EDPS formal comments on the draft Commission Delegated Regulation supplementing Directive (EU) 2010/31 of the European Parliament and of the Council by establishing an optional common European Union scheme for rating the smart readiness of buildings and the Commission Implementing Regulation detailing the technical modalities for the effective implementation of an optional common Union scheme for rating of smart readiness of buildings.

Quantum computers can be highly beneficial to scientific developments due to the new, speedy way of performing computing. Once available, they however could break currently used cryptography and undermine the protection of (personal) data.

The physical laws of quantum mechanics allow for an alternative method to how today’s computers process information. Whereas traditional computers use bits (0 or 1) as a building block, quantum computers employ quantum bits, or qubits, that can be at the same moment a combination of |0⟩ and |1⟩.

The possible spectrum of values one qubit can adopt is best depicted by the surface of the Bloch sphere in Figure 1. While bits allow for two discrete values, qubits can store a point in a two-dimensional continuum, a surface of a sphere. Quantum computing can take advantage of those more powerful qubits and carry out operations not only for a determined value |0⟩ or |1⟩, but also for all possible superpositions at the same time. Consequently, quantum computing attains an efficiency advantage over binary computing for selected tasks. Some tasks would be rendered only feasible due to this efficiency boost, if the appropriate quantum computer hardware were available.

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EDPS comments on the Commission draft implementing decision amending Implementing Decision 2019/1765 as regards the cross-border exchange of data between national contact tracing and warning mobile applications with regard to combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EDPS-Civil society summit is an annual meeting between the EDPS and civil society organisations organized to discuss the state of data protection and privacy in the EU.

The 2020 edition will focus on a number of issues relating facial recognition, biometric surveillance technologies and its effects on activists
in the EU.

The Summit is part of Privacy Camp 2020.

Register here.

You can follow the event on our Twitter account and participate in the conversation using the hashtag #PrivacyCamp20.

This report provides an overview of the activities carried out by the EDPS from 2015-2019. In particular, it focuses on how the EDPS has worked towards implementing the objectives set out in the EDPS Strategy 2015-2019, which relate to digitisation, global partnerships and the modernisation of data protection. This involved not only contributing historical pieces of legislation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation and Regulation 2018/1725, but also bringing the concepts of ethics and accountability to the forefront of data protection discourse and application.

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To tackle climate change, the European Union has set itself a target to ensure that 80% of EU consumers are using smart meters by 2020. This should accelerate the move towards cleaner energy and reduce energy consumption. The European Commission issued a Recommendation on preparations for the roll-out of smart metering systems in 2012. Today, there are an increasing number of smart meters being used across the EU and integrated with other smart home appliances.

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Ever since Alan Turing published his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence in 1950, computer scientists have tried to get machines to mimic human behaviour and make them as intelligent or as smart as human beings, by having them play imitation games.

Turing raised the question: Can machines think? He suggested that something “resembling thinking” could be achieved if we provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This is the main reason why we call modern machines with some imitation capacity smart devices.

Today, a new generation of speaking devices interact with us in human-like ways to execute simple tasks and answer questions, and not only in English. How is this possible?

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