We have heard on how companies are tracking our data, and we have a vague idea on where and when our personal data is being gathered. However, corporate surveillance has been in constant development providing more information about a person than ever before. As an internet user, how much do you know about your personal […]
English Posts
Fines to Facebook and WhatsApp for breach of privacy and antitrust law
€ 150 Million fine to Facebook by French Data Protection Authority Last week, the French Data Protection Authority (DPA) has condemned Facebook Inc. and Facebook Ireland to the payment of a € 150 million fine. The sanction is part of a joint investigation carried out by the data protection authorities of France, German Land of […]
“Obamacare for the Internet” – Republicans Push to Abolish Net Neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the US regulatory authority that ensures compliance with the principles of net neutrality, which were established by the Commission’s Open Internet Order in February 2015. Net neutrality means that all content on the internet shall enjoy the same priority, i.e. Internet service providers and any authority regulating the Internet […]
Data protection impact assesment (DPIA)
The most recent document provided by the Article 29 Working Party (29 WP) provides guidelines for further comprehension on when and how to conduct a DPIA. The main goal of a DPIA is to: “describe the processing, assess the necessity and proportionality of a processing and to help manage the risks to the rights and […]
UK Home Office tracks “immigration offenders” through health system data
NHS Digital and the Home Office: the relationship The outgoing head of the UK’s Health and Social Care Information Centre (“NHS Digital”) claims to have repeatedly been pressured by the Home Office to provide them with the personal data of immigrant patients. In an interview with the Health Service Journal earlier this month, Kingsley Manning […]
Mark Zuckerberg is hitting Snapchat hard – enter WhatsApp Status
New WhatsApp feature WhatsApp has announced a new feature, “Status”. With Status, WhatsApp users will now be able to use GIFs, photographs and videos to update their status. The feature will make provision for multiple updates which a user’s contacts will be able to view in a reel and which will disappear after 24 hours […]
Third Time Lucky: Australia’s New Law on Mandatory Data Breach Notification
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 […]
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 […]