Al Ghaff

Board Director @BigBrotherWatch. ex-Chief Operating Officer @OpenRightsGroup. All views my own.

[Big Brother Watch @BigBrotherWatch]

🫵Are you our next Head of Digital Communications?

We're looking for a brilliant digital communicator with a strong track record in social media management, content/video production and digital fundraising.

Apply today⤵️
https://t.co/eWOmMQnQjG

[Al Ghaff @GhaffAl]

Swedes: “Hands Off Our Snooze” ✊

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Sweden says France’s nicotine pouch ban is an “attack on the Swedish way of life”

[Al Ghaff @GhaffAl]

@Ameer_Kotecha @EllenAMilligan @alexwickham @Ameer_Kotecha — Where would you cut?

— UK FCDO: ~17k (FCO & former DFID)
— Canada: ~13k (Global Affairs Canada)
— France: ~13.7k (Europe & Foreign Affairs Ministry)
— Germany: ~13.6k (Federal Foreign Office)

Former DFID were around 3.4K, so former FCO had ~13.6K!

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

Proud to call this amazing city home x

[Big Brother Watch @BigBrotherWatch]

💪 The fight to protect the public’s rights from facial recognition mass surveillance is far from over.

Support the appeal ⤵️
https://t.co/7WxldldlX4

[Lemma the Optimist @DoctorLemma]

Have you ever been separated from someone and spent years wondering what happened to them?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

In 1950, a 25-year-old Turkish sergeant named Süleyman Dilbirliği was fighting in the Korean War when his battalion heard crying coming from the bushes during a night patrol. The soldiers raised their weapons thinking it was the enemy. Süleyman walked in alone. He found a 5-year-old girl in tattered clothes, alone in the freezing dark. Her parents had been killed. It was minus 35 degrees.

He carried her back to the Turkish garrison and raised her there for 14 months. He named her Ayla, meaning “moonlight” in Turkish, because he found her under the moon. She learned Turkish so quickly she started translating between the soldiers and Korean locals. An entire military base of men became her family in the middle of a war zone.

When the Turkish troops were ordered home, Süleyman tried to take her with him. He couldn’t. They were separated with tears on both of their faces. Ayla was placed in an orphanage built by the Turkish government for Korean war orphans. For the next 60 years, Süleyman never stopped looking for her. When South Korea sent a rescue team after an earthquake hit Turkey in 1999, he watched every face hoping one of them was her. When Turkey played in the 2002 World Cup in South Korea, he searched the crowd on his television screen.

In 2010, at an event marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, the 85-year-old veteran told her story. South Korean officials began searching. Chuncheon MBC, a South Korean television station, helped track her down and filmed what happened next. Her real name was Eunja Kim. She was 65 years old. She’d grown up not knowing his name or his face but always knowing he was Turkish, and she never stopped praying she’d find him before she died. They reunited in Yeouido Park in Seoul for the MBC documentary “Kore Ayla.” Their story later became a Turkish film, “Ayla: The Daughter of War,” nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars. Their final meeting was at his hospital bed in Istanbul. He was 91 and could only gesture with his hands. She was 71, crying, calling him father. He died on December 7, 2017.

[Al Ghaff @GhaffAl]

@bbclaurak One of the most pointless interviews @bbclaurak has ever done, on the heels of her softball interview with Peter Mandelson only weeks ago!

Both interviews says a lot about Laura Kuenssberg.

[Al Ghaff @GhaffAl]

@BenWallace70 @EllieCohanim @Keir_Starmer Hey @BenWallace70 — What sort of “action”? Care to elaborate?

[Misan Harriman @misanharriman]

MacKenzie Scott gave more in 2025 than Musk, Page, Ellison, and her ex-husband, Bezos, have in their lifetimes combined.

Let that sink in, folks.

Via Forbes.

#matriarchy

[Melissa Reddy @MelissaReddy_]

There are so many amazing, kind people who work for this football club - and who worked for it and were let go - that unfortunately have had to directly deal with the continuous idiocy from their ownership.

Manchester United the institution, and the people who genuinely live, breathe and encompass it, deserve SO much better.

[David Davis MP @DavidDavisMP]

Live Facial Recognition has never been properly debated in Parliament.

It is being rolled out without a clear legal or statutory basis.

We need robust rules to govern its use, protecting innocent citizens before this technology becomes the norm.

https://t.co/zmjej7o4O4

[Kick It Out @kickitout]

Kick It Out statement:

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s comments are disgraceful and deeply divisive at a time when football does so much to bring communities together.

In addition to the inaccurate figures mentioned, it’s worth reminding him that Manchester United has a diverse fan base and plays in a city whose cultural history has been enriched by immigrants.

This type of language and leadership has no place in English football, and we believe most fans will feel the same.

[Melissa Reddy @MelissaReddy_]

Jim Ratcliffe established Trawlers Ltd - named in honour of his favourite player Eric Cantona’s famous quote - to acquire his stake in Manchester United.

Cantona on what fuelled his football…

[Internet Society @internetsociety]

We are having a great time at APRICOT! One of the best parts of attending events like this is connecting with our community in person, and we are absolutely inspired by our wonderful community in Asia-Pacific.🌏

This week, we’ve met with (@ISOC_Foundation) grantees, organization members (including our Organization Member Advisory Council chairman, Harald Summa), and our Jakarta Chapter. These relationships are at the heart of our work in Asia-Pacific and beyond.🤝

[Internet Society @internetsociety]

Community networks are powerful tools for connecting the unconnected and addressing populations’ unique needs.

Onno Purbo, recipient of the 2020 Postel Award, explains how community networks have expanded connectivity in Indonesia and across the Asia-Pacific region.🌏🛜 #APRICOT2026

[Internet Society @internetsociety]

#APRICOT2026 continues this week! Our President and CEO, Sally Wentworth, and Senior Director for Infrastructure and Connectivity, Naveed Haq, give an update from Jakarta. We're looking forward to continuing conversations with our members, partners, and the technical community here in APAC.

Later today at 14:30 local time (7:30 UTC), Sally will be joining the other I* organizations to give a brief overview of what we're focusing on this year. Join in person or catch it streaming online: https://t.co/tfEJ8xP1aP

[Internet Society @internetsociety]

January was another great month for our global community. 😄👏 Our chapters kicked off the new year by training various groups (from parents to parliamentarians!) in cybersecurity, sharing resources in an ongoing court case, taking a strong stance against Internet shutdowns, and more. Keep it up! 💪

Learn more about what our chapters have been up to: https://t.co/rbWnyTD2PJ

[Internet Society @internetsociety]

It’s always a pleasure to connect with our community around the world, which is why we’ll be at the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (#APRICOT2026) in Jakarta, Indonesia!

We are proud to have supported APRICOT for more than two decades, and we’ve got some great events lined up this year. Will we see you in Jakarta?

[Al Ghaff @GhaffAl]

You’re a cruel and deeply unpleasant person. Shame on you!

She's a wonderful human being making a positive contribution to society.

She’s 23 year old who volunteers in her free time to help create resources for schools covering menstrual health, endometriosis, pelvic health and menopause.

[Rutger Bregman @rcbregman]

Riveting, extraordinary and brutally honest speech by Mark Carney, Canada's prime minister. God, I wish we would have European leaders like this.

Here's an excerpt:

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless,” and in it he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world unite.” He doesn’t believe in it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this living within a lie. The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.

Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We join its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Read/listen in full: https://t.co/1Cxm0Kxz7a