PRIVACY VIEWS FROM THE START-UP NATION
In today’s episode of the Pad-cast, I was joined by the highly-engaging privacy thought-leader Avishai Ostrin of PrivacyTeam, who is a Senior Privacy Consultant and lawyer, qualified in both the UK and Israel. Based in Tel Aviv, the heart of the “start-up nation”, Avishai has vast experience advising start-ups, hyper-growth businesses and several tech unicorns. He offers some startling insights and a global privacy perspective, as we continue to live through a global pandemic.
Episode highlights include:
Avi Ostrin: [00:00:00] Human rights generally and privacy specifically, don’t get tested when everything is all lovely and rosy and hunky dory and everyone’s going about their business and everything’s fine. The real test of human rights and of privacy specifically is how the rights get preserved or don’t get preserved in times of emergency.
Anthony Brown: [00:00:20] This is the padcast, your privacy and data podcast with me, Anthony Brown interviewing leaders from across the industry to provide you with news, views, insight and opinion. Hello, there. Another very warm welcome to the padcast. I’m Anthony Brown, and today I’m joined by, well, all the way from Tel Aviv, actually by Avi Ostrin or Avi, as we will continue to call in during this episode of the padcast. Avi is both the UK and Israeli qualified lawyer who and this is hot off the press, by the way, he’s just recently joined very recently within the last couple of days, actually Israel’s leading privacy consultancy who go by the name of the Privacy Team. Avi has joined as a senior privacy consultant. He’s going to tell us more about that. He’s going to tell us more about making a move from a more traditional law firm into a consultancy and but basically by way of background. And let Avi tell you more in a minute, this has followed several years of him working in senior positions in leading law firms in Israel. Just one final thing. And then I’ll let Avi talk as a heads up Privacy Team work with many of Israel’s amazing start ups and growth companies, including several tech unicorns that are increasingly experiencing international success and have led Israel to be referred to as the Start-Up Nation. So Avi, it’s wonderful to have you on the show. How are you and how’s life in Israel right now?
Avi Ostrin: [00:01:51] Yeah, thank you very much for having me. Anthony, it’s it’s wonderful to be on the on the padcast. I’ve been a fan for for a long time now, so it’s great to be on as a guest. Things in Israel now are really looking up. We were just talking before the recording about the fact that I’m in the office now. We’re back in the office after many, many months of being out and kind of seeing a little bit of the light at the end of the tunnel for us. Hopefully we’re very much hoping. I’m sure people in the UK and all around the world are kind of looking over at Israel, glancing over and seeing this could potentially be us in a few months. And I very much hope that that is that’s the trajectory we’re moving in to the world’s kind of going back to whatever the new normal is. But yes, going back to normal.
Anthony Brown: [00:02:36] Absolutely. And I’ve got to firstly just comment on the backdrop there. I mean, obviously, it’s it’s a nod to where I am and where the padcast is recorded. But yeah, number 10 is looking pretty good there behind you.
Avi Ostrin: [00:02:50] Yeah. Listen, I figured I figured we can’t travel yet. Maybe when we can go back to traveling, definitely London will be on my first, the top of my list of destinations. And the truth is, this is probably the closest you can get to number 10 these days. I don’t I don’t think you can get this close in real life. So at least we got it on the backdrop there.
Anthony Brown: [00:03:10] So yeah, absolutely. And I guess, you know, similarly to Israel, you know, the UK is, you know, is really forging ahead with the vaccine programme. So I think we we met for the first time on a zoom a couple of weeks ago. And yeah, I think I think we had such an interesting conversation. I was really keen to get you on the padcast. And it’s kind of, yeah, I mean, similar sort of situation, similar green shoots, similar positivity at the moment for, you know, fortunately for both of the countries that we live in just before we sort of dive into a bit more around that and sort of the privacy state of play, perhaps in Israel and lots of other stuff to talk about. Can you tell us a bit about your your background, Avi, because I know you’ve had a really, really interesting few decades, decades.
