Jennifer Cobbe

@jennifercobbe.bsky.social

1395 Followers 727 Following

Tech law @cambridgelaw.bsky.social https://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/j-cobbe/83662

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary is restoring order and control to our asylum system by removing incentives drawing illegal migrants to the UK and ramping up removals of those with no right to be on British soil. “We keep our asylum system under constant review. Claims are always considered on their individual merits and based on the latest evidence to ensure only those in genuine need are granted UK protection.”
CJEU judgment: 111 As the Advocate General observed, in essence, in point 239 of his Opinion, it is in particular by means of the algorithm used that such an operator exercises control over the information stored. As long as it has predetermined, by means of that algorithm, the conditions for the dissemination or not of such information, it is irrelevant that that operator does not itself carry out additional interventions having the effect of promoting, modifying or deleting information stored with a view to its dissemination. 112 In that regard, it must be stated that if, in addition to merely categorising and indexing the information with a view to making it more accessible, the algorithm used determines, in the interest of the operator or its service, under what conditions, in what manner and in what order of priority that information is or is not disseminated, That operator exercises control over those services, with the result that the service which it offers cannot be classified as an 'information society service consisting in the storage of information provided by a recipient of the service' within the meaning of Article 14(1) of Directive 2000/31 (see, to that effect, judgments of 23 March 2010, Google France and Google, C-236/08 to C-238/08, EU:C:2010:159, paragraphs 115 and 117; of 12 July 2011, L'Oréal and Others, C-324/09, EU:C:2011:474, paragraph 116, and of 22 June 2021, YouTube and Cyando, C-682/18 and C-683/18, EU:C:2021:503, paragraph 114).
Screenshot of paper abstract: "Data about people has become a key form of capital in information economies, where its processing is often distributed and multi-party in nature, working through supply chains of interconnected services and actors. Personal data’s legal definition – any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person – divides processing of this data which is subject to data protection law from that which is not. The question of when an individual is in some way ‘identifiable’ therefore helps determine whether its processing falls within data protection law’s framework. I argue that the CJEU’s jurisprudence on this question in practice combines with common multi-party processing arrangements to produce a space of effective legal immunity around shadow processing for speculative accumulation of and value extraction from data relating to people, beyond the reach of data protection law. This is because the CJEU’s modified relative understanding of identifiability systematically excludes certain supply chain actors from the law’s scope. In doing so, this interpretation undermines data protection law’s purpose and objectives of protecting people’s rights and interests where information about them is being processed, operates retrospectively and produces legal uncertainty for many parties, and leaves governance of shadow processing to unsuitable private law mechanisms. This interpretation should be rejected in favour of a contextual and pluralistic one, which better accounts for the distributed and multi-party nature of data processing today."
Yes, these are private businesses, but they now play fundamental roles in our digital society. Interventions are needed to protect the common good. We need to address the surveillance business models, the widespread privacy violations, and – most of all – the power of platform companies. At a minimum, behavioural advertising should be banned; other, less damaging forms of advertising are available. The algorithms platforms use to recommend content should be heavily regulated. Responses from competition law, data protection law, and other areas are also sorely needed to curb the power of platform companies. More ambitiously, a wholesale restructuring of the platform ecosystem may be required.
Headline from BBC News: "Starmer tells Apple and Google to ban nude images on children's phones"
Screenshot of headline from BBC article "Children 'weaponised' by both sides of trans debate, Cass says"
Screenshot from the Curia website "New website Court’s website redesign: easier access to clear, comprehensive information."
screenshot of the new EU Curia website with three columns - (1) a search filter, (2) a list of cases, and (3) the judgment. The first two columns take up most of the screen, and the judgment itself is squeezed into a narrow column on the right
Coffee machine, turned off, with an "out of order" sign in front of it
Screenshot of Instagram interface promoting user to "make a choice about your ads"
The process will also consider banning social media for under-16s, preventing companies from harvesting children's data without consent, introducing overnight curfews, and promoting solutions to curb "excessive doomscrolling".
