Court tells grandma that she should have registered as a data controller and produced a risk assessment document before posting a picture of her grandchildren on social media
The GDPR is a reprehensible and bureaucratic law that is impossible to fully comply with, and dictates an onerous process of risk assessments that are enforced by inspection and audits. It is not the sort of thing that you would wish on your grandmother.
So the law makers built in an important exclusion such that the law does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the exercise of a purely personal or household activity.
But now a Dutch court has weighed in and decided that
this important exclusion does not applying to posting family pictures on the likes of Twitter.
The court got involved in a family dispute between a grandmother who wanted to post pictures of her grand children on social against the wishes of the
mother.
The court decided that the posting of pictures for public consumption on social media went beyond 'purely personal or household activity'. The details weren't fully worked out, but the court judgement suggested that they may have taken a
different view had the pictures been posted to a more restricted audience, say to Facebook friends only. But saying that such nuance doesn't apply to Twitter where posts are by default public.
The outcome of the case was that the grandmother was
therefore in the wrong and has been ordered to remove the pictures from her social media accounts.
But the horrible outcome of this court judgement is that anyone posting pictures of private individuals to Twitter must now register as a data
controller, so requiring submission to the full bureaucratic nightmare that is the GDPR.
Information Commissioner's Office has effectively downed tools as a result of the pandemic, raising concerns about outstanding cases and ongoing privacy issues
A coronavirus check will include, facial recognition, providing personal information, a check against criminal records, a check on the car, and an app with location tracking to keep tabs on your whereabouts in Phuket
Phuket is a holiday island in Thailand that is accessed by road via a single bridge to the mainland. In the name of coronavirus monitoring the Phuket authorities have introduced an horribly invasive computerised checkpoint on the bridge.
The check
on people crossing the bridge will include a temperature check with a facial recognition detection system connected with the public health database. In the case detection of a traveller has contracted the Covid-19 virus, police will be alerted at the
checkpoints along with National Emergency Notification Center staff.
But that is just the beginning of it. The Phuket Smart Check Point will also include scanning for suspect vehicles involved in crimes, and checking the traveller's criminal
record.
The Check Point will also require travellers to register and supply personal information. This will be kept on record for subsequent crossings and will be used for unspecified analysis by the authorities, including for the suppression of
crime.
The system comes with an app that can be used as a tracking device allowing authorities to see where your current location is in the province.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has announced:
The ICO recently set out its regulatory approach during the COVID-19 pandemic, where we spoke about reassessing our priorities and resources.
Taking this into account we have made the decision to pause our investigation into real time bidding and the Adtech industry.
It is not our intention to put undue pressure on any industry at this time but our concerns about Adtech remain and we aim to restart our work in the coming months, when the time is right.
Google's sister company Side Walk Labs has abandoned its smart city development in Toronto citing the effects of coronavirus on the property market.
Chief executive Dan Doctoroff explained in a blog post:
It is with
great personal sadness and disappointment that I share that Sidewalk Labs will no longer pursue the Quayside project.
For the last two-and-a-half years, we have been passionate about making Quayside happen -- indeed, we have
invested time, people, and resources in Toronto, including opening a 30-person office on the waterfront. But as unprecedented economic uncertainty has set in around the world and in the Toronto real estate market, it has become too difficult to make the
12-acre project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan we had developed together with Waterfront Toronto to build a truly inclusive, sustainable community. And so, after a great deal of deliberation, we concluded that it no longer
made sense to proceed with the Quayside project, and let Waterfront Toronto know yesterday.
The GDPR is a reprehensible and bureaucratic law that is impossible to fully comply with, and dictates an onerous process of risk assessments that are enforced by inspection and audits. It is not the sort of thing that you would wish on your grandmother.
So the law makers built in an important exclusion such that the law does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the exercise of a purely personal or household activity. 
Google's sister company Side Walk Labs has abandoned its smart city development in Toronto citing the effects of coronavirus on the property market. 
