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Heather Burns

@heatherburnstech.bsky.social

1.2K followers 140 following 1K posts

freelance tech policy x digital rights / human rights / good trouble / midlife MPhil student @ Strathclyde / IANAL / https://heatherburns.tech / 💬 on Signal / open to work / 🇺🇦 / "bad ass Glaswegian" apparently

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · Aug 21

Some personal news. I've had such good fun doing a midlife masters @lawstrath.bsky.social that I'm going to stick around for another two years and do an MPhil in technology regulation and human rights. Huge thanks to everyone who got me up that hill.
heatherburns.tech/2025/08/21/q...

Queen of the hill – Hi, I'm Heather Burns

I somehow managed to not fling myself off my chair.

heatherburns.tech

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 3m

@benwhitelaw.bsky.social

Felipe De La Hoz @felipedlh.bsky.social · 1h

You cannot be fucking serious

SCOOP: Apple Quietly Made ICE Agents a Protected Class

Internal emails show tech giant used anti-hate-speech rules meant for minorities to block an app documenting immigration enforcement.

migrantinsider.com

Reposted by Heather Burns

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai @lorenzofb.bsky.social · 39m

Here's an updated list of all the technology ICE has in its arsenal to mass deport people.

We've added new sections on cell-site simulators and cellphone location data.

techcrunch.com/2025/10/08/h...

Here's the tech powering ICE's deportation crackdown | TechCrunch

From phone spyware and facial recognition to phone unlocking technology and databases and more, this tech powers Trump's deportation machine.

techcrunch.com

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Mathias Vermeulen @mathver.bsky.social · 2h

Strong report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Protection of Freedom of Expression on "the paradigm shift" in the governance of social media platforms that has "alarming consequences for freedom of expression online". www.ohchr.org/en/documents...

A/80/341: Threats to freedom of expression online in turbulent times

In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression focuses on a paradigm shift in the governance of social media platforms ...

www.ohchr.org

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 3h

Apropos of nothing, I saw "A House of Dynamite" in the cinema before it goes on Netflix, and without spoiling anything, this is ... a bad idea.

Eric Geller @ericjgeller.com · 3h

The U.S. military is reducing the frequency of its mandatory cybersecurity training, per a new memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. media.defense.gov/2025/Sep/30/... (h/t www.meritalk.com/articles/pen...)

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 3h

Fig.7 US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks at the so-called "Terrorism Confinement Center" in Tecoluca, El Salvador on March 26, 2025. In her speech, she threatens migrants without valid papers with detention:
"If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face."
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More recently in 2024, the images have become creepier and more cruel, as was the case in-speaking of remigration-the sexy racism mash-up video and AfD party song,
"Remigration Hit" (Fig. 6). The music video is deliberately audacious in creating an AI-generated visual echo of the infamous May 2024 dance party on the island of Sylt at which elite young Germans were captured on film singing,
, "Deutschland den Deutschen,
Ausländer raus.'
"s "Aryan" pilots and gyrating
flight attendants cram scores of abjected and depressed black and brown men onto hundreds of airplanes and send them away into the blue sky. This is a different kind of arousal or rush, a flagrant display of a felt sense of virile superiority to brown and black men. I think we can read here a shift over the five years between 2019 and 2024: from sexualized danger-mongering (though that hasn't gone away either—in fact the other parties, from the Christian Democrats to the Greens, are now jumping on that band-wagon)* to a mode of full-on braggadocio, where Schadenfreude reigns and-as Adam Serwer put it about Trumpism-"the cruelty is the point." There is, apparently, delicious pleasure in being able to cause hurt. The secret memo of fascism to its followers is not repression. On the contrary, it's a message of permission, of license and impunity. Or as political theorist Robyn Marasco notes, it's all about participation in power.® Indeed, similar forms of sexy racism are embodied by Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (Fig. 7).'
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 3h

This review prompted me to go buy this monograph today at ye olde feminist bookstore: postmodern fascism is not just sadistic, it is erotic.
jacobin.com/2025/09/herz...

What Can We Do With the Right’s Delight in Pain?

Right-wing authoritarianism lures people away from the promise of democracy, peace, and equality toward destructive violence by offering one key appeal: pleasure in harming other people.

jacobin.com

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Dean Jackson @dwj88.bsky.social · 1d

A secret meeting with X. A senior State Dept. advisor just out of college. The VP's speech in Munich. Pressure on European regulators.

What do they share? They're all part of an agenda to turn the transatlantic alliance into a far right international:

www.techpolicy.press/trumps-state...

