Overview

⏱️Schedule:  Doors 18:30 → Talk 19:00→ Q&A → Mingle

🌐Language: English

Almost everything you rely on now runs on data about you, and most of it isn't gathered where you'd expect. Your smart TV, your air fryer, your thermostat. The loyalty card at the supermarket, the travel pass in your pocket, the form you filled out at the doctor's. And it rarely stops with you: a device in a shared room hears the whole household, a friend's app gives away things about you, and one DNA test can expose relatives who never sent in a sample of their own.

That collection has produced real gains, medical research, earlier diagnoses, new drugs, crime prevention, wider access to education, and the AI most of us now use daily all run on the same data. It has also enabled uses that most people would refuse if they were actually asked. Deciding which is which isn't a technical question, it's a moral one, and there's no clean answer, only a trade-off worth understanding clearly. Larissa lays out both sides of that trade, and shows you where your own rights actually stand.

What we'll cover

• How deeply data collection is built into modern life, from how economies run to the services we use without thinking
• Where data actually gets collected, far beyond your phone: your smart TV, your air fryer, your loyalty card, even the form at the doctor's office
• Why data collection is never just about you, and how a shared device, a friend's app, or a single DNA test can expose people who never agreed to anything
• The benefits: what mass data collection makes possible, from medical breakthroughs to the AI we now use every day
• The sacrifices: what it costs us, including uses most people would refuse if they were asked directly
• What you can actually do when a use of your data is one you never agreed to

Speaker

Larissa Meredith-Flister

Litigator — Competition, Digital Markets & AI Law | LL.M., University of Cambridge

Larissa Meredith-Flister is a London-based litigator whose practice focuses on complex disputes across competition law, digital markets, collective proceedings, and privacy. Before practising in London, she clerked at the Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan for both the former and current Chief Justice. She holds a Master of Laws from the University of Cambridge. Alongside her legal practice, she speaks and writes on how artificial intelligence and digital surveillance are affecting democratic institutions and individual privacy rights.