Malawi, which has no privacy law, currently has a children’s ID collection program underway with the intent to register 8.4 million of its children under age 16. The program is part of the national Digital Malawi program which has the goal of linking all Malawi citizens to a government database. Privacy advocates are concerned about the scope of the data being collected, potential for use in government surveillance, and that biometric data is being collected on children as young as newborns.
This coincides with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)’s announcement it is launching an investigation into Twitter, which admitted that a vulnerability affecting its servers and related to 5.4 million users had been exploited.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.