So good afternoon and welcome to the Scottish Parliament. My name is Esther Robertson and I'm one of

the directors of Scotland's Futures Forum, best here at the Parliament, who are working on the

Festival of Politics. And it's my pleasure to welcome you to not the event I ever imagined I'd be

chairing on data vultures and democracy. This year's event is actually celebrating the 18th year of engaging people of all ages

and from all walks of life to participate in three days of spirited debate.

And we're delighted you were able to join us and I'm really looking forward to asking you

to engage in comments and questions later in the session.

I would say that I can remember 18 years ago, sadly, for my sins, the skepticism there was about a festival of politics and

did it not seem like a contradiction in terms. But I think it's a tribute to the Parliament and the

group that organise this event to see the huge range of topics covered in the programme,

and I hope you'll all be able to take advantage to some of the others today.

If you're keen, for those of you that are on social media, you can talk about the event today using the hashtag FOP 2020.

Today's event is looking at the effect of data on our democracy.

We all know that information about us is collected and shared, often without our awareness

or even our permission by data gathering companies and the so-called data vultures.

Who's regulating this mass surveillance and how can we protect

our privacy and democracy from this trend? I'm delighted to have three experts. I just have to hold

the courts. I don't know very much on this subject at all. On my right, I have Professor Charles

Rab, who's a professorial fellow at the University of Edinburgh and a

director of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy.

And we'll obviously have some very interesting views on the subject that we're here to talk about.

Beside Charles, we have Professor Eva Lugar, and we're delighted that Eva's been willing to step in at very short notice. Kate Domet, unfortunately, had to withdraw at the last moment and Eva's just back from holiday and has stepped in, so thank you, Eva. She's co-director of the Institute of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh and Eva works with the World Economic Forum on

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