Four stories from this week, each with a concrete object and a consequence for people who work with data and technology. The source link sits under each story.
A patient code made a million people traceable: IQVIA fined 7 million euros
In a database described as anonymous, every patient had a code that made it possible to follow them over time. The Italian data protection authority (Garante) fined IQVIA Solutions Italy 7 million euros (decision no. 710 of 23 September, announced on 2 October). The database held health information on a million patients of 800 family doctors, with records going back to 2001. The authority found no legal basis, no information given to patients, no retention periods and no impact assessment. Anyone who buys or sells "anonymised" health data for pharma studies should check whether a stable per-person identifier exists: in that case, the Garante says, the data is not anonymous.
Source: Garante privacy, press release →
Italy names who polices AI: two agencies, one decree, one date
Legislative Decree no. 179 of 7 October 2026 was published in the Official Gazette on 8 October (no. 234) and takes effect on 23 October. It aligns Italy with the EU AI Regulation (2024/1689) and splits the work between two bodies already named in law 132 of 2025. AgID is the notifying authority. ACN, the national cybersecurity agency, is the market surveillance authority and the single point of contact with EU institutions. The text also covers the use of AI in training and education. For a company that builds or uses high-risk AI systems in Italy, from that date there is a specific counterpart to answer to.
Source: Normattiva, Legislative Decree no. 179 of 7 October 2026 →
In Brunswick, Georgia, putting cameras on license plates required a deal with a federal anti-drug program
According to documents seen by 404 Media, the city could not install Axon cameras without signing an agreement with the Atlanta HIDTA. HIDTA is an anti-drug program from the 1980s: it has 33 branches across all 50 states and reports to the White House drug policy office. In Georgia, towns that want cameras on state roads must commit to sending the data to a HIDTA. Houston's HIDTA paid a contractor 306,800 dollars to build an archive that makes plates from Flock, Axon, Elsag and Vigilant searchable in one place. A North Carolina sheriff's office said its data is stored there, where public records requests do not reach. Senator Ron Wyden asked for a 2024 privacy review to be published, and on 6 October two bills to limit plate readers were introduced. Anyone designing surveillance or analytics systems has an example of how a local agreement becomes a flow into a national archive, where it is then hard to know who uses the data.
A clock in Vienna keeps time with the nucleus of a thorium atom
Thorium-229 is the only known nucleus with an excited state of such low energy that a laser can drive it. Thorsten Schumm's group at TU Wien locked a 148 nanometre laser to that nuclear transition, using a feedback loop based on absorption spectroscopy. The result appeared in Nature on 7 October. The authors themselves say the prototype is not yet at the level of the best optical atomic clocks. For now it is a lab device: people working in metrology, navigation and fundamental physics have a new candidate for a time reference, to be improved with stronger lasers and better crystals.
If one of these matters for a project, get in touch.
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