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Eerke Boiten

@eerkeboiten.bsky.social

590 followers 540 following 1.1K posts

Prof Cyber Security and Head of School Computer Science and Informatics at De Montfort University. Own views. He/him. Formal methods (last ever books on Z or refinement). Cyber security. Privacy. Data politics. Not all hypes. DM:[email protected].

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Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · Jul 24

Here we go, my 40th article for @uk.theconversation.com: theconversation.com/porn-website...

Porn websites now require age verification in the UK – the privacy and security risks are numerous

Online age verification technology is not as mature and safe as government and regulators would like it to be.

theconversation.com

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Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 17h

In "exceptional scenarios that would have the unimaginable outcome of marginally shifting my sympathy towards ICE and Trump" ...

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peterkwells @peterkwells.com · 18h

I'm sorry, UK govt wrote in a petition response that they'll consult on extending the proposed digital ID card thingy scheme to 13 year olds, without saying anything about that elsewhere before?

Doh, and double doh!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Now Labour pushes ID cards for children as young as 13

A petition against digital ID signed by almost three million people has been dismissed by ministers who vowed to press ahead with imposing them before the election.

www.dailymail.co.uk

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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 19h

All my comics have happy endings!

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Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 18h

Thoughts inspired by my brother reminding me that 14 year old me convinced 12 year old him that the lead vocal on Emotional Rescue was by Miss Piggy.

Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 18h

Random Friday post. We all know there's uncredited Mick Jagger vocals on You're So Vain, and I don't care much who it is about, but: why is nobody suggesting that actually Keith Richards also drops in at the very end? (3:58) www.youtube.com/watch?v=cleC...

You're So Vain

YouTube video by Carly Simon - Topic

www.youtube.com

Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 19h

After an unpromising start with Sutskever, Altman and Hassabis, this by @zsk.bsky.social has some interesting put-downs of AGI & doomers, but none as good as Wendy Hall's eye-roll :) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Tech billionaires seem to be doom prepping. Should we be worried?

The debate is ramping up about what happens if - or when - computer intelligence overtakes humans

www.bbc.co.uk

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Jess O'Thomson @jessothomson.co.uk · 1d

It cannot be made clearer.

If you continue to support the Harry Potter franchise in any way, you are directly funding the removal of trans people's human rights in the UK.

JK Rowling pledges to keep up fight against SNP trans policies

Author vows to bankroll campaigners after Scottish government fails to pay group's legal fees in Supreme Court equality case

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Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 1d

This is not minor detail. The main id method may well delete id as soon as checked, as promised. But the imperfection of age estimation means it always needs a back up id-based method (in Oz even by law). This potentially increases the overall attack surface - looks like here it did indeed.

Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 1d

Come on @josephcox.bsky.social this is not breaking news today, getting to most of a week by now, and we've already heard the stolen id is not from the regular id-based age verification but from appeals against the face-based age estimation.

404 Media @404media.co · 1d

BREAKING: A catastrophic breach has impacted Discord user data including selfies and identity documents uploaded as part of the app’s verification process, email addresses, phone numbers, approximately where the user lives, and much more.

🔗 www.404media.co/the-discord-...

The Discord Hack is Every Users’ Worst Nightmare

A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive informa...

www.404media.co

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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 1d

These aren't "new" checks. Just the old checks, but (supposedly) done more efficiently.

Frédéric Moreau @goodclimate.bsky.social · 3d

This lurid headline is about British tourists no longer getting away with overstaying in Schengen. Or being 'illegals', as it's often called in the UK.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 1d

Astonishing advance by the Greens, astonishing implosion of Labour. When will Starmer's government get the message that it is destroying its base with deeply unpopular, rightwing policies?

By chasing Reform, it legitimises the far right while delegitimising itself.

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 1d

Latest poll puts Greens just two points behind Labour. When I said we weren't here to be disappointed in Labour but to replace them, I meant it.

Join us and let's make hope normal again.

join.greenparty.org.uk

Poll from find out now showing greens on 15 and labour and Tories on 17. Reform on 32.

