Family trees could pin down why racehorses are getting faster

Are new speed records down to faster horses... or better jockeys? Falk Lademann/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Scientists have confirmed a pattern that many inveterate racing fans may have suspected for years: British horses are getting faster. But whether that is down to breeding techniques or other factors is less certain. The researchers suggest that one way to find out would be to carry out a detailed analysis of thoroughbred pedigrees to examine whether speediness is inherited.

Researchers from the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus analysed the racing speeds of nearly 70,400 horses competing as long ago as 1850 – when detailed records were first collected. The results reveal that some types of horses – sprinters running five to seven furlongs – may be moving nearly 13% faster than their predecessors. Over the past 15 years alone, short-distance racehorses have increased their speed by approximately 0.11% per year, which corresponds to gains of 1.18 seconds, or more than seven horse lengths.

The massive dataset comprises results from more than 616,000 races run in the UK between 1850 and 2012. They set out to resolve contradictory patterns reported by previous studies. In particular, they were curious about the fairly widespread belief that horses are approaching a speed plateau. This seems counterintuitive given that speed appears to be passed down through the generations; breeders have long worked hard to preserve and enhance this trait in thoroughbred lines.

How did they have the patience? Pasadena Tournament of Roses chariot race, 1911. Ashley Van Haeften, CC BY-SA

Previous studies have predominantly focused on results from middle- and long-distance elite races (eight to 12 and 14 to 20 furlongs, respectively), but the current dataset also looks at sprint competitions (five to seven furlongs). It also takes into account variations in environmental conditions that can influence horse performance, such as the course, ground softness and the number of runners in the race.

Although the improvements in speed were most noticeable for sprinters, small increases were also seen among middle- and long-distance runners. However, year-on-year changes have not been consistent over time. Changes to riding style appear to be responsible for dramatic improvements in performance during the early 1900s and in the final quarter of the 20th century.

The first period of rapid improvement seems to have resulted from jockeys’ shortening their stirrups and crouching while riding. The second also seems to be caused by further shortening of the stirrups. However, increased commercialisation of the sport during the latter half of the 20th century may have led to an influx of imported horses who improved the quality of the thoroughbred gene pool.

Horses and jockeys

Despite this potential connection between genetics and speed, the researchers are cautious about declaring that decreases in racing time are a direct result of human breeding practices. There are potentially confounding factors – such as individual jockeys’ racing techniques – that they were not able to consider in the study. In addition, the field does not currently have enough information on equine genetics to fully understand the impact of horse husbandry techniques on thoroughbred racing performance. The authors suggest that this could be rectified by a detailed analysis of thoroughbred pedigrees.

The horse Neptune Collonges is a winner. But how successful were his parents? Carine06/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Alastair Wilson, the co-author of the study, said:

By analysing the performance data in conjunction with knowledge of how horses are related to each other, we should be able to determine just how important genes are for determining speed, and whether the genetic makeup of the thoroughbred population is changing through time.

But in the meantime, don’t expect sprinters to slow down any time soon. Middle- and long-distance runners may be nearing their maximal speeds, but short-distance racers could continue to break records for years to come.

How did the turtle get its shell? Fossil discovery gives us a clue

Poor Pappo. Didn't know what he was missing. David DeHetre/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The evolutionary history of turtles has always been a source of controversy in vertebrate palaeontology. When we give anatomy lectures at my university, we often tell students that “turtles might as well have come from outer space”. This is because a lack of fossils showing intermediate stages in their evolution is making it hard to trace their origins. But now scientists have discovered a 240m year-old turtle fossil that could begin to unravel the enigma.

Turtles and tortoises are remarkable creatures with a weird body that is very different from other reptile. But unfortunately there are very few fossils that tell us about the transition from early reptiles to turtles. In other words, modern turtles – with a bony upper shell, carapace, and an under-shell linked together by a series of bridges – seem to just pop up in the fossil record more than 200m years ago.

Reconstruction of the grandfather of the modern turtle, living some 240m years ago. Rainer Schoch

Although we know that turtles are reptiles (or at least that’s the current scientific consensus), their position within this major evolutionary branch of vertebrate animals has been greatly debated. Are they so-called diapsid reptiles, characterised by the presence of two distinctive skull openings behind the eye? This group includes all dinosaurs, flying reptiles and crocodiles, among others.

