“Landslide victory for Labour.” Today is a good day for the UK, my home away from home. After more a decade of Conversative leadership, it very much was time for a change. My best friend and I had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
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In Memory of the Life of Connor
Mary asked me today to give Eulogy because Connor and I were pretty close friends. I would even go as far as claiming that it was the closest either Connor or I ever came to a serious long-term long-distance relationship. 7 and a half years and 4 days to be precise. We often joked that we might marry one day in case Theresa May should actually become UK prime minister – so he could become a German national and seek refuge. Around Christmas, we would always watch Love Actually together. We were never shy to express our affection, and so I feel nothing but happiness to have shared such an amazing time together – and full of love and laughter. And these two the two themes, love and laughter, are what I’d like to emphasise in the following and what clearly would’ve been the most important for Connor for such an occasion.
Authored by Connor Kirkpatrick (1994–2024) in 2021, published posthumously by Konrad Kollnig, in memory of my best friend.
St Giles’ Cathedral looms large upon a city which, if any other, would render it an outsider. It is a 1,000 year old construction, of achingly vulnerable yet discernibly strong design. Despite its imposing presence, it is just another parish church of the Church of Scotland. John Knox said, “Live in Christ, die in Christ, and the flesh need not fear death.” Appropriately, Knox has been buried within St Giles’ for more than 500 years.
This article was written for the Inspired Research magazine of the Depatment of Computer Science of the University of Oxford. URL: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/innovation/inspiredresearch/InspiredResearch–summer23_FINAL_web.pdf
Tracking, the collection and sharing of behavioural data about individuals, is widely used by app developers to analyse and optimise apps and to show ads. It also is a significant and ubiquitous threat in mobile apps, and often violates data protection and privacy laws.
Previously, our research group led by Prof Sir Nigel Shadbolt analysed 1 million Android apps from the Google Play Store from 2017. We found that about 90% of those apps could share data with Alphabet (the parent company of Google), and 40% with Facebook (now renamed ‘Meta’). The data practices in children’s apps were particularly worrisome, which is why our research group – in response – established a dedicated research strand on Kids Online Anonymity & Lifelong Autonomy (KOALA), led by Dr Jun Zhao. Our findings led to major news coverage back then (including by the Financial Times). This underlines the extent to which those data practices violated individuals’ privacy expectations. Google even issued a public response to our findings, in which they tried to cast doubt over the validity of our (peer-reviewed) methodology.
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Summer update
It’s been a bit quiet on here over recent months. A lot has happened. I finished my computer science PhD in Oxford, and moved to a new country to start a new job. Now, I am working at the Law & Tech Lab of the Law Faculty of Maastricht University, in the Netherlands. The change is obviously taking up a little bit of time.
Besides, I’m working on a new book project. This means that, over the last few weeks and months, I’ve nearly been writing a short blog article every day. Hence, I’ve not been so keen on writing even more on this blog. Feel free to reach out though if you want to learn more about my ongoing projects. Contact details are at the bottom of the homepage.
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A Tracking-Free Mobile Ecosystem?
Over recent months, the pressure on providers of app tracking technology has been increasing. In February 2022, the Belgian data protection authority found that the IAB’s Transparency & Consent Framework is in violation of EU/UK data protection law. Among other aspects, the authority argued that the IAB is in fact a data controller and not just those organisations that use the IAB framework. This ruling by the authority represents one of the first applications of the EJC’s rulings on joint controllership within the context of web and mobile tracking. The ruling underlines that those who design the technical infrastructure behind the tracking ecosystem bear responsibility for their design decisions under EU/UK data protection law. Is this the beginning of the end of surveillance capitalism?