Challenges facing legislators in the digital age

The law constrains what computer scientists can do. Software constrains what lawyers and legislators can achieve when creating laws for the Internet. Laws made in one country are difficult to apply to the global internet whose content and algorithms include values from different societies and legal systems.

Personal information can be collected by companies online and sold to marketers in secrecy - without the consumers' knowledge or consent.

Cookies are little pieces of data that inform a website when a particular user has returned. They allow shopping websites to keep a virtual shopping basket for a user, even when they leave the site. However, cookies are also used to track users across many websites and collect data used in ad targeting without the user's knowledge.