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Australia’s first report on the social media ban has several key lessons for European countries contemplating a similar approach – and for the EU’s special panel on online child safety: – Based on a survey of 898 parents of children from 8 to 15: “Of the parents who reported their child had an account on […]
Recently, there have been a few strange comments on the ePrivacy aspects of the Digital Omnibus. I’ll tackle browser-level settings later, but today I want to focus on one issue: what are the ePrivacy Directive consequences of the new Art. 88a proposal? Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive (ePD) is known as the “cookie rule” […]
EDPB stakeholder event write-up: From “no one wants political ads” to “political parties have to be able to reach their local audience”, today’s topic wasn’t very sexy (the “processing of personal data for the targeting or delivery of political advertisements”) but it still was a colourful event. No bar fight unlike some previous stakeholder events, […]
Is Brillen-Rottler truly nothing new, as some appear to be suggesting? This new judgment of the EU Court of Justice confirms that data subject access requests made with a demonstrable aim of obtaining an advantage other than the gaining of awareness about the processing of personal data can be rejected as abusive. Given the number […]
What evolutions await data protection litigation & GDPR fines/sanctions in Belgium? Since Hielke Hijmans announced he is stepping down from his role as Director of the Litigation Chamber of the Belgian Data Protection Authority, hearings in ongoing cases have been pushed back until an as of yet unspecified date. It’s unclear whether it is feasible […]
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 […]
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 […]