teens are scarier than big tech cos. Speaking for a friend……

Jury trials could be scrapped except in most serious cases Only cases of alleged murder, rape or manslaughter will be decided by a jury under new proposals to cut court backlogs.

Imagine coming up with a proposal so stupid, so unworkable, so thoughtless, that it makes Robert Jenrick look sane by comparison.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Transparency is critical for achieving sustainable marine fisheries, but it is not also as clear as it seems.

This #WorldFisheriesDay, take a deep dive into our #tBrief series to learn more about the many facets of fisheries transparency 👇
fiti.global/tbrief-series

Online grooming crimes have doubled since 2018, with victims as young as four, charity warns More than 7,200 offences were recorded by police in the year to March - almost twice the number for the 12 months to March 2018, with instant messaging app Snapchat used in 40% of the cases where a te...

📢FOI in the news!

Online grooming crimes double since 2018 with victims now as young as four, according to NSPCC obtained FOI data.

Instant messenger Snapchat used in 40% of the cases where a tech platform was identified.

news.sky.com/story/online...

Generative AI is Neither Too Unprecedented Nor Too New to Regulate | TechPolicy.Press It is time to recognize the myth of the “unprecedented” and hold tech accountable, writes Sarah Barrington.

While some elements of AI are genuinely new, the harms it enables are evolutions of those we have seen before, writes Sarah Barrington. It is time to recognize the myth of the “unprecedented” and hold tech accountable, she says.

It’s good that the UK Cabinet Office has the equivalent scheduled for release under the 112 1/2 year rule, commencing from death of its author.

✂️ The #EU Commission has set in motion a potentially massive #GDPR reform. Officially, the changes should only include targeted adjustments for several laws. In reality, the current draft would randomly mow down people's #privacy rights.

👉 Read more: noyb.eu/en/eu-commis...

a girl in a school uniform is saying ironic isn 't it ALT: a girl in a school uniform is saying ironic isn 't it

Yes, I have read the leaked GDPR Omnibus. Yes, if unleashed as is, it will be an earthquake for EU data protection law (with 2 or 3 of the deep cuts). Which, ironically, would leave most countries that imported the GDPR with a stronger data protection regime than the GDPR.

MoD: “too costly” to find out if there have been further spreadsheet data breaches Response to FOI request says it would take 237 hours to find out. How can ICO have confidence lessons have been learnt? Anyone who’s ever had been responsible for compiling or overseeing a data bre…

The MoD has said it cannot say whether it has had any spreadsheet-based data breaches following the catastrophic Afghan citizen one, because it would take >237 hours to find out. On my personal blog informationrightsandwrongs.com/2025/11/07/m...

In January 2025 Djibouti in the Horn of Africa became the 174th country to enact a data privacy law: the Digital Code / Code Numerique covers data privacy as well as other e-commerce & cybersecurity topics www.journalofficiel.dj/texte-juridi... Thanks Dave Banisar @dbanisar.bsky.social

An important PSA for those of you in old Londinium and surrounds. 🤔

Image: three figures in protective suits watch from behind a screen as a child approaches a door-like mechanical structure in which stands a man. Between them is an amorphous glowing shape. Caption: Scientists at the institute of halloween studies have succeeded in creating "The treak": a quantum state that is simultaneously trick and treat. It is stable for a millionth of a second before decaying into a half-hearted prank and a mediocre candy bar.

A halloween cartoon for @newscientist.com

An exceptional editor: a tribute to Judith Vidal-Hall who reinvented Index magazine after the end of the Cold War - Index on Censorship Former Index editor Jo Glanville pays tribute to a journalist who introduced a western audience to a diverse range of writers and artists

Lovely obit for Judith Vidal-Hall, former Index on Censorship editor. An absolute force of nature who pioneered the platforming of global voices and always remembered journalism was supposed to be fun and deadly serious at the same time www.indexoncensorship.org/2025/10/exce...

Reads like the background briefing for the method actors playing the bad guys in a 1980s-era scrappy underdog team movie.

The Draghi Dilemma: The Right and the Wrong Way to Undertake GDPR Reform There has been much interest in the report on European competitiveness issued in September 2024 by former Italian Prime Minister and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi at the request of Euro...

“In order to protect fundamental rights, maintain legal certainty, and continue to ensure a high level of protection, any reform should be evidence-based, targeted, transparent, and further the EU’s values” (Christopher Kuner in this new FPF guest post)

#GDPR #Draghi

fpf.org/blog/the-dra...

"Many teams across GDS and DSIT, with our partners in the Home Office, have been doing exceptional work in the run up to the original announcement, and since. I want to thank everyone who has been running hard at this to get us to this point. Those working on digital ID so far know it has been a challenging few months of ambiguity, sporty timelines and high expectations," she told staff. Starmer's announcement seems to have distributed that ambiguity around MPs, the tech sector and the wider public, given the negativity of the subsequent reactions. The government faces a huge task to reverse that negativity. Is digital ID simply a "dead cat" strategy, as some have suggested? A deliberate distraction from other problems, to get people talking about a policy that may eventually prove to be neither mandatory nor national? It's too early to tell.

Who knew? How Starmer kept his digital ID plan secret for months www.computerweekly.com/blog/Compute...

Keir Starmer tweets on digital ID as Caerphilly Labour loss met with silence www.thenational.scot/news/2556856...

("sporty timelines"?)

Privacy groups criticise appointment of former Meta lobbyist to data protection watchdog Campaigners say appointment of Niamh Sweeney undermines trust in Data Protection Commission, which they say has an ‘abysmal’ record in taking on big tech companies

Privacy groups criticise appointment of former Meta lobbyist to data protection watchdog

Digital Omnibus: Consultation response to the call for evidence - European Digital Rights (EDRi) The EC launched a call for evidence on the “Digital Omnibus” initiative, which is expected to be presented around the 19 November.

Has anybody talked about the EU aiming to weaken basically all data protection and enviromental regulations yet?

#eu #europe #privacy #climate

edri.org/our-work/con...

What’s the ROI on telling the truth in Big Tech/AI?

Professor @katekenny.bsky.social of @uniofgalway.bsky.social spent 15 years running the numbers—and the moral math doesn’t look great...

But she’s got ideas for changing it. 🔦

Full Q&A in our Substack (link below).

The strange economics of speaking up Inside the moral math of whistleblowing

psstpsst.substack.com/p/the-strang...