Because many living and fossil turtles completely lack skull openings in this position it has also long been suggested that these reptiles might comprise an entirely distinct branch, below the divergence of diapsids.

Who’s your Pappo?

The turtle described in the new paper is called Pappochelys, which literally means “the grandfather turtle”. The creature, which does not have a shell, appears to have been living in, or around, the Vellberg lake now preserved in 240m-year-old sediments at Eschenau, near Nuremberg in east Germany.

Fossil with turtle bones described in the paper.

Another important feature of this turtle is that it did have two openings in the skull behind the eye. That means that there is now clear evidence that these vertebrates are indeed diapsids – higher up in the vertebrate family tree than much fossil evidence might have led us to believe. The shape of its skull also indicates that turtles were more closely related to lepidosaurs (such as lizards and snakes) than to archosaurs (such as dinosaurs and birds).

The researchers have also worked out that the turtle was about 20cm long and most likely semi-aquatic, living around and in the lake. They suggest that perhaps the complex turtle shell so characteristic of living forms first evolved not just for protecting soft internal body parts but also as a form of ballast for controlling buoyancy in lakes.

Turtle bone puzzle. Credit: Rainer Schoch

What’s also amazing about this discovery is the fact that fossils from the Vellberg lake have been known to science for more than 200 years. Yet specimens of Pappochelys were not found until 10 years ago and are just now being understood.

Our love of technology risks becoming a quiet conspiracy against ourselves

Technological invasion. reidrac, CC BY-SA

With memories of World War I still very much on his mind, in 1935 HG Wells wrote The Open Conspiracy, which advanced a new approach to the perennial problems of human aggression, national conflict and political inertia.

This conspiracy, as envisaged by Wells, would be a revolutionary movement that reflected the new spirit of the times. “Never before” he stated in the opening paragraph, “have the conditions of life changed so swiftly and enormously as they have changed for mankind in the last fifty years.”

Reading Wells today one might be forgiven for experiencing a sense of déjà vu. The changes he identified were, as are those we face today, largely the result of technological and scientific advances. The telegraph and increased communication had shrunk the world, just as the internet and digitisation has done so for us today. Yet while science forged ahead, politics and morality lagged behind. The Open Conspiracy filled the ideas vacuum left by the failures of parliamentary democracy and socialism.

Conspiracy in the open

Wells suggested that, unlike conspiracies of old, this would be a visible conspiracy grown from below rather than led from above by an elite. His conspirators were “the most sane and energetic people” – anti-militarist in orientation, actively subversive of government and traditional institutions that perpetuated the folly of tradition. They would be drawn from different disciplines: banking, finance, and the sciences – and dedicated to spreading scientific knowledge worldwide.

Wells described his conspirators as awakening from an illusion, made possible by the almost instant exchange of information and a new method of organisation that would map the activities of the whole community. At the centre of the Open Conspiracy was “the brain of the modern community, a great encyclopedic organisation, kept constantly up-to-date and giving approximate estimates and directions for all the material activities of mankind" – which rather sounds like a view of “big data” as seen from the 1930s.

Out with the old…

The similarities between Wells’ description of his new world order of peace-loving creatives and today’s technological-utopian culture of the Bay Area, California is striking. Indeed, all that is missing from his account is a description of the networked personal computer (and the benefits of organic farming). The anti-government stance, the commitment to peaceful causes, the celebration of technical expertise, the crucial involvement of private enterprise and commerce, the critique of education and the belief that more knowledge (about everything) will solve the world’s most pressing issues far better than any government – such claims read like a Silicon Valley manifesto.

Has Silicon Valley become a dystopian vision of a post-privacy future? codex41, CC BY

But I’ve started to wonder why so many people outside the charmed circle of technology innovators in Silicon Valley, seem willing to embrace its vision – especially when it undermines something as fundamental as the liberal democratic right to personal privacy. I’ve found that thinking in terms of a technological conspiracy helps pinpoint the politics involved, whatever the technologists might claim.

Today, it is not uncommon for leaders of major technology corporations to speak about the inevitability of a post-privacy world. Politicians frequently offer the not-very-reassuring cliché that: “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear”. Dave Eggers' novel The Circle conjures the deeply Orwellian-sounding phrase “Privacy is Theft” to describe a dystopian vision of the near future. So what is happening?

