"Harassment and abuse are all too common on the modern internet," writes the New York Times. "Yet it was supposed to be different in Germany." In 2017, the country enacted one of the world's toughest laws against online hate speech. It requires Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to remove illegal comments, pictures or videos within 24 hours of being notified about them or risk fines of up to 50 million euros. Supporters hailed it as a watershed moment for internet regulation and a model for other countries. But an influx of hate speech and harassment in the run-up to the German election, in which the country will choose a new leader to replace Angela Merkel, its longtime chancellor, has exposed some of the law's weaknesses.

Investment in transportation, agriculture, healthcare, and education should take priority over investment in surveillance technologies.

In our new book (September 2021), we look at the growing trend of personal data stores or personal data intermediaries, helping individuals take control over and empower themselves with their data. If we want to create a fair and equal society, we call it a data democracy, neither state nor big companies should control our data – and thus our lives. This does not mean that the state or companies do not sit on some of our data. But you are in the driver’s seat and retain control of your full profile.

The Age Appropriate Design Code – now the Children’s Code – has caused huge global changes. Not that tech platforms want to admit it.

Government use of face ID systems exploded during the pandemic—but tying it to critical services has left some people locked out at the moment they needed help the most.

With added security feature in DIDs enabled by Humanode, even if the keys are compromised, not all is lost. It is not clear from the blog post though how those additional security features work and what measures are taken to secure biometric identification...

In this paper, we show that in some narrow instances the ownership of personal data is actually and legally possible: new "user-held data" technologies are emerging and help individuals have their personal data in their "personal data clouds"; Individuals can collect their data from various sources (such as online accounts, wearable devices, IoT, and manually input data). We show that such ownership of user-held data is not different from other types of assets such as money in your bank account, intermediate securities, receivables, floating charge, and your crypto.

While the world still struggles against the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and organisations are discussing how new technologies can be exploited to relieve its impacts and how future pandemics can be avoided or minimised. Among the envisioned solutions, the development of more efficient and widespread smart city initiatives can improve the way critical data is retrieved, processed, stored, and disseminated, potentially improving the detection and mitigation of outbreaks while reducing the execution time when taking critical actions.

Thousands of companies buy and sell consumer data with other companies. Most recently, hundreds of business plans have been prepared, which essentially revolve around the idea of consumers selling their own data to monetize it. Probably neither of these models is a sustainable business. But what about consumers starting to pursue data from companies and public sources? Could it turn the perspective around?