Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Let me first of all thank you, organizers and co-organizers, for making this meeting the event that it is today.
I've been attentive in following the precious and valuable interventions, which were all trying to convey ideas and thoughts regarding protection of personal data on the one hand and the correlation between this protection and democracy on the other, which is ultimately the core of the topic.
Needless to remind you, violating private lives is shaking, if not jeopardizing, our democratic choices. That is, the retention of personal data by certain actors, be they state actors or trade actors, renders our democracies vulnerable and subject to manipulation. Today, whether we like it or not, we all become nomophobic, to the extent that this reminds me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. We become victims of our machines.
I have heard Shoshana speak of the failure of legislators to devise laws and enforce frameworks. Galileo once said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it within himself.” I guess this is what we need to grasp today, more than ever before, beyond the restrictions, beyond the laws and beyond the regulations.
Don't you think—my question is directed to Shoshana—that it's an ethical question? Nobody can legislate on ethics, but what is frightening today is that the more it stays, the more it's going to be hard to handle.
How would you react to that?