A subtle rewriting of the rules

In my time working at the Conspiracy and Democracy Project at Cambridge University I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a technological conspiracy, rather like Wells’ Open Conspiracy, that is very visible and highly participatory. It produces a whole set of lifestyles and descriptions that challenge conventional wisdom and traditional structures of power.

Evangelical in their claims about the future, today’s technologists encourage us to embrace their language and ideas, use them to describe ourselves and our actions and condemn those who are not sufficiently tech-savvy to irrelevance.

But technology is not neutral – and neither is code nor numbers. There are human, subjective judgements lurking behind the apparent objectivity offered by algorithms and the “user-friendly” operating systems. These technologies perform almost magically, while at the same time enabling all sorts of organisations to easily collect information about us, something that makes it that bit easier to usher in new forms of surveillance and control.

Putting technology in its place by recognising the political and social factors that support its vision is a step towards recognising our complicity in this conspiracy against ourselves and, perhaps, towards reclaiming our right to be left in peace.

Don't fear falling into a black hole – you may live on as a hologram

Black holes don't deserve their bad reputation, says study. NASA/wikimedia

In the movie Interstellar, the main character Cooper escapes from a black hole in time to see his daughter Murph in her final days. Some have argued that the movie is so scientific that it should be taught in schools. In reality, many scientists believe that anything sent into a black hole would probably be destroyed. But a new study suggests that this might not be the case after all.

The research says that, rather than being devoured, a person falling into a black hole would actually be absorbed into a hologram – without even noticing. The paper challenges a rival theory stating that anybody falling into a black hole hits a “firewall” and is immediately destroyed.

Hawking’s black holes

Forty years ago Stephen Hawking shocked the scientific establishment with his discovery that black holes aren’t really black. Classical physics implies that anything falling through the horizon of a black hole can never escape. But Hawking showed that black holes continually emit radiation once quantum effects are taken into account. Unfortunately, for typical astrophysical black holes, the temperature of this radiation is far lower than that of the cosmic microwave background, meaning detecting them is beyond current technology.

Hawking’s calculations are perplexing. If a black hole continually emits radiation, it will continually lose mass – eventually evaporating. Hawking realised that this implied a paradox: if a black hole can evaporate, the information about it will be lost forever. This means that even if we could measure the radiation from a black hole we could never figure out it was originally formed. This violates an important rule of quantum mechanics that states information cannot be lost or created.

Another way to look at this is that Hawking radiation poses a problem with determinism for black holes. Determinism implies that the state of the universe at any given time is uniquely determined from its state at any other time. This is how we can trace its evolution both astronomically and mathematically though quantum mechanics.

Lots of theories but only one way to find out for sure. NASA/Flickr, CC BY-SA

This means that the loss of determinism would have to arise from reconciling quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of gravity – a notoriously hard problem and ultimate goal for many physicists. Black hole physics provides a test for any potential quantum gravity theory. Whatever your theory is, it must explain what happens to the information recording a black hole’s history.

It took two decades for scientists to come up with a solution. They suggested that the information stored in a black hole is proportional to its surface area (in two dimensions) rather than its volume (in three dimensions). This could be explained by quantum gravity, where the three dimensions of space could be reconstructed from a two-dimensional world without gravity – much like a hologram. Shortly afterwards, string theory, the most studied theory of quantum gravity, was shown to be holographic in this way.

Using holography we can describe the evaporation of the black hole in the two-dimensional world without gravity, for which the usual rules of quantum mechanics apply. This process is deterministic, with small imperfections in the radiation encoding the history of the black hole. So holography tells us that information is not lost in black holes, but tracking down the flaw in Hawking’s original arguments has been surprisingly hard.

Fuzzballs versus firewalls

But exactly what the black holes described by quantum theory look like is harder to work out. In 2003, Samir Mathur proposed that black holes are in fact fuzzballs, in which there is no sharp horizon. Quantum fluctuations around the horizon region records the information about the hole’s history and thus Mathur’s proposal resolves the information loss paradox. However the idea has been criticised since it implies that somebody falling into a fuzzball has a very different experience to somebody falling into a black hole descried by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The general relativity description of black holes suggests that once you go past the event horizon, the surface of a black hole, you can go deeper and deeper. As you do, space and time become warped until they reach a point called the “singularity” at which point the laws of physics cease to exist. (Although in reality, you would be die pretty early on on this journey as you are pulled apart by intense tidal forces).

