Data privacy: the tide is turning in Europe – but is it too little, too late?

April 6, 2015
Amazon Dash – the company’s single purpose internet-connected ordering button – may soon be blackening our skies with drones delivering loo rolls and detergent. And so, the relentless march of technology – not to mention cheap labour, unthinking consumerism and scandalous environmental devastation – goes on.
But while more convenient ordering of washing powder might have captured the headlines of late, Europe has been in the midst of a technological step change; a pivot in the world of data privacy. Several notable events at the end of March, in Luxembourg, London and Geneva, show a glimmer of hope that those frail, beaten rights – privacy and data protection – might yet see their true worth in the digital age. A moment, first, in defence of privacy – reports of whose death are, I hope, greatly exaggerated.