Sir Bruce Slane, New Zealand’s first Privacy Commissioner, at the end of his term of office in 2003 highlighted the importance of privacy by drawing a parallel to the air we breathe: both are invisible and we only notice it once it’s gone. So when Scott McNealy said in 1999: “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it” he might as well have said: “You don’t have any air to breathe, so just stop breathing.” Twenty years later, Mark Zuckerberg uttered: “The future is ...

Berlin, 26 March 2020 The containment of infections with the novel coronavirus is an unprecedented challenge for democratic societies in terms of its scale and globality. They must face the pandemic and its consequences with determination while preserving their fundamental values. Another cause for concern, however, is the uncertainty in the application of data protection rules. ...