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As reported here, on June 13, 2014, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered Google to block a website worldwide in Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack. Later, Google applied for leave to appeal the decision and for an order staying the enforcement of the order. Read more » about British Columbia Court of Appeal Refuses to Stay Enforcement in Equustek Solutions v. Google

It’s not straightforward being a law enforcement officer in the UK in 2014. I often think of how different my working existence is to that of my great-grandfather, also in law enforcement, but working in a small Scottish village in the late 19th Century. The highlight of Constable Taylor’s 30-year career was once catching a burglar.  Read more » about Reflections on the UK's DRIP Act

There's an old joke that goes like this: “There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.” Like most old jokes, it's built around a kernel of truth. If you cram enough training in mathematics and science into a person's brain, it changes not just how they think, but how they see the world. It's hard to overstate just how deep this shift goes, but it's akin to the “overview effect” experienced by astronauts during spaceflight, in which suddenly seeing the planet from a different perspective induces a profound sense of oneness and connection. But for engineers and other types of data scientists, I suspect that the effect goes in the opposite direction. It seems like there's an inclination among some who work with large bodies of data, be they NSA cryptologists or Facebook researchers, to view their data as something separate from the individual citizens and consumers that those data points represent. And I believe that this disconnection goes a long way towards explaining the tensions in the modern big data world. Read more » about Big Data and the Perceptual Divide