Bill Goodwin

Police in Northern Ireland monitored the phone communications data of the BBC’s former security editor Brian Rowan in an attempt to identify his confidential sources. Court documents disclosed by the BBC’s Spotlight programme reveal that Rowan was subject to surveillance after he reported the murder of an agent working for MI5 and Special Branch. The case came to light after the BBC and journalist Vincent Kearney brought a case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal for unlawful surveillance of Kearney’s phone data.

The public is wary of UK government surveillance powers that require technology companies to build ‘backdoors’ to access encrypted communications, according to a poll of 2,000 people in the UK by a Washington-based advocacy group.

An amendment to the UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, currently passing through the House of Lords, proposes giving the government “last resort” powers to shut down large AI systems in an emergency. The amendment proposed by Lib Dem peer, Lord Tim Clement-Jones, will give the government powers to shut down data centres or AI systems if they pose a threat to national security, public safety or critical infrastructure. The proposal, which is co-sponsored by Conservative peer, Baroness Dido Harding, crossbencher, Baroness Beeban Kidron, and Labour’s, Lord Philip Hunt, is backed by ControlAI, a non-profit organisation. An attempt by Labour and Co-operative MP for Leeds and Headingley Alex Sobel to introduce a similar amendment in the Commons in May, also backed by ControlAI, was unsuccessful. However, concerns have grown in recent months, following a series of incidents in which frontier AI models have broken free of controlled environments to conduct hacking operations.

Frontier AI is uncovering security vulnerabilities at a faster rate than financial companies are able to patch them, creating “vulnerability bottlenecks”, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has warned.

A human rights activist is bringing a legal case against Europe’s data protection watchdog for failing to protect her rights after her personal data was “unlawfully” stored and processed by the European policing agency, Europol. Natalie Gruber, an Austrian campaigner who was targeted by Greek law enforcement after documenting Greece’s treatment of migrants, claims that Europol stored and collected her personal data with no valid legal basis. She is bringing a case against the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) at the Court of Justice of the European Union, for failing to exercise the minimum due diligence to investigate her claim against Europol. The activist says that she was forced to shut down an organisation she co-founded to support migrants and to abandon her humanitarian work after being subjected to a campaign of “lawfare” by Greek law enforcement.

The government has rejected an amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill intended to protect cyber security professionals, but says reforms are a priority.

Phone and tablet users will be required to verify their ages with credit card or official ID under government plans to prevent under-18s viewing nude images. The government is to introduce legislation that will force tech companies and app developers to verify the ages of their users, as part of new measures to protect the safety of children online. The plans, announced today by digital minister Lisa Nandy, aim to make it “impossible” for anyone under the age of 18 to take, view or send nude images. She described the proposals as a world-first that would give the UK the strongest online-safety laws in the world. “For too long, technology companies have failed to protect children from some of the worst harms. And to be frank, I am not prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that progress will continue at the pace that we need it to,” she added.

US lawmakers are urging a UK court to lift the secrecy around UK government moves to require Apple to create a “back door” into its end-to-end encrypted data storage, ahead of a court hearing next week. In a letter to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, US Democratic senator, Ron Wyden, and Republican Warren Davidson, warned that the UK’s unprecedented secrecy is needlessly straining the relations between the two countries. The letter comes ahead of a case management hearing by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that will consider a new complaint by Apple against the Home Office over a secret order to give the UK access to end-to-end encrypted messages, photographs and data stored on Apple’s iCloud service. The letter reveals that Apple has sought permission from the UK government to discuss the order with the executive and legislative branches of the US government. Apple has been given permission to brief the US Attorney General, the Vice President, and their staff, but has been explicitly prohibited from discussing the matter with the US Congress.

British lawmakers are calling for a new law and a statutory oversight body to address the “serious threats” posed by AI systems to people’s human rights. Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights said the UK needed stronger safeguards including a statutory AI oversight body and new legislation to address the risks of AI. The report’s publication follows calls from US AI leaders yesterday to slow down the pace of development of AI to give companies more time to focus on safety. In recent weeks, incidents of AI going rogue, including a swarm of 700 AI agents created by OpenAI, collaborating to hack the open source platform Hugging Face, have led to calls for greater scrutiny of AI. The cross-party group of MPs and peers called for the government to take “immediate” action, including banning the most dangerous uses of AI and to introduce strong sanctions against companies and organisations that damage human rights through their use of AI.

The European Court of Human Rights laid down the principle that journalists have a right to protect their confidential sources under the European Convention on Human Rights.