@maireadenright has an interesting and thought provoking piece in the Times today.

Stasi archive shows way for institutional abuse record-keeping https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/stasi-archive-shows-way-for-institutional-abuse-record-keeping-1.4398008

When one tracks the very basis for Privacy and shortly later on Data Protection rights and law in the European Union, one need only look to the aftermath of World War II the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948; and in 1950 the ECHR.

Data protection coming in the 1970s with the German State of Hesse adopting the first DP law, followed by Sweden in 1973 and FR, DE, NL and UK in the 1980s. The COE adopting Convention 108 in 1981.

As the world has watched the erosion of rights and the rule of law under Trump and the mendacious Brexit project obsessives in the Tory party in the main, the import of such rights cannot be understated.

I had a double take at the headline of Mairead’s piece, not because it was designed to catch my attention, but more because of what we’ve all seen emerge in the US, data harvesting projects and ancillary issues associated with the modern world.

You can bolt the word ‘cyber-‘ on to pretty much anything but the underlying behaviours, conditions and, let’s face it, wholesale abuses are not really any different. Perhaps, all heightened by immediate access.

Concessions to human frailty, populist, or just plain wrong?!

The final passage of @maireadenright piece is really important. Existing practice ....