End of an Era

I've just been informed of the death of Alan Westin.

Professor Westin was one of the pioneers in the modern debate about privacy and the law and his writings certainly influenced much of my early academic work. His book, Privacy and Freedom was published in 1967 and is still worth reading. I doubt whether the same will be said of my books 50 years from now.

There is an obituary in the New York Times which you can link to from here

Ian

"EU Cybersecurity plan to protect open internet and online freedom and opportunity"

"The European Commission, together with the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, has published a cybersecurity strategy alongside a Commission proposed directive on network and information security (NIS).

The cybersecurity strategy – "An Open, Safe and Secure Cyberspace" - represents the EU's comprehensive vision on how best to prevent and respond to cyber disruptions and attacks. This is to further European values of freedom and democracy and ensure the digital economy can safely grow. Specific actions are aimed at enhancing cyber resilience of information systems, reducing cybercrime and strengthening EU international cyber-security policy and cyber defence."

The full press release is here, along with links to the proposed directive and to strategy documents.

From my perspective, this looks like a good thing, both for increasing the scope of what is considered to be critical national infrastructure in a digital age, and also to bring up the overall level of cybersecurity, and particularly to level the playing field: over the top communications providers should, I hope, be brought up to the same level as traditional telcos here.