Technology Pill

Jan 17 2025 85 ep. 44 mins 282

Technology Pill Podcast artwork

Find out how technology is reshaping our lives every day and explore the new powers of governments and companies.

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Vertical Mergers: Competition, Connectivity, and Starlink

Jan 17 2025 101 mins

This week we're talking to Peter Bloom from Rhizomatica and Lũa Cruz from IDEC about internet connectivity, what drives social media companies to expand into internet provision, and what an earth is going on with Starlink in the amazon rainforest. Links: - Read PI's research: https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/5409/decoding-vertical-tech-integrations-why-do-they-

The End of Privacy in Public: Facial Recognition and the UK Parliament

Dec 16 2024 40 mins

This week we're talking about facial recognition in the UK. Our research shows that members of parliament (MPs) don't know as much as they should about facial recognition use in the UK. So, what is going on? And what do MPs need to be aware of? Links: Write to your MP: https://pvcy.org/endofprivacypod Our previous research about how much MPs know about facial recognition: https://

Data and Disability: Rights in a Digitised world

Nov 15 2024 98 mins

This week we take a deep dive into the issues around the rights and privacy of the global disability community in the digital age. We're joined by Rosemary Kayess - Vice Chair of the UN Committee on the Convention of the Rights for Persons with Disabilities, and the Disability Discrimination commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Marc Workman - CEO of the World B

Enter the matrix: How to run an encrypted communications platform

Oct 18 2024 53 mins

This week we're talking to Matthew Hodgson, one of the founders of Matrix - a network for secure, decentralised communication, and CEO/CTO of Element - a communications platform built using Matrix, about the regulatory environment matrix lives in, the difficulty of and the passion for interoperable communications at matrix, and the complications of building an encrypted communicati

The XZ exploit: The day the internet got lucky

Jul 27 2024 54 mins

This week we're talking about a backdoor inserted into a popular Linux file compression tool, which had the potential to massively undermine the security of vast swathes of the internet. What happened? How did it happen? And how was it thwarted? Links - Andres Freund's Mastodon - where he revealed the backdoor: https://mastodon.social/@AndresFreundTec - Read more in Ars Te

The Cryptowars: A short history of encryption politics

Jun 14 2024 54 mins

Welcome to the last of our short series on encryption. This week we're just talking amongst ourselves, luckily Gus is an expert on encryption - having been working in and around the encryption debate since the '90s. Links - Read more about PI's work on encryption here: ⁠privacyinternational.org/learn/encryption⁠ - Matt Blaze and crypto.com: theverge.com/2018/7/6/1

A letter from the Russian government: Defending encryption in Court

Apr 30 2024 34 mins

This week we speak to Ioannis, a senior lawyer at PI, about his and his colleague's work on the landmark case protecting encyrption at the European Court of Human Rights: Podchasov v. Russia. The case dealt with a Russian law obliging telecommunications service providers to indiscriminately retain content and communications data for certain time periods, as well as a 2017 disc

What is Encryption? Codes, Keys, and Hashes

Mar 23 2024 55 mins

What do you know about cryptography? Have you ever wanted to get a better understanding of some of the maths behind encryption? This week we speak to Ed, a Senior Technologist at PI, about some of the history and basics of encryption. Find out more about encryption: - Computerphile on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@Computerphile) is a computer science professor with a range of

GPS tracking of migrants in the UK: Performative cruelty and dodgy tech

Feb 13 2024 43 mins

This week we speak to Mark Nelson, a car mechanic and father of five, who has been forced to wear a GPS tag by the Home Office for the past 20 months, and his lawyer Katie Schwarzmann of Wilsons Solicitors. The pair have been challenging the Home Office's ongoing imposition of GPS tracking on Mark in the courts and are now awaiting a judgement. We explore the legal case, the wa

Good News: Things you might have missed in 2023

Dec 15 2023 53 mins

This week we talk about good things (or good-ish things) that you might have missed from 2023! Links Companies getting disciplined - Ovulation Tracking App Premom Will be Barred from Sharing Health Data for Advertising Under Proposed FTC Order https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ovulation-tracking-app-premom-will-be-barred-sharing-health-data-advertising-