In Mathur’s universe, however, there is nothing beyond the fuzzy event horizon. Currently, a rival theory in quantum gravity is that anybody falling into a black hole hits a “firewall” and is immediately destroyed. The firewall proposal has been criticised since (like fuzzballs) firewalls have drastically different behaviour at the horizon than general relativity black holes.

But Mathur argues that to an outside observer, somebody falling into a fuzzball looks almost the same as somebody falling into an Einstein black hole, even though those falling in have very different experiences. Others working on firewalls and fuzzballs may well feel that these arguments rely on properties of the example he used. Mathur used an explicit description of a very special kind of fuzzball to make his arguments. Such special fuzzballs are probably very different to the fuzzballs needed to describe realistic astrophysical black holes.

The debate about what actually happens when one falls into a black hole will probably continue for some time to come. The key question is to understand is not that the horizon region is reconstructed as a hologram – but exactly how this happens.

Uber labour ruling in California could send shockwaves through the sharing economy

Some feel as if they're being taken for a ride, rather than enjoying it. Andrew Matthews/PA

The rapid rise of ride-hailing firm Uber has seen it grow into a global business reaching from California to India and many points in between. The paying public has been receptive, but there has been outrage amongst taxi companies and the firm has even been banned by regulators in some jurisdictions.

Now a labour tribunal in California has ruled against Uber on a legal loophole at the heart of its business model: that its drivers are not employees, meaning it does not hold certain (potentially expensive) responsibilities towards them as an employer.

Uber makes use of technology to match freelance drivers to passengers needing a lift. In the same way other apps, such as Airbnb or Handy, respectively match those with a spare room or domestic/trades skills with those in need. Called the “sharing economy”, this approach is seen by some such as Debbie Wosskow in her 2014 report for the UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills, as potentially beneficial to the functioning of the labour market.

Such a model can be seen to potentially benefit freelancers in particular. The platforms allow flexible working and reduces freelancers' transaction costs through automatically assigning payment to them for their services. Society may also benefit. Wosskow recognises the potential for sharing platforms to reduce wider unemployment and underemployment (where, for example, workers may be over-qualified or work fewer hours than they would like).

But the model has prompted clashes with existing businesses over allegations related to users' safety and unfair competition. These are particular concerns for often heavily regulated industries such as hotels and licensed cabs. Airbnb has also faced fines in Barcelona for issues around accountability and unfair trade, after failing to register with the local authorities. While those sharing platforms which are aware of such concerns offer insurance, minimum service guarantees and background checks for contractors, regulatory issues remain.

Regulatory issues specific to employment crop up in many of these firms' business models. Handy explicitly states on its website that it is not an employer. By not affording workers employee status, organisations reduce their responsibilities and legal obligations. Under UK law, for example, employees (who work under a direct employment contract with an organisation) are distinct from “workers” who do not. Workers are not entitled to, amongst other rights, compensation in cases of unfair dismissal as well as being deprived of various forms of leave and statutory sick and redundancy pay.

Uber hasn’t met with universal acclaim, with protests in cities such as Portland. aaronpk, CC BY

This is a contemporary concern. Research from the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development reveals that non-standard employment relationships (such as zero-hours and temporary contracts, homeworking and self-employment) have increased since the economic crisis of 2008. What’s more, a growing number of those working under such arrangements do so involuntarily. The sharing economy may further increase the precarious nature of modern employment and encourage exploitation and uncertainty.

The ruling against Uber last week may prove ground-breaking. The California Labour Commission ruled that Barbara Berwick, a contractor working for Uber, should be classed as an employee after she sought work-related expenses from the company. The commission defended its judgement saying the services of Berwick and other drivers are integral to Uber who could not exist without them. Uber is contesting the ruling (it has successfully defended itself in other similar cases in the US) but the ramifications are potentially huge for Uber and other firms in the sharing economy.

Some analysis has decried the ruling as a threat to the existence of the sharing economy model, while others have highlighted the financial implications of the ruling to similar businesses. The ruling also has implications for contemporary employment: while the decision may not eventually be upheld in California and won’t directly apply elsewhere, it has brought the insecurity of some work into sharp focus.

It highlights the importance of viewing potentially positive trends in contemporary employment – such as technologically powered labour flexibility – with a critical eye, recognising potential negative effects such as uncertainty and reduced employer responsibilities. Opportunities offered via sharing platforms may benefit those moonlighting or not seeking a regular income, but the nature of this sort of employment may be harmful to others.

