Data privacy: the tide is turning in Europe – but is it too little, too late?

Simultaneous legal cases suggest that the need to assert the digital rights of citizens over corporations and governments is finally being addressed

Amazon Dash - the company's single purpose internet-connected ordering button - may soon be blackening our skies with drones delivering loo rolls and detergent. And so, the relentless march of technology - not to mention cheap labour, unthinking consumerism and scandalous environmental devastation - goes on.

But while more convenient ordering of washing powder might have captured the headlines of late, Europe has been in the midst of a technological step change; a pivot in the world of data privacy.

"There is no magic bullet, no panacea. If the privacy pessimists are to be proved wrong, the great diversity of new privacy-destroying technologies will have to be met with a legal and social response that is at least as subtle and multifaceted as the technological challenge. Given the rapid pace at which privacy-destroying technologies are being invented and deployed, a legal response must come soon, or it will indeed be too late."