Avi Ostrin: [00:03:55] Wow, you’re going back pretty far there Anthony yeah, no with pleasure. So I, as you can hear from my accent originally from the U.S., but I moved to Israel when I was only seven years old. So I did grow up in here in Israel and Jerusalem, went to law school here, trained as a lawyer and one of the large Israeli firms that works with. I did mainly M&A and corporate commercial work like any young and up and coming lawyer would, and I really fell in love with the area of privacy. And the reason that I found it so fascinating is because it really it involved two areas or two topics that I was extremely passionate about and interested in. One was obviously the law, which is why I went to study it. I find that very, very interesting and legal concepts and you know how the law is applied in practice and the other area is technology. I’m a huge tech geek. I like to say I’m the largest tech geek you can you can get without actually having gone and studied engineering or something tech related or computer science. So I really love technology. And you know, the area of privacy is one of those areas where you can really talk about the two and experience the two and work with the two of those areas with law and technology on a day to day basis, which is why it’s so fascinating to me. So I was looking around at legislative landscape and realize that Israel probably is, you know, an interesting place to work to be based. But the Israeli privacy legislation isn’t exactly what you call a gold standard of privacy, and they were talking about this new exciting regulation in the EU called GDPR at the time and so I was looking for a place where I could actually practice this new, fascinating area of law, and I’ve known the founder of Asserson and Trevor Asserson for many, many years. And so I said, Well, I’d love to come and join you and I’d love to work in privacy in your firm. And he said to me, Well, there are two problems. The first one is that you’re not an English lawyer, and we only hire English lawyers. And the second one is that we don’t have a privacy practice at Asserson. So he thought he was shutting the door in my face. But in fact, that only encouraged me to try even harder. And so I went back and said, Well, you know what, then what I’ll do is I’ll qualify in the UK and I’ll start the privacy practice at Asserson. And that is what I did. I didn’t really. Not not one for taking no for an answer. So I that’s what I did. I joined Asserson and I re-qualified in the UK, started the privacy practice here at Asserson or at. I should say I’m still speaking and it’s still fresh in my mind. But but yeah, but so I started the privacy practice that Asserson and I was there for three and a half years and recently decided to move to Privacy Team. And the move to privacy team for me was from from a personal perspective. It was really when I was looking at the advice that I was giving clients, I realized that there is a bit of a limitation when you’re practicing as a lawyer in a law firm because you’re really limited to the specific jurisdiction that your law firm operates in. So in my case, for example, I was a qualified lawyer in Israel, but working in a UK law firm. And so the advice that I was giving was advice on UK law and the application of UK law within the privacy realm, within the privacy sphere. And what I wanted to do increasingly more and more when I came in in contact with my clients is that I wanted to have a much more global approach to privacy compliance because at the end of the day, if a company is building a tech product, yes, GDPR is super important. And yes, the UK is an absolutely crucial market to make sure that you’re compliant in. But at the end of the day, companies, when they’re looking at privacy compliance, they’re looking at it from a global perspective. And that was very important to me to be able to have that global perspective and to work within a company and to be able to advise on all different types of privacy laws. There are so many of them that are coming out now. It’s really amazing to see and and so I wanted to work with all of these different legislative frameworks and all the different jurisdictions, which is why I decided to make the move from privacy lawyer to privacy consultant, which is where I am today. So that’s the that’s kind of the background to my to my move.
Anthony Brown: [00:08:10] And thank you for explaining that Avi, It’s a really interesting move. Would I? Would I be correct or incorrect in saying then if you are more of a consultant, it means that you will be more engaged in a sort of operational perspective, as well as just the sort of law. Does that broaden things for you in general?
Avi Ostrin: [00:08:28] Yeah, I think I think it’s it’s much more the ability to embed yourself within the company, within the client that you’re working with and talk about privacy from all the different elements and aspects, whether it’s the product team, the marketing team, the sales team or HR C-suite, all of the different aspects of the of the company. So having a much more kind of holistic approach to the company and to privacy compliance. So they may say to you, you know, we’re starting a marketing campaign in Australia, what do we need to do in order to to be compliant with that? So that’s very difficult to do. If you’re a UK privacy lawyer, because you don’t really know the legislation in Australia. It’s important, though, to stress Anthony. I think for the listeners as well is that there is absolutely a very, very important role to play in as a privacy lawyer. It’s an absolutely crucial job. And I’ll explain in a second why. But it’s not, you know, I don’t want it to come off as sounding that there’s some that a consultant is somehow better than a lawyer or a lawyer is better than a consultant. They’re just different functions. So I’ll give you an example of where a lawyer is absolutely crucial. So I had a client who came to me a couple of I think it was about two years ago, and what they were trying to do is they wanted to do a clinical trial of a new medication. Now, obviously a clinical trial, as you can imagine and as your listeners can imagine, involves a huge amount of sensitive health personal information. And so you need in order to do that, you would have your you would probably have your internal consultant, whether it’s, you know, the internal privacy team or the DPO or whoever it is within the company would consult with local counsel who would know inside and out all of the regulations and legislation and specific issues that have to do with carrying out a clinical trial. And they would, you know, that’s where the deep, deep, deep knowledge of a privacy lawyer would be absolutely crucial for that. So I think the way I kind of view it from a very general perspective is you have your consultants who are kind of more of if, I guess, if you would compare it to a legal role.You have your consultants who’s more of the general counsel of the company, the GC function, who’s often called on on any matter that is legal, no matter where it is in the world than they have to, you know, go and figure out the answer. But when you have a specific question that you need very, very specific jurisdiction specific advice, then that’s when the role of a lawyer becomes absolutely critical.
