Admiration for human rights as a key feature of modern democracies has led Laura Drechsler to study law and to focus on new threats posed by technology to these human rights. She therefore chose as her PhD project to focus on how human rights interact with the challenges posed by the widespread use and (ab)use of personal data to establish whether human rights protection provided by the European Union can effectively protect individuals in a globally interconnected world.

Ever wondered why your smartphone seems to know everything about you? You talk to a friend on Whatsapp about getting a new coffee machine and suddenly you see online ads about coffee machines everywhere. What is happening and what can we do about this? Laura Drechsler (VUB - FWO) tells you more about data & data protection law in this video.