Developing technology opens the space for companies such as Uber to expedite the rise of precarious employment across the economy. The status of workers covered under such arrangements and the impact this has on their rights should become a key future concern. The Berwick case in California may be a milestone in this debate for the future of employment.

How we found signs of 'recent' running water on Mars

The ice caps on Mars could have been the source of the water flows. ESA, CC BY-SA

A hot topic in science over the past few decades has been whether liquid water is present or has been present on Mars in the past few millions of years. But despite a lot of research no conclusive answer has been put forward to date. Our international team has now hunted down another piece of evidence. By comparing satellite images of Mars with mud flows on Earth, we found that running water must have existed on the red planet relatively “recently”, in the past million years.

Martian soil discovered by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. wikipedia

My (intellectual) journey to Mars when I first saw the beautiful high-resolution images of the surface of Mars in the early 2000s from Mars Global Surveyor and others. I thought they were from deserts on Earth. I was studying how the action of water, wind, ice, and volcanism form landscapes on Earth and realised that there was another planet out there remarkably like our own. Since then I have been drawn to Mars and in particular how flowing water has sculpted its surface.

Tilt and flows

Our new finding indicates that the planet might be more habitable than previously thought. Knowledge about past water flows could also provide a valuable resource for future human missions to Mars. However, for me, the most important thing about the study is that it ultimately guides us towards a better general understanding of how planets work, including our own.

We still struggle to understand how natural variations in the Earth’s axial tilt – the angle between its rotational axis and its plane of orbit around the Sun, which gives rise to seasons – have affected climate over a timescale of tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Mars experiences much wilder swings in axial tilt over similar periods of time, because it does not have a large moon to stabilise its orbit. We used this as a starting point for our research.

What we found was that sufficient quantities of water flowed on Mars' surface to create large “debris flows” at certain spots when there was a high axial tilt. Debris flows are slurries of water, mud and rock which surge downhill – on Earth they can be very hazardous and are triggered by heavy rain or volcanically melted ice or snow (also called lahars).

Figure 1: The Istok crater.

We investigated deposits of these debris flows within an impact crater on Mars called “Istok”. Because meteorites are always falling onto Mars (approximately 30 10m impact craters form per year), we can estimate the age of a surface by counting the number of impact craters – the more there are, the older the surface. Using this standard technique we estimated that Istok crater formed around one million years ago. Because the debris-flow deposits are found within the crater we know they must have happened after Istok crater formed. And because we see many hundreds of overlapping deposits we also know there must have been repeated episodes of water saturating the surface to trigger the debris flows.

We used two satellite images of Istok taken from different angles to produce a high-resolution 3D computer model of the terrain (see figure 1) and compared the debris flows from the pictures with deposits found in Arctic environments on Earth, such as Iceland. Remarkably, we found that the such flows happened at the same rate on Mars as on Earth.

Mud flows on Iceland helped us trace water on Mars. credit NERC ARSF, Author provided

Today’s climate on Mars is cold and arid – water exists only as ice (mainly in glaciers and the ice caps) and as vapour, rather than as liquid. For water to have flowed recently our results indicate that swings in Mars’ axial tilt must have produced very big changes in climate.

The research is also helping us get a fuller picture of the way in which the “Earth-like” glacial-interglacial cycles currently operate on Mars. These cycles occur, as on Earth, when the planet’s axial tilt changes. When the tilt increases, the ice-caps disappear. Mars is currently in the “glacial” part of the cycle, where the water is trapped as ice and so no liquid water is formed. On Earth they melt when the tilt changes, but on Mars the water probably doesn’t melt but goes instead into the atmosphere as water vapour and clouds. These clouds can produce snow – and it’s this snow that we think was melting and causing debris flows in Istok crater.

Fresh gullies

We also found gullies similar to those formed by debris flows in Istok in many other locations on the Martian surface. But for some mysterious reason these do not look as fresh. Is there something peculiar about Istok crater which means the “weather” conditions were different to the rest of Mars during the past million years? Was there another source of the water at Istok that we have overlooked – perhaps underground? For me, it is the fact that research almost always throws up such new and interesting questions that keeps drawing me back to studying Mars.

Thanks to this study, I’ll certainly be paying more attention to terrestrial landscapes where melting snow or ice generates debris flows in the future and then study how the unique environment of Mars affects the behaviour of debris flows through laboratory experiments. I have great hopes that scientists will continue to produce papers on water on Mars and from these we will develop a better understanding of how planetary surfaces evolve under a changing climate system.

