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Tech is ‘forcing us to evolve’ says Commissioner

Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon has said that technology is impacting on society faster than citizens can figure out how to protect themselves from its impact.

In an interview with Silicon Republic, the commissioner said that tech is “crashing up against social norms and forcing us to evolve”.

She pointed out that when telephone caller identification was first introduced, there was a lot of concern about the privacy implications.

Now, many people are unlikely to take a call unless the call is identified beforehand.

She described this kind of issue as “a very hard call’ for a regulator, pointing out that often issues of data protection are a matter of consumer choice to control.

Public sentiment can change as populations become more digitised, the Data Protection Commissioner believes.

Quadrupled budget

Since her appointment in 2014, Dixon has seen her budget quadruple and her staff numbers climb to over 100.

The Data Protection Commission is conducting large-scale investigations, she confirms, with many high profile data breaches on its books as a result of the introduction of the GDPR last May.