Anthony Brown: [00:11:05] Absolutely. I think you can be in a better place. Could you really, since I’ve got to know you over the last few weeks, I think and really it was spun out of hearing you talk a few weeks ago. I think on a webinar you were talking about Israel and the fact that it is known as the Start-Up Nation. I think one of the incredible facts that many people may not know is that I think population wise, it’s got the largest amount of start ups anywhere in the world. Yeah, yeah. So I guess you’re in a perfect storm, aren’t you? Given what you do? Can you just explain a bit to us, Avi, about why you think there’s this backdrop in Israel of so many successful tech startups that are going out to the world?
Avi Ostrin: [00:11:46] It’s an amazing, amazing question, and it’s true. It’s almost a phenomenon, an international phenomenon that’s that’s very difficult to explain. By the way, there’s an excellent book called Start-Up Nation that I would recommend people pick up if they’re interested in reading a little bit more about this, because the amount of information on this can can definitely fill many, many pages in a book. But I think the the general answer that’s given to that question is that it’s, as you say, it’s the perfect storm of a number of things. First of all, Israel has mandatory and military conscription, so mandatory military service. A lot of the people who go into the military end up in units where things like cybersecurity and defence and those types of areas are extremely, you know, that’s basically their day job for a number of years while they’re in the military. And so they have this background, this deep background in understanding how systems work, how cybersecurity works, you know, that whole world. And so there are a lot of cybersecurity companies in Israel. The other thing that Israelis are people who’ve ever seen, if anyone has ever come into contact with an Israeli tourists, you probably know the term chutzpah, which is a little bit of tenacity. There isn’t really a good English word for it, but you know, Israelis have chutzpah, and what it translates to in the business world is a desire to take risks, to not take no for an answer, which is obviously very conducive for a culture of entrepreneurship and people who are willing to kind of take that plunge, leave the very comfortable job that they have and start a new venture and so that’s just kind of in terms of the Israeli mindset. The other thing that Israel is, unfortunately doesn’t have many natural resources. And so what the Israeli government and the Israeli culture has done is really capitalized on the one natural resource that we do have, which is very, very, very smart people and the investment in the people and in this culture of entrepreneurship and whether it’s funding or creating that ecosystem, that’s helpful. So whether that’s government money that goes towards funding startups, accelerator programs, venture capital, all of those things kind of come together to create this very interesting culture of entrepreneurship and of and of specifically of tech startups. And as a someone who’s kind of on the on the side of that because I obviously advise a lot of these startups, it’s an absolutely brilliant place to be. It’s amazing to kind of be in what we call the heart of the startup nation. I’m sitting here in Tel Aviv with many, many, many startups who are my clients and that fast paced that they move in and it’s really an exciting environment. You can feel the buzz when you walk around the streets of Tel Aviv and you speak to people. That’s the vibe that you get and it’s really fun.
Anthony Brown: [00:14:48] It certainly sounds very exciting. I hope I get the opportunity one day to meet you in person. Absolutely. I would love that.
Avi Ostrin: [00:14:55] Yeah, I love that. I can guarantee very good whether most of the year so
Anthony Brown: [00:15:00] I’m in, I’m absolutely in. And I guess I’m just trying to think of the bigger picture here. So you’ve got this incredible dynamic workforce and approach and all of the framework led by the government to enable all of these startups exciting things going on. And I guess from your perspective, though, Israel will be going out to the world with a lot of their businesses. Is that right? So hence why you probably qualified as a UK lawyer in the first place because inevitably you’re going to have work in a lot of GDPR projects and for Israeli businesses. And likewise, I’m sure there would also be businesses obviously looking to start up in Israel or work collegiately with Israeli businesses.
