News

On April 16, 2015, an Irish deputy introduced a bill that would update a previous legislation, the Post Office (Amendment) Act 1951, which protects against harassment via snail mail, telephones and (as of 2007) SMS messages. The proposed amendment would introduce a provision dealing with “offences in connection with public electronic communications networks”. Among other offenses, […]

The Japanese Government has been discussing about extensive reforms in the data protection field. The ongoing topics concern the use of anonymous data, EU adequacy, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Cross Border Privacy Rules and drones, as well as the establishment of an independent Data protection authority. More information is available at http://www.privacylaws.com…, http://www.hldataprotection.com…, and at http://cacm.acm.org… Follow […]

On February 24, 2015, Argentina enacted a new regulation addressing the use of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras used for video surveillance purposes. The regulation requires data controllers to give previous notice and obtain consent to CCTV related data processing. Previous notice can be given by means of signs clearly informing data subject of the existence […]

Vera Jourova, the EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, declared the EU wants to find a clear agreement on the Safe-Harbor Program soon. According to the Commissioner, the EU is seeking to resolve some key issues with the U.S. (in particular: “limited and clearly defined number of exceptions for law enforcement and security agencies’ access […]

An interesting article published by Bloomberg/BNA discusses law firms’ data security practices. The author mentions the law firms’ high risk for cyberintrusions, as recently discussed in a New York Times article. The author also mentions the data security issues arising from the production of confidential client information in the discovery phase of a civil lawsuit. […]

On April 15, 2015, the Energy and Commerce Committee of the US House of Representatives approved the “Data Security and Breach Notification Act” by a vote of 29 to 20. The draft legislation aims to tackle data security threats at a national level. The document will be taken up in the House next week. More […]

On April 14, 2015, in Sweet v. LinkedIn Corporation, a California District Court held that reference searches conducted through LinkedIn do not amount to background checks. LinkedIn Reference Searches are not protected under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), and therefore employers are not subject to its requirements, (e.g. obtaining candidate’s written permission, disclosures obligations). In this […]

On April 9, 2015, the Vienna Regional Court (Landesgericht) heard the first hearing (vorbereitende Tagsatzung) of the class action claiming that Facebook breached EU privacy laws. The class action claims that Facebook Ireland: has a data use policy that violates EU law; does not provide users with the possibility to express effective consent to several types […]

On April 2, 2015, the Council of Europe issued Recommendation CM/Rec(2015)5 on the processing of personal data in the context of employment. The document lists several principles – for the public and private sectors – that member States should reflect in the application of domestic legislation on the processing of personal data of employees and […]

On April 1, 2015, Facebook received a class action complaint and demand for jury trial for having allegedly violated users’ privacy by collecting and using their biometric data. According to the complaint, through its “tag suggestions” program, Facebook scans all pictures uploaded by users and identifies any Facebook friends they may want to tag. Plaintiff […]