Dr Charlie Harry Smith
banner
chsmith.bsky.social
Dr Charlie Harry Smith
@chsmith.bsky.social
Digital ID Scheme, OfDIA/DSIT

Developed the first liberal political philosophy of British digital identity systems (for a DPhil at @oiioxford.bsky.social)

chsmith.co.uk
Pinned
🎓 I’m pleased to share that my doctoral thesis is now available for download (freely – it's Open Access!) from the Oxford University Research Archive: ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid...
A liberal political philosophy of British digital identity systems - ORA - Oxford University Research Archive
This thesis evaluates the British state’s national digital identity systems using the tools of liberal political philosophy for the first time. Such systems are becoming ubiquitous, with public and pr...
ora.ox.ac.uk
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
my sense is most philosophers agree: this is exactly wrong
Let my gravestone read "PUNCTUATION GOES INSIDE THE QUOTATION MARKS."
November 10, 2025 at 5:27 PM
GOTY contender (philosopher’s choice, at least)? youtu.be/oONZ_f4kwiU?...
The Trolley Solution - Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer | Latin American Games Showcase 2025
YouTube video by GameTrailers
youtu.be
August 4, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
"Some kinds of writing shouldn’t, or perhaps can’t, be summarized." #authors

www.newyorker.com/culture/open...
What’s Happening to Reading?
For many people, A.I. may be bringing the age of traditional text to an end.
www.newyorker.com
August 3, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Quite enjoying tracking and rating restaurants with this new app Beli that @laurelboxall.bsky.social introduced me to! beliapp.co/wMFSbUBdxVb?...
beliapp.co
August 3, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Resharing for the after work crew!
May 19, 2025 at 4:35 PM
🎓 I’m pleased to share that my doctoral thesis is now available for download (freely – it's Open Access!) from the Oxford University Research Archive: ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid...
A liberal political philosophy of British digital identity systems - ORA - Oxford University Research Archive
This thesis evaluates the British state’s national digital identity systems using the tools of liberal political philosophy for the first time. Such systems are becoming ubiquitous, with public and pr...
ora.ox.ac.uk
May 19, 2025 at 9:54 AM
I’ll brave the rain, lightning and hail, he thought. It doesn’t look that bad!
May 12, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
This week’s Kitchen Diary observer.co.uk/style/nigel-...
May 4, 2025 at 7:17 AM
Can you run a company as a perfect free market? Inside Disco Corp www.ft.com/content/c043...

Fascinating experiment. Sounds wildly inefficient in many ways, and not sure I’d love working there, but glad someone’s trying it!
Can you run a company as a perfect free market? Inside Disco Corp
For over a decade, a $20bn manufacturer has been conducting a radical experiment. No one has a boss or takes orders. Their decisions are guided by one thing, an internal currency system called Will
www.ft.com
May 4, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
I think the suggestion that any kind of human-to-human interaction should be replaced with human-to-chatbot interaction should be scrutinized as a kind of moral rot. It’s antisocial ideology and should be treated as such
May 2, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked,

"If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?"

Allow our scaled diagram to explain...
April 15, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Ha! I’m one of those (well, for DuckDuckGo searches)

Submitted a complaint to Meta too
#30DayChartChallenge Day2 Slope – Google search interest in “How to remove Meta AI from Whatsapp”.

As Meta AI’s chatbot is rolled out across Europe, many users are wondering how they can turn it off --> you cant, upsetting quite a few users www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/whatsa...

Made in Figma
April 4, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Great article! Had no idea how insanely readable COBOL code was until now. Let alone the gendered/gatekeeping dynamics behind its historical denigration or modern downplaying of the number of active coders…
March 29, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
This blog post by @mattedgar.bsky.social resonated. 'Pragmatic ambition' is a good term that I will no doubt be using soon.
blog.mattedgar.com/2025/03/29/b...
Between the tepid bath and the cloud of vapour: a plea for pragmatic ambition
A man visiting a health resort is sitting in a steam box. Engraving, May 1869. Wellcome Collection In my most recent weeknote, I promised a blog post… Somewhere in all this between the t…
blog.mattedgar.com
March 29, 2025 at 7:56 AM
If only someone had warned us that turning your own DNA into a saleable asset was a bad idea www.bbc.com/news/article...
23andMe files for bankruptcy protection
The company said that it will now attempt to sell itself under the supervision of a court.
www.bbc.com
March 24, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Took me a while, but I've finally deactivated X/Twitter – will be fully deleted next month. Just don't trust that even historical data is safe there anymore.

Considered handle-squatting but decided it's not worth it...
March 21, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Tiny attack vector, since patched, in mobile browsers. Pretty interesting though! #passkeys

“an attacker within BLE range can trick a victim into using their passkey to log the attacker's (Raspberry Pi) device into their account.”
Podcast: risky.biz/RBNEWS396/
Newsletter: risky.biz/risky-bullet...

-First passkeys phishing technique
-Undocumented commands found in ESP32 chips
-US cuts Election-ISAC funding
-Hacker steals and then returns 1inch funds
-Cyberattack halts shipping at appliance maker Presto
-MSFT retires Publisher
March 10, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
An apology to John Rawls. I couldn’t really understand why he was so obsessed with the importance of stability as a political value. But now I do.
February 18, 2025 at 10:27 AM
We’re so cooked y’all
Microsoft's own research confirms something that was already pretty obvious: relying on a text generating machine to come up with answers erodes critical thinking, and is a method favoured by those who never liked doing critical thinking in the first place

advait.org/files/lee_20...
advait.org
February 9, 2025 at 11:40 AM
Reposted by Dr Charlie Harry Smith
Mastercard be like "digital identity will become the master key to a connected world, unlocking access across platforms and borders without exposing personal data"
Mastercard Signals: Racing towards the future of payments
This issue of Signals explores seven trends signaling how payments could evolve by 2030
buff.ly
February 8, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Plus, if ever we needed more examples of why extreme care is needed when creating (digital) powers, even if you trust the incumbents… change can happen very fast
I hope one thing digital government practitioners are taking away from attempting to divine what is happening in the US: it should be a mater of public record how digital public services and infrastructure work, when they change and what data they use. No more excuses.
February 7, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Is this the US version of SpAds?
February 2, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Got views on the latest trust framework we published in November? We’d really appreciate your feedback — more detailed the better! #digitalidentity

The survey linked below is open to all and closes 3rd Feb, so there’s plenty of time to collate your thoughts
Your feedback on the gamma (0.4) trust framework
In November, we pre-released the gamma (0.4) publication of the trust framework. We also highlighted that we would be seeking feedback on this latest publication to inform our ongoing work. This post ...
enablingdigitalidentity.blog.gov.uk
January 22, 2025 at 9:54 PM