This blog is about technology and the mark it leaves on the people who use it. I pay particular attention to how the big tech companies overstep (quietly harvesting data, locking you in, putting profit ahead of privacy) and what you can actually do to protect yourself. It’s written for ordinary people in plain, human language, with no jargon and no assumption that you’re an expert.
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Reclaiming Your Privacy
You don’t need to be a tech expert to take back your data. Beginner-friendly sites, a note on phones, and one simple change that already makes a difference. [English and Polish]
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Is this the world Tony Stark fought for?
From Snowden to the :Snoopers; Charter”: how “national security” quietly became the surveillance of everyone – and why “I’ve got nothing to hide” no longer holds up. [English and Polish]
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Amazon payola
Writer Cory Doctorow, who coined the term “enshittification” for the way digital platforms slowly decay into something that serves everyone except the user, points to Amazon’s own accounts as the clearest example yet. Amazon runs several huge businesses, but its single most profitable one isn’t selling goods or renting cloud servers. It’s search placement. When…
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25 years of mass surveillance and where it’s heading
Digital-rights lawyer Cindy Cohn and security expert Bruce Schneier take stock of what 25 years of mass surveillance has done to Americans’ rights. It began after 9/11, when the US government stopped targeting specific suspects and started collecting everything: phone records, internet traffic, metadata on whole populations. Sold as a defence against terrorism, it never…
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Flock camera – the network watching US roads
Flock Safety sells automatic number-plate cameras that sit above roads across the US. As you drive past, the camera photographs your vehicle and sends the images to Flock’s servers, which log your number plate, colour, make and model, all stamped with the time and place. Local police can then search these records – and through…
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A&E visits for gambling problems nearly doubled
When Ontario opened its online gambling market, emergency-room visits for gambling disorders roughly doubled – and almost the entire rise fell on young men. That’s the finding of a new University of Toronto study in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Comparing the years before and after the change, researchers found visits ran 154% above…
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US border agents can now search your phone with no warrant and no suspicion
A US federal appeals court has ruled that border agents may search a traveller’s phone without a warrant, without probable cause, and without even a flicker of suspicion. The decision, handed down by the Second Circuit on 17 September 2026 in United States v. Alisigwe, widens an already broad exception to the Fourth Amendment, which…
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Your car is spying on you and selling what it learns
Your car probably knows more about your daily life than your phone does, and almost no one talks about it. If you’ve bought a vehicle in the last few years, there’s a good chance it came with a built-in mobile connection – the same one that powers roadside assistance and the app that unlocks your…
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“AI could kill everyone” – a researcher quits Anthropic, and a current staffer agrees
In early September 2026, a striking exchange about the dangers of artificial intelligence played out in public – not between outside critics, but between people working inside one of the world’s leading AI labs. Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher, resigned from Anthropic (having previously worked at OpenAI) and posted his reasons on X. He accused…
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Switzerland’s government wants to break free of Microsoft
Switzerland is trialling open-source software to cut its reliance on Microsoft and regain control over its own data. Here’s what the plan involves.