Avi Ostrin: [00:15:45] Yeah, absolutely. So you know, the joke in our in our circles is that actually the the Israeli privacy law is largely irrelevant because Israel is a very, very, very small market. We’re only eight million people in this very, very tiny country, and we don’t get along very well with our neighbors. So it’s not like we have, you know, geographically, it’s it’s a difficult region, as you know. And so the one thing that we can do is we can export our technology. And so when a when a startup is built here in Israel, there is automatically the assumption is that you’re either going to go to Europe or to the United States in order to develop your product. And so often times what you’ll see classic model that you’ll see here is you’ll have this small startup starting here in Israel. The founders will be here in Israel, but as the company grows and grows and grows, they’ll start having more and more employees, for example, in the UK or in Europe or in the United States. Sometimes management will move there. And if you’re talking about the large corporates, then you’ll often see when the startup has grown to unicorn stage, which you mentioned before. Then you’ll often see an R&D, a research and development arm that sits here in Israel because this is where the product is developed. But most of the sales happen overseas, which is why it’s so crucial. As you mentioned, for people like myself and advisors and people who advise these companies on how to build their products and how to market them and how to go to market with them. It’s so crucial for us to be knowledgeable about the legislation in other places in the world and not just look internally at the Israeli privacy law, which has other impacts on our lives, but in terms of the companies that I advise. Definitely the most important thing is understanding the other legal frameworks around the world. So I guess it begs the
Anthony Brown: [00:17:37] It begs the question. I’m sure it’s one that you’re asked pretty regularly, but I suspect you possibly answered it there because obviously, because of the set up, there’s a lot of, you know, from the inside looking outwards, and therefore there may be not be as much focus on your domestic privacy laws and regulations. So you did refer Avi earlier that it’s not necessarily a gold standard in Israel. What is the privacy state of play from your perspective in Israel?
Avi Ostrin: [00:18:05] Okay. Yeah, this is this is a this is a good question. That’s obviously no better time to discuss it than now in terms of in terms of COVID times, it’s funny. I just got a message just to give your listeners and a feel of the privacy legislative framework in Israel. I just got a message today from a friend of mine who runs a privacy NGO here in Israel that they’re having a conference in a couple of weeks in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Israel’s privacy law. Israel’s privacy law was enacted in 1981 and has been changed about twice or three times, I think, since its enactment. So you could understand why US privacy professionals in Israel are a bit frustrated. But in all seriousness, in this area of privacy, we often talk about two concepts we talk about data privacy, which has to do with how your data is used and data security, which is how your data is secured and saved and kept safe by those who are who are holding it. When you look at Israel and the Israeli legislative kind of scaffolding, most of the emphasis is put on data security. So we have very, very comprehensive and prescriptive security requirements all the way down to what kind of encryption you need to use, how you need to secure information, what you know, making sure that basically securing information from outside threats. So from a data security perspective, I think Israel is probably quite advanced compared to some of the other areas in the world. What we lack in Israel is comprehensive data privacy legislation and understanding. And it’s interesting because as opposed to the U.S., for example, in which data privacy is viewed as a consumer right, Israel actually has a constitutional recognition of the right to privacy. It’s in our Israel’s constitution that there is a right to privacy. But the problem is that it’s not. Unfortunately, that hasn’t translated into how the laws get applied in practice and the laws that have been enacted based on that constitutional right. I mentioned before that COVID has a lot to do with this, and I think that one of the things that I often. Say is that privacy doesn’t get tested, the human rights generally and privacy specifically don’t get tested when everything is all lovely and rosy and hunky dory and everyone’s going about their business and everything’s fine. The real test of human rights and of privacy specifically, is how the rights get preserved or don’t get preserved in times of emergency. And I think that some of the actions by the Israeli government specifically show in the name of the war on the coronavirus have shown us exactly what the right to privacy is kind of worth, if you will, on the streets of Israel and in the in the courts. So I’ll give your, you know, your listeners a couple of examples if if they’re not familiar. So one of the decisions that was made very early on in the in the name of the war on coronavirus was to use the intelligence services the Shin Bet, which is Israel’s Secret Service equivalent of of MI5, to actually use it internally on Israeli civilians to use their technology tools to