New Zealand is generally an engaged country, and most of you reading this will be part of or will have been members of a club at some point. Whether it is a swimming, softball or rugby club or a miniature horse society, you will have been involved in one or know someone who is in one.

I recently got privacy advice from a blackmailer. The email said he or she had studied my love life and created a video series about me. The first part apparently showed the X-rated video that I watched and the second part, taken with my webcam, showed me doing “inappropriate things”.

Last month, I travelled to the United States, in part to attend the Global Privacy Summit.

My second day in Washington involved more meetings and discussion of hot-button issues in the tech and privacy sectors.

On Wednesday 1 May, the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) hosted their Data Protection Authorities Day (DPA) at the White House.

We’ve all seen the ads for genetic ancestry testing - as a way for people to trace their genealogy beyond traditional family trees and historical detail. And thanks to shows like CSI, the public might think of DNA as an investigative tool for the Police; a silver bullet that can solve any high-profile case in just minutes. But DNA can be used for much more than law enforcement activities or tracing ancestry.

OPC has teamed up with South Auckland community initiative UpSouth for this year’s Privacy Week (13-17 May).

Once upon a time, we didn’t collect data about people because we didn’t have the technical means to do so. Computers weren’t fast enough, sensors weren’t small enough, and storage wasn’t cheap enough. As technology has continually improved, it has enabled a superabundance of data – more data being collected means more data is being stored and transmitted, which means more data is being used.