Bill Goodwin

The Court of Appeal finds that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has no power to award costs against Northern Ireland police despite ‘unreasonable conduct’ by the force

Operational pressures do not reduce the need for lawful and consistent safeguards, says Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO)

Home Office seeks technical fixes to immigration and asylum while invoking national security to avoid disclosing the growing use of AI in decision making, claims report

Court of Appeal to decide whether Investigatory Powers Tribunal has powers to award compensation for legal costs to victims of unlawful surveillance

Northern Ireland journalist subject to unlawful communications surveillance seeks damages from police in Northern Ireland in high court claim for data protection breaches and harassment

Cyber attackers linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security are targeting opponents and opposition groups with Windows spyware

Computer Weekly's Bill Goodwin has seen both sides of the courtroom during a career spent exposing the surveillance state and protecting those who wish to let the world know its secrets

A poll of 2,000 UK citizens taken after the government issued a secret order seeking access to Apple users’ encrypted data finds that the public is sceptical of government surveillance powers

Computer Weekly reveals for the first time how French cyber spies hacked EncroChat phones used by organised crime groups

Northern Ireland police monitored phone communications of former BBC security editor Brian Rowan after he wrote about a police and MI5 agent in Northern Ireland

The UK’s Supreme Court rules that Bahrain cannot claim sovereign immunity for infecting the computers of two UK-based dissidents with German-made FinFisher spyware.

The Security Service, MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland have been ordered to pay damages to a former BBC journalist, Vincent Kearney, following multiple attempts to identify his confidential sources

Lithuania has built a network of tech startup companies the hard way, through bootstrapping. Today, it claims six companies with valuations over a billion dollars

Migration campaign group Front-Lex has filed a complaint to Europe’s data protection watchdog, calling for a ban on Europol’s data processing operations that do not comply with EU law, following an investigation by Computer Weekly, Solomon and Correctiv

UK proposals for mandatory age verification will not mitigate children’s exposure to harmful content and ‘addictive’ app design, and risks excluding vulnerable groups from online services, says Foundation for Information Policy Research

Expansion of Europol’s mandate should be paused while allegations investigated, a number of MEPs say

The use of encryption helps to secure WhatsApp’s infrastructure, but researchers at Black Hat Asia warn platform’s architecture is driving hackers to target user devices directly

NCSC advises on countermeasures for high-risk individuals over phishing attacks on encrypted messaging services, such as Signal, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger

Police and MI5 conducted seven unlawful operations to obtain phone data relating to former BBC journalist Vincent Kearney, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal heard today

Labour proposals to restrict social media use to people aged 16 and under could have unintended consequences for businesses using virtual private networks