Why banning minors from accessing social media etc is a bad idea: (i) While I think it is unjustified fear-mongering, several consumer rights organisations and privacy researchers say it will lead to mandated surveillance of Internet usage, and that it will concentrate power among the platforms that are able to deploy age verification effectively. I […]
Scientific push against blocking of minors: since December, journalists from across Europe & Australia have asked me to comment on age-gating initiatives internationally to restrict minors’ access to online content, and at the CEDPO conference in 2025 I pushed back against a 5-person panel that was fully in favour of prohibiting minors’ access to social […]
Is “personal data” an asset? A study on human dignity & data protection has been released that on paper sounds like it should cover all the key topics. Its authors argue that individuals are “the primary right-holders in relation to the processing of their personal data” and that these “are dignity-relevant manifestations of the person […]
Interesting study on where human dignity and data protection come together, worth the read. I’m not convinced by some parts, though, as there is too much room left for subjectivity in the way certain things are worded. The authors suggest 7 guiding principles, but of particular interest to me were their suggested 6 limits to […]
Some thoughts on the leaked EU Council draft compromise re the GDPR parts of the Digital Omnibus: – This draft reads as a major lobbying win by data protection authorities and civil society. The EDPB would be given more power, the Commission no supervision, and a lot of the more business-friendly proposals would be removed […]
A new study on LLMs & personal data (by Dimitri Staufer and Kirsten Morehouse) can be read in two ways: 1. Some will see it as validation that LLMs process personal data because they seem to be capable of associating attributes with a person with a certain % of confidence. 2. I see it instead […]
[This is a translation of an op-ed in French that was published in the French journal Revue Politique on SRB and the Digital Omnibus, plus the newest EDPB & EDPS Joint Opinion on the topic. The original in French can be found on the Revue Politique website. + The banner image is a jest – […]
Pour les francophones: I was given the opportunity to write an op-ed for the French journal Revue Politique on SRB and the Digital Omnibus, plus the newest EDPB & EDPS Joint Opinion on the topic. The result? “Rendre le RGPD réaliste ? Les autorités ne le souhaitent qu’à moitié”. I’m working on a translation into […]
I criticise them a lot for many things, notably their often dogmatic and not-so-pragmatic positions, but kudos to the European Data Protection Board for two things today: (i) they actually sent a reminder to participants for the “Political ads” stakeholder event of 27 March to ask if people wish to speak on particular topics or […]
Under which circumstances does the GDPR consider scientific research compatible with existing purposes of personal data processing? Recent positions by regulators and legislators show it is still a hot topic – one with major implications for R&D globally. Recital 159 of the GDPR states that “the processing of personal data for scientific research purposes should […]
