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Having regard to Article 63, Article 64 (1a), (3) – (8) and Article 35 (1), (3), (4), (6) of the Regulation 2016/679/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such […]

On October 10, 2018, the Portuguese Data Protection Authority (CNPD) found the Barreiro Hospital guilty of violating the integrity and confidentiality principle and the data minimization principle set forth by the GDPR. According to this source, the infringements were punished with a fine of €400,000. The hospital is going to fight the fine, this source […]

On October 3, 2018, the European Parliament published a resolution on distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) and blockchain. DLTs and blockchain are the technologies behind bitcoin and other crypto currencies, and basically consist in a ledger of digital information maintained in decentralised form across a large network of computers. See here for more information. The EU […]

On September 3, 2018, the Bundesgerichtshof, the German Federal Court of Justice deferred a preliminary ruling to the Court of justice of the European Union (CJEU) to decide whether, under EU data protection laws, a pre-checked checkbox – which the user must unselect to refuse his consent – is a valid consent to store information, […]

On October 18, 2018, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published – along with Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Small Business Administration – guidance for small businesses on how to deal with cyber threats and increase data security. The FTC highlighted a dozen need-to-know topics: Cybersecurity Basics, Understanding […]

On October 4, 2018, the European Parliament adopted the proposed EU Regulation on the Free Flow of Non-Personal Data in the European Union. The Regulation aims at removing obstacles to the free movement of non-personal data within the European Union. The Regulation does not cover data mobility outside the EU. The approved Regulation does not […]

On October 16, 2018, the European Union Blockchain Observatory and Forum published a thematic report on the Blockchain and the GDPR (“Report”). The report includes the input of a number of different stakeholders and sources. The report aims at answering the question of whether GDPR compliant blockchain is possible. The paper highlights a fundamental point: […]

  Do the benefits of smart contracts overwrite their downfalls? While smart contracts bring a lot of benefits, allowing for a quick execution once a certain condition takes place, a lot of value can get lost in these transactions. For example, it is estimated that in 2017, over $1B in value was lost with smart […]

    On October 17, 20180 the American Bar Association issued ABA formal opinion 483 addressing attorneys’ ethical obligations after a data breach that involves information relating to the representation of a client. According to the Opinion, compliance with the obligations imposed by the Model Rules of Professional Conduct depends on the nature of the […]

In September 2018, the French Data Protection Agency, the Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) published a report explaining how Blockchain relates to the GDPR (“Report”). In particular the Report highlights the following. WHO IS THE CONTROLLER IN A BLOCKCHAIN TRANSACTION. Users of the web who decide to submit a transaction to the validation […]