The European Commission and the US are finalizing the content of a commercial data-sharing agreement, which will affect the way businesses store and transfer data to third parties. A final deal is expected later this summer. Sources: here and here. The agreement is supposed to reform the ‘Safe Harbor’ agreement in order to ensure adequate levels […]
On July 28, 2015, the Hamburgische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit, the Hamburg Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) adopted a decision against Facebook’s policy forbidding users to utilize pseudonyms for their accounts. The German DPA issued an injunction against Facebook Ireland Ltd for infringement of the German Telemedia Act (Telemediengesetz), and the Personal ID Act (Personalausweisgesetz). […]
On July 23, 2015, the Constitutional Council (Conseil Constitutionnel) validated most of the Loi Renseignement containing several mass surveillance provisions (see here), which had been suspected of being unconstitutional. The Constitutional Council censored a couple of provisions of the law. Among others, it specifically deemed the procedure for “operational emergency” manifestly disproportionate with reference to the right […]
July 21, 2015 “Right to be forgotten” in Russian data protection law has passed all stages of approval Dear Sir or Madam, This letter is to inform you that on July 14, 2015 Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, has signed the law on implementation of the “right to be forgotten” (hereinafter the […]
On June 4, 2015 the Spanish court of Pontavedra (Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra) held that a father cannot publish his child’s pictures on Facebook without mother’s permission Inside a divorce proceeding a court had granted Father the right to publish his son’s pictures on Facebook. Mother appealed and the Audiencia Provincial de Pontevedra reversed. See […]
On June 12, 2015, in the Bundestag (German legislative body) a bill on data retention (Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Einführung einer Speicherpflicht und einer Höchstspeicherfrist für Verkehrsdaten) was introduced. It requires companies to store (in Germany) traffic data for a specified amount of time to allow enforcement agencies to request it for repression of terrorism. However, due to strong […]
On June 23, 2015, the French senate formally voted the Loi Renseignement (see here). The law has been named “Le Patriot Act” because – in the wake of the terrorist attack killing 17 people in Paris (see here) – it gives mass surveillance powers to the French Government. On June 24, 2015, the law was voted also by the […]
The European Court of Justice is called to decide whether server logs shall be considered as ‘personal data’ under the EU’s Directive 95/46/EC. Case C-582/14. Server logs are automatically created and typically set behind webpages to record which pages have been viewed, when, and by which dynamic IP address. The IP address is the number […]
On June 16, 2015, the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) adopted an opinion on the utilization of drones for all civil purposes. According to WP29, several privacy risks may arise in relation to the processing of data carried out by the equipment on-board a drone. “Such risks can range from a lack of transparency of […]
As we previously reported (see here) on May 7, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the controversial surveillance program according to which the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting Americans’ phone records was not authorized under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act (ACLU v. Clapper, 2015 U.S. […]