A privacy regulator's podcast about where privacy comes from.
ODPA Data Protection Teabreak comes from the Office of the Data Protection Authority, Guernsey's independent privacy regulator. Its recent conversations treat privacy as something with a long past, moving from a Roman-era account of Paul invoking his citizenship to a 1970s Indian film and the case for Indigenous control of Indigenous data.
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ODPA Data Protection Teabreak comes from Guernsey's Office of the Data Protection Authority, the independent regulator of a local law that mirrors Europe's GDPR. That makes it an unlikely home for stories about Roman citizenship, Indian cinema and colonial-era consent. Its recent episodes go there anyway. The series 'Privacy Across Time & Space' grew out of a storytelling panel at the 2025 Privacy Symposium in Venice. Its premise is simple: a privacy leader brings a story, and the story shows privacy working as both a basic right and a practical answer across political and economic divides. Alexander White arrives with a varied record: former privacy advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Bermuda's first privacy commissioner, and now Queensland's new one. His conversation with Commissioner Brent Homan reaches back to Paul, threatened with a whipping, who pointed out that he was a Roman citizen by birth and so outranked the tribune, who had bought his citizenship. Alexandra Delaney-Bhattacharya comes at privacy through cultural studies, reading films as places where a society's anxieties and values play out. One of her examples is a 1970s film about a newly married couple struggling for intimacy in a crowded joint family home. Shana Morgan's episode turns to Indigenous data privacy and the collective focus of Indigenous communities. The conversation holds that consent was no consideration under colonization, that the imbalance still shapes how data is used, and that it will not change without Indigenous control of Indigenous data. It also questions whether data protection laws centred on the individual fit those communities at all. Homan takes the storyteller's role himself in an episode about the personal privacy epiphany that inspired the series. Part of it travels to northern Ethiopia in 2013, where a program in agrarian villages tried to build a savings mindset in an area devastated by drought and famine in the 1980s. Outside that series sits 'Data, Democracy & Freedom', a three-part run on how technology and data can either promote or threaten personal freedoms and democratic institutions. Its final episode pairs Homan with human rights lawyer Susie Alegre, author of 'Freedom to Think' and 'Human Rights, Robot Wrongs'. Freedom of expression and freedom of information both get their due, along with a case that unexpressed opinions may deserve absolute protection, and a look at online news that differs from one person to the next. The office itself comes into view in Homan's conversation with Maddy Russell, a 19-year-old Guernsey student of political science at Brock University in Canada who spent a summer as a junior investigator there. She talks about reworking school presentations with the communications team and emailing people in Kenya and South Korea, and about how a small jurisdiction can affect the wider world. Episodes sign off by pointing to odpa.gg for further help and advice. A newcomer drawn to privacy as culture might start with Alexandra Delaney-Bhattacharya; one curious about the regulator at work, with Maddy Russell.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants privacy explained through history, film and human rights rather than compliance checklists, and who is curious how a small data protection regulator thinks about its own work.
What sets it apart: It comes straight from a working data protection regulator, yet its storytelling episodes follow privacy through a Roman citizenship dispute, a 1970s Indian film and Indigenous experiences of colonization rather than through rules alone.
The Office of the Data Protection Authority (Bailiwick of Guernsey) are the independent regulator of the local data protection law which is equivalent to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We aim to give you accessible, informative, thought-provoking, and hopefully entertaining insights to a broad range of topics relevant to data protection.
From the Roman census to your personalized news feed, privacy gets a longer memory.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Indian films frame privacy as a lived struggle over home, reputation, and power.
Privacy comes through as a matter of culture, power, and daily arrangement, not just law. Alexandra Delaney-Battacharia, the Information Commissioner for the Isle of Man, looks at Indian cinema to trace how intimacy is shaped by shared homes and social expectation.
A measured look at how citizenship, census records, and personal data shaped public power.
Privacy comes through here as a matter of public power, not just personal preference. Commissioner Brent Homan and Alexander White follow that idea across White's work in privacy advice at the U.S.
A clear, grounded look at why Indigenous data privacy depends on collective control and sovereignty.
Privacy Across Time and Space considers a broad privacy question - who controls data? - through Indigenous data privacy, where privacy can be collective rather than only individual.
A Guernsey intern links school privacy education with the wider reach of data protection work.
A summer internship at the ODPA opens into a clear look at how data protection is explained to young people and connected to work beyond Guernsey.
Alexandra Delaney-Bhattacharya connects the 2017 Supreme Court of India privacy ruling to older Indian legal traditions, including the Arthashastra, the Yajnavalkya Samhita, and the Manusmriti.
ODPA Data Protection Teabreak’s "Privacy Across Time & Space with Alexander White" links Roman citizenship records, census rolls, and military diplomas to modern privacy practice.
An interview with Shanna Morgan about Indigenous data privacy and sovereignty, exploring how Indigenous communities view data as identity, land, language, and legacy.
A summer intern at the Guernsey data protection authority discusses her experience and privacy issues facing youth with the Data Protection Commissioner.
Susie Alegre argues that data protection now shields freedom of thought from algorithmic inference, manipulation, and punishment.
Travis LeBlanc, a PCLOB member since 2019, describes receiving a White House notice in January 2025 that he would be terminated in 48 hours, then suing in February and winning a May district court judgment.
Colin Bennett says political data harvesting can fragment public debate when voter groups receive different messages through opaque microtargeting.
Australian Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind questions whether Australia's under-16 social media ban is the best way to protect children, citing age-assurance privacy risks.
The episode introduces Project Bijou, an initiative to share stories about data's impact on life and promote better data outcomes, featuring a guest lecturer.
The episode discusses a partnership between the data protection authority and a youth commission to educate young people about data protection and privacy rights.