screenshot of Bluesky muted words interface with "fifa peace prize" written
A screenshot of a Bluesky interface saying "Age Assurance" and "It looks like you haven't added your birthdate. You must provide an accurate date of birth to use Bluesky" and giving me only options to add my birthdate or logout
Morris-Almond is one of 23,500 people who have had their child benefit stopped by HMRC in the past few weeks as part of the government’s crackdown on benefit fraud. But unlike many others, she did not encounter border control or travel to an airport, suggesting that the Home Office immigration operations could have had access to passenger records. In response to earlier inquiries, the Home Office said operators of international passenger services were “required by law to provide information to the Home Office about each service and the people onboard for international journeys to and from the UK”. They said the information was needed for immigration, customs and police purposes including border security and law enforcement.
Parents in Northern Ireland have had their child support payments stopped as part of the UK government’s crackdown on alleged benefit fraud simply because they returned from a holiday via Dublin airport. So far 346 families have had their benefits frozen, an investigation by NI online newspaper, the Detail, shared with the Guardian, has discovered. The extraordinary mistake comes in the wake of a new anti-fraud system designed to track those who leave the country but do not come back after eight weeks, raising a red flag at HMRC for possible emigration. The problem in Northern Ireland is many families routinely fly out of Belfast but return via Dublin, which is often cheaper and offers many more flights, leaving HMRC with the impression a passenger has not returned.
The European Court of Human Rights (the Court) has recognised that, the very essence of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention) being respect for human dignity and human freedom, it guarantees the right of trans people to personal development and to physical and moral security. Gender identity is covered as an aspect of private life under Article 8 of the Convention. This protection entails an obligation to provide for legal gender recognition, in order to avoid the unsatisfactory situation in which trans people live in an “intermediate zone [as] not quite one gender or the other” (Christine Goodwin v. the United Kingdom). The Court has further emphasised the importance of the impact on trans people of a discordance between their social reality and the law, with the coherence of the administrative and legal practices within the domestic system being an important factor in assessing whether there has been a violation of Article 8 (Hämäläinen v. Finland). It should be ensured that steps taken towards implementing the Supreme Court judgment avoid a situation where a person’s legal gender recognition is voided of practical meaning, to the extent that it leaves trans people in an unacceptable “intermediate zone”. Where possible, inconsistencies within the domestic system, particularly with regard to the interplay between key legal frameworks such as the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, which could lead to legal uncertainty or to dissonance between the lived experiences of trans people and their treatment in law, should be avoided. It is also to be recalled that not all trans people wish to obtain legal gender recognition, and in reality simply live according to their gender identity. This does not in any way diminish their right to be treated with dignity, to be protected from discrimination, and to be able to participate in all areas of everyday life.
As I note in my end-of-visit statement, I observe a tendency to see the human rights of different groups as a zero-sum game. This has contributed to narratives which build on prejudice against trans people and portray upholding their human rights as a de facto threat to the rights of others. Such a zero-sum approach risks certain inferences being drawn from the UK Supreme Court judgment that could lead to widespread exclusion of trans people from many public spaces. This, in turn, may severely infringe on their ability to participate fully and equally in society. This is particularly the case, as discussions about how access to services and facilities will have to be regulated following the judgment have tended towards the exclusion of trans people. It would therefore be crucial for all stakeholders to receive clear guidance on how inclusion of trans people can be achieved across all areas, and how exclusion can be minimised to situations in which this would be strictly necessary and proportionate, in line with well established human rights principles. In reality, tensions between the human rights of different groups in this context are likely to be exceptional in nature, and resolvable through nuanced, reasonable and balanced accommodations. This would also be in line with the approaches taken by various bodies of the Council of Europe (such as the Committee on the Prevention of Torture (CPT) or the Group of Experts on Violence Against Women (GREVIO)), which recognise the particular vulnerability of trans people, and which begin from the position of their inclusion within spaces according to their gender identity – with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis as necessary. Another area of concern is that blanket practices or policies on access to gender-segregated spaces could be put in place, which would require trans people to habitually “out” themselves publicly when accessing services or facilities, either directly (by being asked about their…
Shame - Cutthroat
"The UK is "out of whack" with other countries, according to Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister who later became right-hand man to Zuckerberg. He believes the UK needs to "think long and hard" about "whether we've overdone it" on policing speech. "Surely part of the definition of being in a free society is people say ghastly things, offensive things, awful things, ugly things, and we don't sweep them under the carpet," he has said.