Trump’s State Department Wants to Use Tech Policy to Remake Europe In Its Image | TechPolicy.Press

Tech policy is a key part of the Trump administration's dramatic project to replace the US's traditional European alliances, Dean Jackson writes.

www.techpolicy.press

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Evelyn Douek @evelyndouek.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote about an under-appreciated aspect of AAUP v. Rubio. It is the first case of the Trump Era to explicitly identify and reject the primary and most pernicious form of speech suppression employed by this Administration: Chill.

balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/aaup...

Balkinization: AAUP v. Rubio and the Big Chill

A group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics

balkin.blogspot.com

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: In May, a Texas police department said they used the powerful Flock surveillance network against a woman who had an abortion "for her safety"

Newly obtained court records show it was a 'death investigation,' and they considered charging her with a crime

www.404media.co/police-said-...

Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime

Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.

www.404media.co

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1d

einen Swing! 💃

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1d

also: you need to view Ofcom’s OSA moves against live-streaming in this particular context. The insurrection will not be live streamed. Because the children.

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1d

Yes I am *great fun* at parties in 2025

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1d

On the day it happens, and it will, the executive power provisions within the Communications Act of 1934 and the National Emergencies Act of 1976 will allow him to kill switch the US internet. He will. Plan for that now, because it includes your US-based cloud storage and hosted SAAS applications.

Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 1d

It seems clear—I think to everyone, now—that a false and illegal invocation of the Insurrection Act is coming before the end of the year. Media outlets should be telling us how they will prepare for this potential Treason. State governments should be telling us. Activists should be developing plans.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1d

CC: the academic readers of my dissertation who got to the part where I discussed Thiel and probably wondered what I was smoking

WIRED @wired.com · 8d

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Carl Schmitt, the German legal theorist tapped by the Nazi's to justify Germany's slip from democracy to dictatorship.

Those theories have been a roadmap for the billionaire
ever since.

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

www.wired.com

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1d

ROSS

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 2d

Here's a discount code for a data broker removal service, which you needed yesterday incogni.cello.so/uDIEW5c65kp

Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 2d

@jshermcyber.bsky.social explores the risks posed to U.S. national security from data brokers in Europe and what can be done to protect American’s data from adversarial exploitation. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/euro...

Europe’s Data Broker Problem Threatens U.S. National Security

Data brokerage in Europe is putting U.S. service members and personnel at risk. The U.S. is waiting on Europe to step in.

www.lawfaremedia.org

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Graham Smith @cyberleagle.bsky.social · 2d

Quite amusing that the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 is listed in the Appendix to the Wolfson Report as a domestic statute covering human rights ground. It wouldn't exist at all but for a series of Strasbourg judgments and the ECHR.

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 2d

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Signal @signal.org · 5d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

signal.org

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 2d

you'd like this, @cyberleagle.bsky.social

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 2d

New blog post from me: to mark #BannedBooksWeekUK, here's a reminder I spotted on my recent wanders that 2025 is a repeat of 1525. You read that right.
heatherburns.tech/2025/10/06/b...

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 3d

I think this might be a good week for me to read "The Next Civil War" by Stephen Marche for the fourth time.

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 3d

Ahem

www.amazon.co.uk/Commission-R...

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States: Amazon.co.uk: Lewis, Dr Jeffrey: 9780753553169: Books

Buy The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States by Lewis, Dr Jeffrey from Amazon's Fiction Books Store. Everyday low prices on a huge range of new releases...

www.amazon.co.uk

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 3d

Top milsec protocols here from Trump’s brass, who have been caught discussing troop movements, on Signal, on their own devices, in public. Again.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

White House official inadvertently reveals plans to send elite army unit to Portland

Anthony Salisbury displayed chat about deployment of 82nd airborne division on cell phone while in Minnesota

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Heather Burns

Dr. Bradley Onishi @bradleyonishi.bsky.social · 3d

Peter Thiel’s Tech-Theology is vexing. I’ll unpack it as best as possible Monday.

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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 4d

Mildly fascinated by the Venn diagram of Christofascists and open source software community teams

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 4d

Weaponized gratitude is a key tool in the abuser's toolkit. The goal is to convince the victim that they owe the abuser so much, they should feel guilty for wanting to complain.

Tweet from the VP:
Joy Reid has had such a good life in this country. It's been
overwhelmingly kind and gracious to her. She is far wealthier than most.
Yet she oozes with contempt.
My honest, non-trolling advice to Joy Reid is that you'd be a much
happier person if you showed a little gratitude