Welcome New Subscribers!
Just a heads-up on what you signed up for.
Now that I’ve hit over 100 subscribers, someone informed me that I should get around to introducing myself and share a bit about what this blog is all about, what I’m about, and to open it up for a little casual conversation.
I’m Carey (privacat on the socials). I’m a former lawyer turned techie turned data protection geek. I’m based in Ireland and live with my husband and 9 cats. Yes. I am a crazy cat person, but I manage it well. Obligatory cat photos at the bottom of this post!!!
I tend to write about loads of things, but my main areas I touch on include:
Instances where Big Tech behaves badly by stepping all over our privacy, moving fast and breaking things in a way that causes harm, and pursuing misguided technolsolutionism to solve manufactured problems. For example, I’ve written about how Meta’s decades of fucking-around-and-finding-out is finally at the find out stage, Calmara.ai being a privacy disaster, and the dystopian facial recognition AI nightmare that is PimEyes. I like these articles, and readers seem to as well, so expect to see more of them. In addition to bringing awareness, I also plan to highlight exactly how tech choices can manifest into profound privacy harms. These won’t be too lawyerly, but I may drop some legal bombs here and there.
The intersection of law and technology, and in particular how the rush to pass more laws (to deal with ever-complex problems & systems) can compound old problems and create new ones, a process I refer to as legal code debt.
AI, both as a force-multiplier for good and as cautionary tales when tech companies forget that real people can be harmed.
Finally, I plan to write in the next coming months a bit about the Catalonia region of Spain, including Catalonian culture. If that seems a bit … strange, have a look at my domain name and this fun little twist. I will most likely offer these in both English and Catalan.
I want to write this stuff in a way that leads to conversations. I love audience participation and I try to respond to everyone who leaves a comment or shares their thoughts with me on LinkedIn, Bluesky or Xitter. What I hope this blog will be is a way to build a community and get more people thinking about why data protection and privacy are important — not in the abstract, but for them personally.
A fair bit of warning — I probably will offend some people at times (I swear pretty regularly, and discuss sensitive subjects rather bluntly). I am happy to call out bullshit and do not suffer fools. That’s not my intent, but it does happen. Still if you’re up for a little straight talk about complex issues, I hope you stick around, participate, and contribute. And now…
Obligatory Cat Photos