Quote from article: "During his recent visit, US Vice-President JD Vance said he did not want the UK to go down a "very dark path" of losing free speech. The US business magazine Forbes carried an editorial this month that took this argument further still. In it, editor-in-chief Steve Forbes condemned the UK's "plunge into the kind of speech censorship usually associated with tin pot Third World dictatorships". He argues that, in stark contrast to the United States - where free speech is protected by the first amendment to the constitution, "the UK has, with increasing vigour, been curbing what one is allowed to say, all in the name of fighting racism, sexism, Islamophobia, transgenderism, climate-change denial and whatever else the woke extremists conjure up". So, how exactly did we get to the point where the UK is being compared to a dictatorship and, given how inflamed the conversation has become, what - if anything - would it take to turn down the heat?"
Headline from a BBC article: "Nick Robinson: How the simmering row over freedom of speech reached boiling point"
Extract from BBC news live post by Mike Wendling entitled "Bullet casing inscriptions give possible clue to motive": "The markings on the bullets described by authorities indicate that the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was steeped in online culture and included references to the Antifa, or the anti-fascist, movement. A fired shell casing was inscribed with “notices bulges OwO what’s this?” - a reference to a “copypasta” - a piece of text that is repeated over and over again, often to troll people online. Authorities say one unfired casing had the words “Hey fascist! Catch!” and an up, right and three down arrows. The three down arrows alone could be a common symbol used to represent the anti-fascist movement. As a whole, the sequence of arrows could reference a gaming cheat code - although this remains unclear, and authorities have not yet released images of the casings. A second casing had the lyrics to a song “Bella Ciao” inscribed on it. The song honours WWII-era partisans of the Italian resistance who fought Nazi Germany. The third unfired casing was inscribed with the words “If you read this, you are gay lmao” - again an apparent reference to online trolling humour. Antifa is a loose collection of far-left activists who have been active in the US over the last decade, at street protests and other events. They often oppose Trump's policies and far-right groups."
Screenshot of tweet "Tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart. Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize."
Among the projects slated for closure are work on developing AI systems to detect online harms, producing AI tools that can help policymakers tackle issues such as inequality and affordability in the housing market and measuring the impact in health inequality of major policy decisions like lockdowns. Other projects expected to close include an AI-based analysis of how the government and media interact. A project looking at social bias in AI outcomes will also be dropped. Projects being paused include a study into how AI might affect human rights and democracy, as well as research into creating a global approach to AI ethics. A spokesperson for ATI said: “We’re shaping a new phase for the Turing, and this requires substantial organisational change to ensure we deliver on the promise and unique role of the UK’s national institute for data science and AI. As we move forward, we’re focused on delivering real-world impact across society’s biggest challenges, including responding to the national need to double down on our work in defence, national security and sovereign capabilities.”
