Masters of Privacy

Carissa Véliz is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Fellow at Hertford College at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the 2021 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy.
Our guest is the author of Prophecy, now longlisted for the Financial Times business book of the year (2026), as well as the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. Her previous book, Privacy is Power, was chosen by The Economist as one of the best books of the year in 2020.
Carissa advises companies and policymakers around the world on privacy and the ethics of AI, and is a member of UNESCO’s Women 4 Ethical AI.
References:
* Breakfast Workshop - Santa Monica, CA - September 2, 2026 (free for MoP subscribers)
* Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI (Amazon)
* Carissa Véliz on Substack (The Antidote)
* Gary Marcus: Even more good news for the future of neurosymbolic AI (Substack, April 2026)
* Refresher (January 28th special, Masters of Privacy): Data Protection vs. Privacy and Data Privacy (with Carissa Véliz, Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, Brendan Quinn, Tim Turner, and Markus Wünschelbaum)
* Carissa Véliz: privacy is power (Masters of Privacy ES, Oct 2021 - Spanish)
* Install the TODO.LAW suite on your own device (Dealroom, DPO Central, AI Sentinel).
Send us your questions, feedback, or report requests (InScope, AuditScan) to: info[@]northend.law.


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Professor Solove returns to discuss the fundamental flaws of “informed consent” and explore viable alternatives in the quest for true individual privacy.
Daniel J. Solove is the Bernard Professor of Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the George Washington University Law School. He is the co-director of the GW Center for Law & Technology. One of the world’s leading experts in privacy law, Solove is the author of 10+ books, 100+ articles, and a children’s fiction book about privacy. His latest book is “On Privacy and Technology”.
References:
* Daniel J. Solove on Substack
* Daniel J. Solove on LinkedIn
* Daniel J. Solove on Bluesky
* Daniel J. Solove’s personal page
* On Privacy and Technology: Oxford University Press, Amazon
* Murky Consent: An Approach to the Fictions of Consent in Privacy Law, (Daniel J. Solove, August 2023)
* Orwell vs. Huxley: Which Dystopia Was More Prescient? (Daniel J. Solove, June 2026)
* How to Maintain Our Privacy in the AI Age (Daniel J. Solove, June 2026).


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We’re back for a new season (#12 across both channels, heading into our 7th year!), and we do it with a Newsroom update. We will cover our usual five blocks: ePrivacy & regulatory updates; MarTech & AdTech; AI, competition and digital markets; Zero-Party Data; and the future of media.
This season’s update includes:
- Meta’s “addictive design” of services for minors (public nuisance in New Mexico, trial of twenty nine states in California, DSA charge over addictive design in Brussels)
- Social media bans for minors in France, the UK and Australia, and the push to move age checks to the operating system
- The second largest GDPR fine to date, against Uber, for deactivating drivers by automated decision (Article 22)
- Enforcement across Europe (health data warehouses, traveller profiling, loyalty club consent, scraped business contacts, AI companion apps) and in the US (public, private)
- AI Act enforcement begins while obligations for high risk systems slip to 2027, plus EDPB guidelines on anonymization, web scraping and generative AI
- The end of FTC independence, doubts over the Data Privacy Framework, and a Google fine answered with tariff threats
- Advertising inside AI assistants, pixel matching by default, and AI copyright settlements.
All references and links (plus some bonus materials) can be found in a separate blog post available to paid Masters of Privacy subscribers on our website’s Newsroom section (Newsroom Notes: Summer 2026).
Our usual disclaimer: the voice that joins Sergio today is a text-to-speech output generated with Eleven Labs.


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Where is the privacy-AI convergence taking us in 2026? How different is the UK’s new approach to automated decision making (ADMT)? Is AI pushing young lawyers out of the profession?
Eduardo Ustaran is global co-head of the Hogan Lovells Privacy and Cybersecurity practice, widely recognized as one of the world’s leading privacy and data protection lawyers and thought leaders. With over 30 years of experience, our guest advises multinationals and governments around the world on the adoption of privacy and cybersecurity strategies and policies. Eduardo has been involved in the development of the EU data protection framework and was listed by Politico as the most prepared individual in its ‘GDPR power matrix’.
Eduardo obtained his JD from Universidad de Navarra and an LLM in European and International Trade Law from the University of Leicester.
This is our 40th and last episode in the current (10th) season. We will be back in a few weeks. Have a great summer!
References:
* Eduardo Ustaran at Hogan Lovells
* Eduardo Ustaran on LinkedIn
* AI and Automated Decision-Making in the UK (Part I): The new rules and regulatory guidance (Eduardo Ustaran, Katie McMullan, Alina Podolyak)
* CCPA Updates, Cybersecurity Audits, Risk Assessments, Automated Decisionmaking Technology (ADMT), and Insurance Regulations
* Eduardo Ustaran: (Spanish) Second anniversary of the GDPR (Masters of Privacy ES, May 2020)


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“You trust your chatbot with everything. Should you?” is the title of Theodore Christakis’ comprehensive research project on the privacy of our conversations with AI. Part two of this project (“Governments, Courts and the Battle Over Your Chatbot Conversations”) was published on June 8th, and we have taken the opportunity to ask the author for a high-level overview of his findings. On top of this, we have also discussed his separate piece on the rise of AI-powered health assistants against the backdrop of the new European Health Data Space, discussed last week in our Spanish-language channel.
(Our previous conversation with Mr. Christakis focused on the use of personal data in LLM training datasets.)
Theodore Christakis is Professor of International, European and Digital Law at University Grenoble Alpes (France). He holds, since 2019, the Chair on the Legal and Regulatory Implications of Artificial Intelligence at the Multidisciplinary Institute on AI (AI-Regulation.com). He is Director of Research for Europe at the Cross-Border Data Forum, a member of the Board of Directors of the Future of Privacy Forum, and a former Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the New York University Cybersecurity Centre.
His work focuses on the questions at the centre of today’s debates on digital sovereignty: government access to data held by private companies, international data transfers, the security and operational resilience of digital infrastructure, and the regulation of artificial intelligence. He served as an expert for the OECD in the process that led to the adoption, in December 2022, of the OECD Declaration on Government Access to Personal Data Held by Private Sector Entities. He was a member of the International Data Transfers Experts Council of the United Kingdom Government, and an expert for the High-Level Expert Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement established by the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. He has also served as a member of the French National Digital Council and of the French National Committee on Digital Ethics.
He has published or co-edited twelve books and is the author or co-author of more than 120 academic articles and book chapters. He has been invited to lecture and present his work at conferences, workshops and seminars on more than two hundred occasions, in over 38 countries.
As an independent expert, he advises governments, international organisations and private companies on questions of international and European law, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, digital sovereignty and data protection.
References:
* Theodore Christakis’ SSRN Author Page
* Theodore Christakis on LinkedIn
* You Trust Your Chatbot With Everything. Should You? Part I: How The Controller Uses Your Chat Data (March 3, 2026)
* You Trust Your Chatbot With Everything. Should You? Part II: Governments, Courts and the Battle Over Your Chatbot Conversations (June 8th, 2026)
* The Health AI Agent Rush: Five Companies, Your Health Data, and the Governance Questions Nobody Is Asking (March 25th, 2026)
* Mikel Recuero: a deep dive into the European Health Data Space (ES, Masters of Privacy, June 2026)
* Multidisciplinary Institute on AI
* Université Grenoble Alpes: Centre d’études sur la sécurité internationale et les coopérations européennes.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.mastersofprivacy.com/subscribe