The Fusion of Human Data: A European Essay

Europe's democracies are in disorder. Their unease is also consequential to Europe's ubiquitous digital progress. In particular, when citizens are permanently being monitored by their mobile devices, when their behavior is being controlled through continuously fired stimuli using online media, digitization becomes a game changer for democratic societies. The continuous tracking and tracing of the individual and the use of data fusion technologies to extract profiles with thousands of details about a person change the image of man. However, if our enlightened understanding of what the image of man is shifts, we are going to change our European democratic ruling systems and, ultimately, the rule of law in democratic states. Anyone who strives to prolongate democracy into the digital era requires a firm political will and the sharpest weapon of democracy alike: legislation through a democratically constituted legislature.