Jason O'Brien
jasonobrien.bsky.social
Jason O'Brien
@jasonobrien.bsky.social
Father. Accenture Consultant with an interest in Information Security, Technology, Data Protection, Privacy and Ethics. Opinions are personal.
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
Our News at 10 segment on the nursery hacks here. One of the most shocking parts of this nasty little hack is that the criminals have hired people to call up some of the parents to say 'your kids data is going on the dark web unless you tell Kidos to pay us'.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q9S...
Children's names, pictures and addresses stolen in nursery chain hack - BBC News at 10 report
YouTube video by Joe Tidy
www.youtube.com
September 26, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
The Baden-Württemberg DPA created ONKIDA, a GDPR-compliant AI standard, to help organizations interpret GDPR rules for AI. It provides positions, guidance and recommendations from data protection authorities to support compliance.
September 13, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
The EU’s decision on a potential “stop the clock” for the AI Act is delayed. The AI Board meeting was postponed, following delays to the Apply AI Strategy and the national authorities' setup. Political guidance is now expected at a Telecom WP this month.
www.mlex.com/mlex/article...
EU decision on pausing parts of AI Act pushed back by preparation delays | MLex | Specialist news and analysis on legal risk and regulation
A decision on proposing an enforcement pause for parts of the EU's AI Act has been pushed back by the European Commission following delays in the delivery of an AI strategy for industrial sectors and ...
www.mlex.com
September 3, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
The RTB settlement wait is over: Google real-time bidding privacy settlement will require Google to give users new controls over online tracking/ad targeting.- @wendyndavis. See storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
September 3, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
The apartment lights go out. The smart shutters start to roll up. An internet-connected boiler is remotely turned on.

But the residents didn’t trigger any of these actions. It’s a demonstration of how AI can be hacked to create real-world havoc.
Hackers Hijacked Google’s Gemini AI With a Poisoned Calendar Invite to Take Over a Smart Home
For likely the first time ever, security researchers have shown how AI can be hacked to create real world havoc, allowing them to turn off lights, open smart shutters, and more.
wrd.cm
August 9, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
Today is the 47th anniversary of this clearly unimprovable photo, from a story so absurd that it shouldn’t be true, but is: the day a team of workers from British Waterways pulled the plug out of the Chesterfield Canal, and all the water emptied out
August 10, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
My cartoons for this week’s @theguardian.com books
#holiday #vacation #reading
August 10, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
Greetings from SXSW. Just saw Meredith Whittaker (Signal CEO) gave a great talk on why everyone needs privacy even if you don’t think you do. And how being a nonprofit removes the temptation to “further monetize” information you have on your users
March 7, 2025 at 10:38 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
best use of AI yet? UK mobile operator O2 has created a human-like AI “Granny” to answer calls in real time from fraudsters, wasting as much of their time as possible 😅 news.virginmediao2.co.uk/o2-unveils-d...
O2 unveils Daisy, the AI granny wasting scammers’ time - Virgin Media O2
O2 has today unveiled the newest member of its fraud prevention team, 'Daisy'. As ‘Head of Scammer Relations’, this state-of-the-art AI Granny's mission is to talk with fraudsters and waste as much of...
news.virginmediao2.co.uk
November 16, 2024 at 10:31 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
This has officially made my week
March 15, 2024 at 7:35 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
A water scheme in Mayo (Ireland) was offline for two days due to hackers taking their ICS offline with a cyber attack

Attackers claimed they attacked the system due to it being manufactured in Israel

#CyberSecurity #NIS2

westernpeople.ie/news/hackers...
December 8, 2023 at 11:03 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
CJEU’s SCHUFA judgment on data protection and credit rating is out, with lots to chew on. Key takeaways: credit decisions using ‘scoring’ are a form of automated decision making which the GDPR strictly limits; rating agencies can’t retain insolvency data longer than the public insolvency register.
curia.europa.eu
December 7, 2023 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
Per the Court: “Scoring’ is a mathematical statistical method used to predict the probability of future behaviour, such as the
repayment of a loan” 🫢 & such scoring amounts to #ADM as regulated under Article 22 #GDPR, which the Court clarifies contains a PROHIBITION 2/
December 7, 2023 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
While EU officials & MEPs have spent the last 20 hours continuously negotiating prohibitions under the AI Act, lo & behold the Court of Justice of the EU deciding today that there is already a prohibition on individual automated decision-making based on personal data in the #GDPR 🤭1/
December 7, 2023 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
Someone took out a person on a murderous rampage by clouting them on the skull with a moped helmet, which despite the circumstances, affirms my faith in Dublin, Ireland, and humanity.
November 24, 2023 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
One of Australia’s big internet/phone providers has a major outage right now and this is the best story I’ve heard yet
November 8, 2023 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
There’s a word in modern German slang, Knäckebrottelefonierer, which describes a person who talks into their phone while holding it in front of their mouth like a cracker. It literally means “crispbread phoner”
November 6, 2023 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
Doctor’s Office xkcd.com/2850
November 4, 2023 at 6:05 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
India's biggest data breach? Hacking gang claims to have stolen 815 million people's personal information.

Read more in my article on the Bitdefender blog: www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotfors...

#cybersecurity #privacy #databreach #india
India's biggest data breach? Hacking gang claims to have stolen 815 million people's personal inform...
The personal information of more than 815 million people in India has reportedly been leaked online.
www.bitdefender.com
October 31, 2023 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
There's times recently when social media feels a bit like a mistake, and then there's moments like this
Incredible comment under this video - no notes.
October 29, 2023 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
Dendrochronology xkcd.com/2847
October 28, 2023 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Jason O'Brien
"nightshade" is a data poisoning tool that can break AI models if they try and scrape your image into their training set without your consent

www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1...
This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI
The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.
www.technologyreview.com
October 24, 2023 at 1:33 AM