by Jonathan Armstrong, Gayle McFarlane, André Bywater As anticipated the Article 29 Working Party (often known as WP29), a group of the EU’s data protection regulators met in Brussels today to discuss the European Commission’s Privacy Shield scheme, the proposed replacement for Safe Harbor. As we had anticipated in our earlier alerts WP29 decided that in their view […]
The EU Commission “seeks stakeholders’ views on the current text of the ePrivacy Directive as well as the possible changes to the existing legal framework to make sure it is up to date with the new challenges of the digital area. Public Consultation on the Evaluation and Review of the ePrivacy Directive.” In the view of […]
After the October 6, 2015, European Court of Justice’s annulment of the Safe Harbor decision of adequacy (Maximilian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner), the European Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) gave businesses until January 31, 2016, for the start of enforcement of the Schrems’ decision (see here). The Safe Harbor Scheme had been used for almost 15 years as the […]
On March 2, 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) brought its first data security enforcement action, acting as federal data security regulator to ensure that financial companies and service providers adequately secure consumers’ information. The CFPB, a federal agency – whose creation was authorized by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in […]
February 2, 2016 – After the expiration of the DPAs’ deadline of January 31, 2016, for the start of enforcement of the Schrems’ decision (see here), the EU Commission announces that it had a deal with the US Government for a new “Safe Harbor”. See more here February 3, 2016 – Article 29 Working Party […]
The Article 29 Working Party (WP29), on February 29, 2016, issued a statement on the Commission’s draft adequacy decision and the legal documents of the Privacy Shield. While welcoming the draft decision and those documents, the WP29 warns about the need to carefully analyze the material. In particular, the WP29 — divided in subgroups — […]
The Bundeskartellamt (the German AntitrustAuthority) initiated a proceeding against Facebook Inc., USA (the Irish sub sidiary of the company) and Facebook Germany GmbH, Hamburg on allegations that the tech giant abused its dominant position in the social market networks market by way of imposing certain terms of service on the use of data. The Antitrust […]
On February 29, 2016, the European Commission issued the legal texts to implement the EU-US Privacy Shield and a communication relevant to that. The Commission also released a draft “adequacy decision”. Once adopted, the adequacy decision establishes that “the safeguards provided when data are transferred under the new EU-U.S. Privacy Shield are equivalent to data protection standards […]
Francesca Giannoni-Crystal & Allyson Haynes Stuart have just published in the Information law Journal an article dealing with privacy and data protection in the IoT. The article deals with recent developments in the IoT sector, highlights the difficulty of giving a definition of the IoT, and discuss the most important authorities (on the two side of the Atlantic) […]
The German Government approved the draft law to improve enforcement of certain data protection law provisions that aim to strengthen consumers’ protection. The law was published on February 17, 2016 and entered into force on February 24, 2016. In particular, the law empowers consumers and business associations to commence actions against (and issue warnings to) companies who […]