track coronavirus patients and many, many experts were obviously up in arms. And the truth is that it’s been shown that actually the intelligence services are not very good at deploying this technology internally. Their systems aren’t built for it. They’re not set up for it. And it gave back many, many inaccurate results, false positives, things like that. And so the decision was nonetheless made to use to use this technology. One of the other pieces of legislation that was pushed through a couple of weeks ago, was it a decision, as you know, Israel is is leading the way in the vaccination effort. And so what the Ministry of Health decided to do was that they wanted to they were going to give information to the municipalities, give information, contact details of people who have been vaccinated, who haven’t been vaccinated, who’s in what state so that the municipalities could reach out to people and convince them to come and get vaccinated. And so, by the way, with no with no controls, no checks and balances, no discussion around what this could potentially mean for people’s right to privacy. And so I wrote an article a few weeks ago for The Times of Israel, in which I claimed that in the name of the war on the coronavirus, we’ve seen the government take more and more and more decisions that are encroaching on the right to privacy and in Israel and the reason that this is problematic is because it’s not about now, it’s not about what’s happening today, it’s about how these decisions are going to have an impact on our right to privacy going forward. And so what what is our right to privacy going to look like after this pandemic is over? How are we as citizens in this country going to be treated by our governments? How is our information going to be treated by our government in five or 10 years from now or when our children grow up? These are the conversations I think that aren’t being had. And this, unfortunately, is leading to basically an erosion in my view of the right to privacy in the name of the war on this pandemic. So that’s where I see the state of privacy in Israel at the moment. I know that there are other countries around the world. The UK, by the way, is another example of a country that has taken very drastic measures in the name of the war on privacy. Not necessarily, by the way, not necessarily decisions that shouldn’t have been taken, but there should have been a discussion and some thought and consideration and involvement of privacy professionals in the decision making process. In order to make sure that we make the proportionate decisions that get us to where we want to be without completely eroding this very basic human right that we have.
Anthony Brown: [00:24:39] Scary stuff in a way, isn’t it? It’s, you know, so many people are unaware of it. I think anyone in privacy, like our ourselves are well aware of it and what the precedents are being potentially set and how difficult it’s going to be to rewind what has been done when you’ve gone so far down the track. And I just wanted to mention as well, I’d made a note, and I think it will give our listeners an insight, perhaps into some of the Israeli government’s sort of thoughts or approaches to society. And I’ll quote one of your ministers who recently said, with all due respect, I don’t understand the big issue with using such a bracelet. Now this bracelet he refers to is a tracking bracelet. Is that correct?
Avi Ostrin: [00:25:18] That’s correct. That was this is another new initiative by that was our minister of health who decided that people who were coming back from abroad, they’re piloting this program where they’re going to put bracelets on them. They’ve actually used this technology in Hong Kong, put bracelets on them, and they’ll have to check in a couple of times a day to make sure that they are complying with the self-isolation requirements. But yeah, go ahead. Why don’t you finish the quote? And then,
Anthony Brown: [00:25:45] Yeah, the quote finishes. It’s not like we’re asking to put a camera in someone’s toilet. We’re asking law abiding citizens to self-isolate. I don’t understand how this harms anyone’s privacy. They’re not supposed to leave their house anyway.
Avi Ostrin: [00:25:59] Yeah. Well, let that sink in for a moment. But listen, Anthony, this this this is in all seriousness, this is this is my issue, right? I don’t think that there’s any measure that shouldn’t be tested out. Thought about that. There are no decisions that should be thrown out in the outset simply because, you know, well, maybe jailing the entire population might be one of them. But aside from, you know, taking really drastic measures, we live in a democratic society and our elected officials are should be testing measures that will help protect the society. My problem with that quote is a minister in the Israeli government saying that he doesn’t understand why this is a privacy issue. That is my problem. The blind, the turning of a blind eye to these issues without any willingness to acknowledge that there might be some problematic aspects to the solution that need to be thought out. That is an irresponsible minister, and that’s someone who needs to, I think, be called out on it. And the same, the same thing goes for governments around the world because we’ve heard these variations on this, this exact quote from governments and from leaders around the world. That’s all it is. It’s raising awareness and understanding that these decisions have far reaching implications.
