The Privacy Mission

CHAPTER 11Government

My area of expertise is within government policy and over the years I have given evidence to various governments and government organisations to highlight the potential issues policymakers and lawmakers need to consider in relation to data protection, online privacy and our online rights, as well as to provide constructive suggestions that can be incorporated into national or supranational laws.¹

For example, in 2014 myself and a few other experts in this space testified at a European Parliament special hearing about many of the issues that came out of the Snowden disclosures. Among those who spoke at that hearing was Tom Drake, an NSA whistleblower who, like Bill Binney, went public with his concerns about the NSA's activities following the failure of the Trailblazer project. One of the steps the EU took following this hearing and others, for example, was to formulate a directive in the EU to protect whistleblowers. In 2022, the European Commission also put forward a Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles,² which at the time of this writing is expected to be ratified within a matter of months.

Having a Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles is all well and good, but the question remains about how this can be meaningfully implemented given what we know about the power the spies and corporations have. This is especially the case when you consider Article 10.2 of the European Declaration of Human Rights, which provides a blanket exemption around ...