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Nurseferatu @nurseferatu.bsky.social · 1d

Apolitical is code for “safe from any real negative consequences of politics”. So someone whose primary demographics put them in the majority or at minimum able to pass comfortably as such in this culture. And critically, comfortable ignoring the circumstances of anyone who is not safe.

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emily moonlight @threnody.bsky.social · 1d

just watched a dozen people ask microsoft copilot experts their most pressing questions and those questions were 90% “how do i turn it off?” and “when i turn it off, is it really off or is it spying on me?”

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Dr Emma L Briant 🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸 @emmalbriant.bsky.social · 1d

This is awful. Most importantly health care is meant to be independent - to be trusted - it's going to make people feel more paranoid about going to seek help and talking freely with their doctors and medical professionals about their circumstances.

Peter Stefanovic @peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 1d

BREAKING: Specialist employment advisers will be based in GP surgeries and mental health services as part of government plans to get people back to work.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden speaks to #BBCBreakfast about the government’s plan to tackle long-term sickness

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The Observer @theobserveruk.bsky.social · 2d

"The shadow justice secretary has railed against the lack of integration in parts of Britain. But it’s the ‘flag-bothering patriots’ who don’t want to mix", writes @sarfrazmanzoor.bsky.social.

Read their full piece now: https://bit.ly/4mWSYtp

Yes, Robert Jenrick, we have an integration problem: raci...

The shadow justice secretary has railed against the lack of integration in parts of Britain. But it’s the ‘flag-bothering patriots’ who don’t want to mix

bit.ly

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 6d

🌟 New preprint 🌟, by @olivia.science and me:

📝 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025). *Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists*. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧪

Table 1

Core reasoning issues (first column), which we name after the relevant numbered section, are characterised using a plausible quote. In the second column are responses per row; also see the named section for further reading, context, and explanations.

See paper for full details: ** Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

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Kashmir Hill @kashhill.bsky.social · 2d

What strikes me about this is how much more clearly incriminating chats with ChatGPT are going to be than Google searches in criminal investigations

niki grayson @nikigrayson.com · 2d

the city of los angeles burned in january in part because of a man who couldn’t stop generating images of burning cities on ChatGPT, and then after he lit the fire he asked if the fire he started was his fault

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Dr Stephanie Hare @dr-harebrain.bsky.social · 2d

"We took the freedom of speech away"

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Trump: "We took the freedom of speech away because that's been through the courts and the courts said you have freedom of speech, but what has happened is when they burn a flag it agitates and irritates crowds."

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Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 2d

Interesting that in Oz, the incompleteness/unfairness of face-based age estimation is built into the law. This is also the first article about this breach that puts emphasis on the gov id leaking via appeals - the direct gov id based method probably does delete ids as soon as checked, as claimed.

Eerke Boiten @eerkeboiten.bsky.social · 2d

Article fails to mention whether the OfS Freedom of Speech czar is onto these universities willing to monitor their students' social media on behalf of the weapons industry. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

UK universities offered to monitor students’ social media for arms firms, emails show

Loughborough, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow corresponded with companies concerned about campus protests

www.theguardian.com

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Chris Boyd @paperghost.bsky.social · 2d

if nothing else it's very funny to say you want to get rid of english degrees two days after you give everyone chocolate with "britian" written on it

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 3d

The whole world watched Britain pretending to believe the UN aid agency was a terrorist organisation, then we all watched as UNRWA was replaced by criminals firing machine guns at starving people trying to get bags of flour, while press and politicians pretended not to understand what was happening.

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Channel 4 News *
@Channel4News
X.com
The prime minister has described plans for pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the UK today as
'un-British' and has called for them not to go ahead.
Students from several universities are expected to gather in London and other cities.

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Omar Khan @omaromalleykhan.bsky.social · 3d

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 3d

The audacity to anthropomorphize machines being built by corporations
--stealing data
--exploiting the labor of the people who are actually the "undesirables" under eugenic thought
--killing the environment,

and then compare criticisms of such eugenic practices to, wait for it, eugenics.

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Jon Cooper @joncooper-us.bsky.social · 3d

Cartoon by @ivan-ehlers.bsky.social.

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