Anthony Brown: [00:27:27] Yeah, it’s the kind of attitude. Well, you know, if you if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn’t be worried about us, you know, having access to your data or know what you’re up to, isn’t it? And it’s like, Whoa, there. And also, I think quite interesting, you kind of touched on it before. Just as an aside here, I know that your view is that in the EU, privacy or privacy forms part of basic human rights. The US, as you mentioned earlier, is more focused currently on consumer rights and Israel for all the reasons you mentioned is more focused on data security, not least to do with your neighbours, as you mentioned that perhaps aren’t so friendly. Yeah, so they are the cultures, they’re the tapestry, you know that and the frameworks that the world is currently operating in in various degrees and there’s a real mixed bag isn’t there. I think obviously, I sort of started the padcast a few months ago, and I’m so I feel so privileged that I’m able to have a conversation now. The pandemic has actually had some fringe benefits, as we know which is bringing the privacy or privacy conversation, you know, really opening up across the world. I mean, I can’t imagine over a year ago that I would be sat having a Zoom sort of interview or padcast with you Avi. You know, it’s fantastic. And you know, any regular listeners will know that I’m trying to bang the drum on this theme, trying to do my tiny weeny little bit. But there’s some fantastic thought leaders, some very smart individuals out there like you who are doing the work on the ground and equally, you know, trying to bang the drum. What’s been your experiences and sense and positive experiences, I guess, over the last few months during the pandemic in this, you know, just in the context of what I mentioned and opening up the privacy discussion globally?
Avi Ostrin: [00:29:17] It’s been absolutely huge, Anthony. I mean, whether it’s yourselves, yourself or and other privacy podcasts that if you had told me
Anthony Brown: [00:29:29] There aren’t any Avi, its only the Padcast!
Avi Ostrin: [00:29:33] The only one you’re listening to. So no, no, it’s it’s all good. But I think I think the other thing is, you know, platforms like LinkedIn and other social media platforms that have completely opened up the conversation. And I think in the same way that we say that we’re all aware of the fact that COVID has completely changed the way in which we work because we’re working much more remotely and flexibly. It’s also changed the way in which we communicate and we’re able to share ideas. It’s much less formal and it’s much more cross-border, as you say. I think that it’s it’s an amazing thing and it’s it’s very exciting. And I think that especially for me, my my clients, very often I have a lot of Israeli based clients, but I also have a lot of clients that are based in the UK or in the US and other places around the world. It did feel before the pandemic a little bit. Like, oh, you know, this is this is kind of a weird setup, like we’ve got a UK based company doing business in the UK, but our lawyers in Israel, that’s in Tel Aviv, that’s kind of that’s kind of strange and that has completely gone away. Like, there’s no it doesn’t matter if you’re on the other side of a screen. It doesn’t matter if you’re in if you’re in London or Leeds or Manchester or Tel Aviv, it really doesn’t matter. That’s an amazing and amazing result. So as you say, a secret or a fringe benefit of this pandemic, this new normal that we’re living in. So it’s it’s wonderful.
Anthony Brown: [00:31:09] Absolutely. I totally concur. And you know, hopefully we’ll look back a couple of years time and see these last few months actually as a real turning point for the global privacy discussion. I think I really think we will and obviously, as we know, so much has been filtered out in the press recently as well with the big tech giants. And you know, the discussion is really moving into the public conscience now, which is fantastic. So, yeah, long may that continue.
Avi Ostrin: [00:31:36] Yeah, I’ve always said that in the context of adequacy, we talked about it, I think in our in the last Zoom that we had the well, now there’s the UK adequacy. There was the Israeli adequacy that was given in 2011. But I’ve always said that if you want to if the EU Commission ever wanted to really examine whether adequacy should be given, it doesn’t matter what it says in the laws, in the books, in the courts. None of that matters that you get on an airplane and you come to that country and you go to the supermarket and you ask Joe Bloggs in the supermarket what he thinks or she thinks their privacy rights are and how they whether they care about their privacy rights and whether they feel that the laws in that country are protecting their privacy rights. That is the way to test adequacy. And I think that, you know, one of the things that this corona period has done is it’s raised the awareness, it’s raised people’s awareness of things like like privacy and like, you know what is being done with my data? Who has my data, what’s being done with it? It’s being shared with how it’s being used, how long it’s being stored for those are conversations. I think that we’ve seen accelerated over the last year, and in my view, it’s it’s really an amazing thing. Absolutely.
Anthony Brown: [00:32:59] And hopefully, Avi, you referred to the hopping on a plane and going and chatting to other citizens in other countries, hopefully before too long. Yeah, may happen. I think that will be a nice thought for us to finish on. I’d just like to say thank you so much, Avi. It’s been a really fascinating conversation. I’m sure everyone’s enjoyed it and we’ll have lots of thoughts to take away with them. So in the meantime, I think we should just say goodbye to our viewers. Let’s get you back on again in the future and see where we are. Avi any anyway and wishing you the best of luck in your new role at the Privacy Team. Thank you. Have a great day. Bye for now
Avi Ostrin: [00:33:35] Thanks Very much, Anthony. Bye. It was great being on.