How EU data protection law could interfere with targeted ads

Businesses say data protection sacrifices the cloud advantage for security. cloud by Maksim Kabakou/shutterstock.com

The successor to the 20-year-old European data protection directive has inched closer to becoming law, having been approved by the Council of Ministers, which represents each of the 28 EU member states. This has led to howls of anguish from some parts of the computing industry, not just the usual suspects based in the US such as IBM and Amazon, but also European firms such as German software company SAP.

Data protection law governs who can gather and retain personal data, the circumstances under which it is allowed, and what they can do with it. The move to an increasingly digital economy makes this vital to get right: too little protection erodes trust and leaves businesses and individuals vulnerable, while overbearing rules make it difficult for organisations to work together. The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to encompass the technological changes since its predecessor was enacted, such as the rise of social media and cloud computing.

The regulation is a heavily revised version of the draft passed by the European Parliament in March 2014, with largely pro-business changes such as decreased fines for companies breaking the rules and wider exemptions for the sorts of data and uses covered by the regulations.

Before a final version is reached there will be further negotiations between the European Commission, the parliament and the Council of Ministers. Nevertheless businesses are howling now, because this is essentially their last chance to do so.

Unlike a directive, which member states enshrine into their national law through passing their own legislation, a regulation is European law that applies directly to member states. In principle then, a regulation provides harmonised rules for businesses working across the European Union. In this respect it does seem that the industry has a legitimate complaint.

Competing views

The European Parliament’s original draft envisaged that, for a company registered with member state, that country’s data protection authority would act as a “one-stop shop” for data protection matters, whereas currently a firm may have to negotiate with the authorities of each country in which they operate.

Facebook, for example, is being sued in Belgium despite being regulated in Ireland. But this has been significantly diluted in the Council of Ministers’ draft – and it’s not clear whether this will relieve firms of the need to deal with every national regulator. Certainly it seems that a failure to introduce this change destroys most of the practical benefit of having a regulation rather than a directive.

The industry’s other complaint is less straightforward. Under the current system cloud services companies such as Amazon are classified as “data processors” since they do not collect the data themselves. That means they are not held liable for using the data illegally unless they breach the contract with the company whose data they process. The industry argues that this is simple, and gives citizens a single point of contact in the event of a breach of data protection. The new regulations make processors also liable – something IBM argues “risks blurring these lines of responsibility”.

Free, ad-supported online services could suffer. apps by Twin Design/shutterstock.com

Consent

If the world of data protection consisted of large banks processing clearly identifiable personal data, this would be a reasonable argument. But these days, we hand over snippets of personal data all the time – search terms, email addresses, browsing histories – to a huge number of organisations of varying technical and legal competence. Very often these offload that data to cloud computing companies for processing – firms of, one hopes, greater competence (despite the fact that both AOL and Netflix have blundered in the past).

This handing over is currently done implicitly and is generally on a “take it or leave it” basis: if I want to buy a railway ticket online I have to consent to the terms. Parliament required “explicit consent” for data processing, whereas the draft approved by EU members has reduced this to “unambiguous consent”. This may mean that using the website counts as consent, but the wording in the council’s draft includes “any clear affirmative action […] signifying […] agreement”.

In a privacy-conscious world it should be possible to consent separately to the use of my data for the purpose of buying a ticket, to the use by the railway company for targeted advertising, and for the use by the data processing firm the railway has hired for targeted advertising. But this separation seems to have been significantly weakened.

Benefits without liability

Technologically, processing firms are in a very powerful position when it comes to aggregating people’s data. In searching the Amazon terms and conditions, I have been unable to find any guarantee that they will not re-process any data I supply. We already know that companies such as Facebook and Google make their money from targeted advertising made accurate through processing their users' data.

In a very perceptive article in the UCLA Law Review in 2009, Paul Ohm proposed that these data processors and potential aggregators are where we should regulate more stringently. In a similar vein, a UK survey in 2014 found 20% were concerned about the privacy implications of government surveillance, while 60% were worried about the sharing of personal information by businesses. And recently, David Anderson’s report into government surveillance reiterates the point that “commercial use of consumer data can have serious impacts on the personal lives of individuals”. Such concerns cannot be brushed aside, so simply howling “we shouldn’t be regulated” isn’t enough.