It’s possible that you haven’t heard of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). However, it is likely that the ITU affects your life in some way. The ITU is the UN agency responsible for information and communication technology. One of their key functions is standard-setting. They set the technical standards that make it possible to send a text message to an overseas phone without having to get some kind of complex adaptor; they also help to assign satellite orbits so that you don’t get abrupt service interruption from two (or more) satellites crashing into one another.

It’s nice to be recognised, and this week we were pleased to win the People’s Choice Award from the NZ Open Source Awards.

It’s a month since I joined the bustling team at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC). What are my first impressions?

While our fridges, toasters and socks are learning how to talk to each other, so is Barbie. While governments are finding new ways to watch what we do, how we interact and how we talk to each other, so is Barbie. And on Christmas day, while we are listening to our children run in squealing, excited circles, so will Barbie.

Some of you will be familiar with Gartner’s ‘hype cycle’. The hype cycle concept is the idea that each promising new technology goes through a similar set of phases before it is widely adopted. It often starts with a hiss and a roar, scales the peak of inflated expectations, drops down into the trough of disillusionment, claws its way up the slope of enlightenment until it finally reaches the plateau of productivity.

When the Ashley Madison data breach story first broke, it was quite isolated. It was a criminal matter for local authorities and a PR disaster for Ashley Madison itself, but that’s as far as it went.

The Internet of Things presents the internet-connected world with boundless possibility, but it also presents risks that we haven’t even considered yet. A recent Guardian article included the quote: “The scariest thing is that we don’t know what the scariest thing is”.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner wants to get in front of the looming tech trends, from wearable devices to AI to drones. But is that the best approach? Following a series of tech-related privacy workshops, the OPC is having second thoughts - maybe it's time to take a step back and tackle a few basics? In this post for IITP's Techblog, our Policy and Technology Team Policy Adviser, Tim Henwood, takes a look at our current thinking.