Text from techradar: https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/chatgpt/chatgpt-users-are-not-happy-with-gpt-5-launch-as-thousands-take-to-reddit-claiming-the-new-upgrade-is-horrible "A lot of the uproar surrounding GPT-5 is based on the overpromising from Sam Altman, who hyped up the latest announcement as if it were going to revolutionize the world and the way we interact with AI"
Timeline of decisions and challenges to construction of the A5 in Northern Ireland, from 2007 through to 2025
Polling from YouGov showing that 80% of all Britons (69% of men, 89% of women) support age verification
13. Mr Breyer has accessed several websites operated by German Federal institutions. On the websites, which are accessible to the public, those institutions provide topical information. 14. With the aim of preventing attacks and making it possible to prosecute ‘pirates’, most of those websites store information on all access operations in logfiles. The information retained in the logfiles after those sites have been accessed include the name of the web page or file to which access was sought, the terms entered in the search fields, the time of access, the quantity of data transferred, an indication of whether access was successful, and the IP address of the computer from which access was sought. 15. IP addresses are series of digits assigned to networked computers to facilitate their communication over the internet. When a website is accessed, the IP address of the computer seeking access is communicated to the server on which the website consulted is stored. That connection is necessary so that the data accessed maybe transferred to the correct recipient. 16. Furthermore, it is clear from the order for the reference and the documents before the Court that internet service providers allocate to the computers of internet users either a ‘static’ IP address or a ‘dynamic’ IP address, that is to say an IP address which changes each time there is a new connection to the internet. Unlike static IP addresses, dynamic IP addresses do not enable a link to be established, through files accessible to the public, between a given computer and the physical connection to the network used by the internet service provider.
A Kent police spokesperson said: “Under the Terrorism Act it is a criminal offence to carry or display items that may arouse reasonable suspicion that an individual is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation such as Palestine Action.”
Students lined up in their gowns ready to leave Queens' College to go to their graduation ceremony
Screensot of another tweet: "So yes, I do think I have a better insight than the president of the company."
Screenshot of posts: the first is Starmer saying he's confident Trump will avoid getting involved in the Iran-Israel conflict; the second is JD Vance saying Trump could take action against Iran's nuclear program; the third is Trump saying they'll come down hard if Iran does anything to "our people"
From BBC News "A leisure centre in Larne was attacked as a third night of violence broke out in Northern Ireland on Wednesday. During the violence on Monday and Tuesday, the worst of which took place in Ballymena, 32 officers were injured and six people arrested. Earlier this afternoon, Mid and East Antrim Borough Council confirmed the leisure centre had provided emergency shelter for families in urgent need following disturbances in Ballymena."
Excerpt from Joseph Weizenbaum's 'Computer Power and Human Reason': "I knew of course that people form all sorts of emotional bonds to machines, for example, to musical instruments, motorcycles, and cars. And I knew from long experience that the strong emotional ties many programmers have to their computers are often formed after only short exposures to their machines. What I had not realised is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people"
Dear Daniel, I write as a constituent dismayed at the Supreme Court's judgment on Wednesday relating to the rights of transgender people, and at the comments made by both Bridget Phillipson and the Prime Minister's spokesperson today that transgender women should use the men's bathrooms when in public. The Supreme Court's decision that transgender people should be considered their birth sex for the purpose of equality law stands in flagrant opposition to the clear intention of Parliament when passing the Gender Recognition Act. The government of the day stated explicitly in the debate in Parliament that the intended effect of the Gender Recognition Bill was that transgender people with a gender recognition certificate would be considered to be their acquired sex for the purposes of equality law. This position was echoed in the explanatory notes for the Gender Recognition Act and has broadly been understood to be the case ever since. Indeed, civil servants involved in bringing the Equality Act through Parliament have taken the unusual step of publicly stating that the Equality Act was written in light of the Gender Recognition Act, in full expectation that transgender people with a GRC would be considered to be their acquired sex for the purposes of the Equality Act. That the Supreme Court has unilaterally reversed this position and rolled back decades of progress on LGBT rights – ignoring the explicitly stated purpose and effect of equalities law passed by a Labour government – should concern anyone with any interest in the proper constitutional functioning of this country. That in doing so the Court openly stated in their judgment that the drew positively from the arguments put forward by Sex Matters – an explicitly anti-trans hate group – should concern anyone with any interest in progressive values.
