“We don’t have to manipulate our customers or exploit their vulnerabilities to scale up” – European entrepreneurs and social organizations appeal to the MEPs to put an end to invasive and privacy-hostile practices related to surveillance-based advertising and thus open the market to ethical and innovative online ads, which respect users’ rights and their choices. On the opposite bench – the Big Tech lobby fights for the status quo to remain – despite the well-documented social and individual harms caused by the current ads ecosystem.

Following a number of complaints filed in 2018 and 2019, including by Panoptykon and Bits of Freedom, and coordinated by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Belgian Data Protection Authority has found that the consent system developed and managed by the adtech industry body IAB Europe, and used by many websites in the EU, is illegal under the GDPR.

"All indications are that the attack on the editorial offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo will provide a pretext for the introduction of further limits on our civil liberties - a new order the victims of which are unlikely to be terrorists … Independent analyses confirm that data inflation and the growing use of algorithms in intelligence work do not improve the effectiveness of threat detection.

Technology has changed and keeps dramatically changing our everyday life by transforming the human species to advanced networked societies. To celebrate this digital revolution, 17 May is dedicated to the “World Telecommunication and Information Society Day” (WTISD-17).