Data is vital to AI systems, so firms want the right to take it and ministers may let them. We must wake up to the danger

Imagine someone drives up to a pub in a top-of-the-range sports car – a £1.5m Koenigsegg Regera, to pick one at random – parks up and saunters out of the vehicle. They come into the pub you’re drinking in and begin walking around its patrons, slipping their hand into your pocket in full view, smiling at you as they take out your wallet and empty it of its cash and cards.

The not-so-subtle pickpocket stops if you shout and ask what the hell they’re doing. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” the pickpocket says. “It’s an opt-out regime, mate.”

Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: China’s Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media