The Scottish Government pointed out to the court that the legislators were specifically thinking about trans people when they brought in the regime for gender recognition certificates. There was even an explanatory note in the Gender Recognition Act 2004 pointing out that the legislator's specific intent was to make it so the earlier 1975 Act would have its meaning changed. I think the court's response to this unhappy counter-example, after harping on about legislative intent in the 1975 Act, is one of the most breathtaking pieces of judicial handwaving I've encountered. "the Scottish Ministers drew the court’s attention to para 27 of the Explanatory Notes. The notes give as an example of the effect of section 9(1), that a trans man with a GRC would be entitled to protection from discrimination as a woman under the SDA 1975. In our view, this is a good illustration of why the use to which the courts should put explanatory notes is limited to the context of the legislation and the mischief to which its provisions are aimed: see Lord Steyn in R (Westminster City Council) v National Asylum Support Service [2002] UKHL 38, [2002] 1 WLR 2956, para 5 and the passages from R (O) cited earlier. There is nothing in the notes to suggest that the department had undertaken the kind of detailed analysis of the effect of such a change on the operation of provisions of the SDA 1975, as amended by the 1999 Regulations, that we have undertaken in the following sections of this judgment before giving that as an example of the effect of section 9(1)." - Paragraph 81 (emphasis added) When the legislators of a repealed law from 50 years ago were not considering trans people in their drafting and definitions of a man and a women, then we spent paragraph after paragraph on it. When a specific piece of legislation explicitly acknowledged an intent to define a gender marker inclusively, the court dismisses the legislators clearly stated intent, on the basis that hadn't thought enough abou…
A former civil servant who played a key role in drafting the Equality Act has said the supreme court’s ruling about the legal definition of a woman contradicted the act’s original intentions. Melanie Field, who oversaw its drafting and passage through Westminster in 2010, said the legislation was meant to give transgender people with gender recognition certificates the same legal status as biological men or women. She said that giving trans women the same sex discrimination rights as biological women was “the clear premise” of the policy and legal instructions to the officials who drafted the bill. The supreme court’s ruling on Wednesday that the legal definition of “woman” only referred to biological women was “a very significant” reinterpretation of parliament’s intentions when it passed the Equality Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004, she said.
Extract from paragraph 221: "Moreover, women living in the male gender could also be excluded under paragraph 28 without this amounting to gender reassignment discrimination. This might be considered proportionate where reasonable objection is taken to their presence, for example, because the gender reassignment process has given them a masculine appearance or attributes to which reasonable objection might be taken in the context of the women-only service being provided."
250. Applied in the context of a discrimination claim made by a trans woman (a biological male with or without a GRC), the claimant can claim sex discrimination because she is perceived as a woman and can compare her treatment with that of a person not perceived to be a woman (whether that is a biological male or a trans man perceived to be male). There is no need for her to declare her true biological sex. There is nothing disadvantageous about this approach. Neither a biological woman nor a trans woman "bring a claim of direct sex discrimination as a woman" (as the EHRC suggests). That is now how the EA 2010 operates: a person brings a claim alleging sex discrimination because of a protected characteristic of sex. 251. Take, for example, a trans woman who applies for a job as a sales representative and the sales manager thinks she is a biological woman because of her appearance and does not offer her the job even though she performed best at the interview and gives the job instead to a biological man. She would have a claim for direct discrimination because of her perceived sex and her comparator would be someone who is not perceived to be a woman. The fact that she is not a biological woman should make no difference to her claim, which would be treated in the same way as a direct discrimination claim made by a biological woman based on the sex of the complainant herself.
Email screenshot showing a reminder to respond to a journal review invitation sent two days after the invitation itself
Dear Cobbe, On Mar 28, 2025 we invited you to review the above referenced manuscript, as we believe it falls within your expertise and interest.