Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used.

Vibrations from cars and pedestrians create unique signals in cables. Now scientists have used the trick to show how Covid-19 brought life to a halt.

In the wake of COVID, a pandemic treaty could be a way to agree on data access before the next emergency strikes.

DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, Protonmail and others say "businesses can thrive without privacy-invasive practices" and advertising can be done without spying on users.

The European Parliament approved the ePrivacy Derogation, allowing providers of e-mail and messaging services to automatically search all personal messages containing material depicting child sex abuse and report suspected cases to the police. The European Pirates Delegation in the Greens/EFA group strongly condemns this automated mass surveillance, which effectively means the end of privacy in digital correspondence. Pirate Party MEPs plan to take legal action. Patrick Breyer (German Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament): “This harms children rather than protecting them”

A story of a new data team leader successfully growing the team and building a data-first culture in a medium-sized technology company: depicting the initial state of the company with data in many different places, frustrated ML researchers who can’t get their research into production, and confusion over what the data team is actually for - some of the experiences you might relate to.

Quebec will require its citizens to carry a “vaccine passport” as of Sept. 1 that would serve to exclude those who have not received two doses. Health Minister Christian Dubé stressed the passports would only be mandated in regions that experience outbreaks and would not be needed to access essential services.