On February 13, the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Bill 2016 passed both Houses of Parliament after two previous attempts to establish such notification obligation were unsuccessful. This means that Australians will need to be notified of serious incidents regarding the processing of their personal data. However, not every data breach will be subject to […]
English Posts
Social Media Post-Truth
If it weren’t for the hyphen, one might say – finally! While it remains to be hoped that social media posts stay with the truth, this article discusses so-called fake news – a phenomenon that currently plagues us and is alleged to have influenced the recent presidential elections in the USA. The German word for […]
Microsoft Remains Victorious in Legal Battle Over Cloud Data
The decision that the jurisdiction to issue search warrants concerning foreign data centers lies with the local authorities and not with U.S. courts still stands. In July 2016, a U.S. federal appeals court had ruled that Microsoft is not obliged to grant the U.S. government access to user data stored on servers in Ireland. The […]
Beacons for Compliant Personal Data Processing in Russia
„Do they even have Data Protection rules in Russia” is a question that – in variations – we often encounter during our professional routine. The answer is always the same, as Russian law does protect Personal Data. The changes made to the Federal Law No. 152-FZ on Personal Data 2006 (Personal Data Protection Act) (in […]
Inappropriate Photo Transfers at Apple Store?
Apple store employees accused of having accessed and shared female customers’ photos. According to the Australian newspaper, The Courier-Mail, there have been reports of employees in the Apple Store in Carindale near Brisbane, Australia secretly having taken close-up and ‘explicit’ photos of female employees and customers. These photos were then shared to a group chat […]
The Article 29 Working Party Statement on the adoption of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield
On July 26, 2016, following the adoption of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield decision on July 12, the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) held a press conference[1] with a view to express its opinion regarding the adoption of the Commission’s decision regarding this important matter. After welcoming the improvements brought by the Privacy Shield, compared to […]
Microsoft triumphs over the U.S. Government in their ‘Warrant Case’
From a data protection perspective, over the past twelve months some very important developments in data protection law have taken place. On July 14, 2016 another milestone emerged. In 2013 a New York magistrate judge issued a warrant in a drug trafficking investigation, directing Microsoft to seize and produce certain e-mails by granting the F.B.I. […]
Apple’s Big Privacy News
On June 13th 2016 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Craig Federighi, VP of software engineering, mentioned a particular kind of privacy enhancing tool that would enable “crowdsourced learning” while keeping people’s information completely private. He was talking about differential privacy. Although the concept is apparently not new[1] -at least in the fields of statistics […]
Data transfers EU – China: the next battle?
A key finding of the recent ad hoc civil liberties mission to China suggests that the country does not secure an adequate level of data protection due to the lack of specific legislation addressing the processing of personal data[1]. A group of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the European People’s Party have therefore […]
European Data Protection Supervisor about the Privacy Shield
After pointing out that the Privacy Shield Draft Adequacy Decision constitutes a step forward compared to the Safe Harbor Decision, in his Opinion from May 30th 2016, Giovanni Buttarelli, European Data Protection Supervisor, noted that such progress is not, in itself, sufficient. Mr. Buttarelli reached this conclusion based on the fact that, according with the […]
Do personal assistant devices violate children’s data privacy?
It has recently been argued that personal assistants like Amazon Echo, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Home could violate children’s data privacy inasmuch as they record and store children’s voices and questions while processing their requests and keep such data on storage to “improve the customer’s experience”. An article[1] published by the British Newspaper […]
The Opinion of Article 29 Working Party on the EU-US Privacy Shield: “Nobody knows what will happen now”
In a press conference held yesterday, April 13th at 1.00 PM, Article 29 Working Group presented their opinion on the EU-US Privacy Shield. You can find the press release here. In a rather impeccable presentation, Isabel Falque-Pierrotin (chairman of Article 29 Working Party) presented and explained the key points and considerations of such opinion. In […]
EU-US Privacy Shield and the Article 29 Working Party – „Saving the Day“ or „Business as Usual“?
Had you asked any privacy lawyer after the ECJ’s abolishment of Safe Harbor on October 6th 2015, if there was any valid alternative for transferring personal data into the United States, you would have ended up with a variety of answers and thus more confused than before. As the European Commission announced on Tuesday, a […]