California ballot initiative, Consumer Right to Privacy Act of 2018, gathers momentum for a November vote, spurring some telecom and internet businesses to organize opposition. By Michael H. Rubin, Roxana Mondragón-Motta, and Scott C. Jones Businesses are preparing to oppose a California ballot measure that could impose new data privacy and security obligations, with the … Continue Reading
By Gail Crawford and Mark Sun The Article 29 Working Party (WP29), an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy released the results of their first review of the EU-US Privacy Shield on Wednesday (6 December 2017). The WP29 has identified several “significant concerns” with the EU-US Privacy Shield (Privacy Shield) programme, as currently … Continue Reading
By Gail Crawford and Calum Docherty On October 3, 2017, the Irish High Court announced that it will make a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling on the validity of the Standard Contractual Clauses, which allow companies in the European Economic Area (EEA) to transfer personal data … Continue Reading
By Gail Crawford, Ksenia Koroleva, and Andrea Stout The State Duma, Russia’s lower chamber of Parliament, has adopted amendments to the Federal Law on Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection of the Russian Federation (the Law) in its first reading. Under the proposed amendments, messaging apps would be required, among other things, to verify users … Continue Reading
By Gail Crawford, Ulrich Wuermeling, Calum Docherty The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR or Regulation) will become applicable in one year, as of May 25, 2018. A lot has happened since we set out the key provisions of the Regulation last year. As companies implement compliance programmes in efforts to protect data subjects and avoid … Continue Reading
By Ulrich Wuermeling Well ahead of the implementation deadline for the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the German Parliament (Bundestag) passed a new Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz) on April 27, 2017. The Federal Council (Bundesrat) could confirm the Act before the summer, but may require further amendments. If the Parliament and the Council fail to … Continue Reading
By Hui Xu, Gail E. Crawford, Wei-Chun (Lex) Kuo, Andrea E. Stout and Sean Wu The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued Draft Measures for public comment on April 11 on Security Assessment for Cross-border Transmission of Personal Information and Critical Data (the Draft Measures). The Draft Measures provide further clarification surrounding the “localization” requirement … Continue Reading
By Serrin Turner and Megan Behrman Another front recently emerged in the legal battle over whether US law enforcement authorities can use a search warrant issued under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) to obtain data stored overseas. Until now, the battle has been focused in New York, where Microsoft filed a challenge in December 2013 … Continue Reading
By Jennifer Archie and Alex Stout Tax-related identity theft is nothing new, but tax season 2016 took tax schemes to a new level. Last year, our cyber experts advised a large cluster of clients (public and private companies) over a period of only two weeks, following a nationwide explosion of deviously simple attacks—mostly targeted at … Continue Reading
By Ulrich Wuermeling On January 10, 2017, the European Commission proposed a new ePrivacy Regulation (Proposal). Compared to the internal draft that was leaked in December, the official Proposal has been substantially modified. However, the general approach taken by the European Commission has not changed. The Proposal includes provisions with a broad scope of application covering … Continue Reading
By Fiona Maclean & Calum Docherty The Article 29 Working Party (WP29) – the group that represents the data protection authorities of all EU Member States – has published guidance and FAQs on a number of issues under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Data Protection Officers (DPOs) (Guidance & FAQs) DPOs are the cornerstone … Continue Reading
By Ulrich Wuermeling An internal Commission draft of a new ePrivacy Regulation (Draft) has been leaked to the public. The Commission plans to propose it in early 2017, but the content of the Draft does not seem near a final proposal. It is either older or still needs some time to be finalized. The Draft … Continue Reading
By Jennifer Archie, Gail Crawford, Serrin Turner, Hui Xu & Lex Kuo The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has introduced China’s first and comprehensive Network Security Law (also referred to as Cybersecurity Law). The law will have far-reaching implications for parties that utilize the internet and … Continue Reading
Latham partners Serrin Turner, Jennifer Archie and Jeffrey Tochner sat down with Eric Friedberg, Executive Chairman at Stroz Friedberg, and Matt Olsen, President – Consulting at IronNet Cybersecurity, to discuss current cyberthreat levels and the growing need for companies to devote resources for future risk mitigation. … Continue Reading
By Matt Murchison and Alex Stout Today, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved far-reaching new information privacy rules that will govern how providers of broadband Internet access service collect, use, protect, and share data from their subscribers. These new rules, which were adopted by a 3 to 2 vote, are intended to fill a … Continue Reading
By Gail Crawford and Ulrich Wuermeling On October 19, 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling on the question of whether IP addresses constitute personal data. The ruling has direct implications on the general question of when data can be regarded as anonymous and, thus, fall outside the scope of data … Continue Reading
By Ksenia Koroleva On July 6, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed Federal Law No 374-FZ. This law is also known as the “Yarovaya” law (named after a Russian senator who was the main driving force for the law to come into existence). The Yarovaya law introduces amendments to certain Russian federal laws. The majority … Continue Reading
By Gail Crawford and Lore Leitner Today, after more than four years of debate, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, or the Regulation) enters into force. The GDPR will introduce a rigorous, far-reaching privacy framework for businesses that operate, target customers or monitor individuals in the EU. The Regulation sets out a suite of new … Continue Reading
By Serrin Turner Last week saw action on two fronts regarding the Stored Communications Act (SCA) – the US federal statute regulating government searches of online accounts in criminal investigations. In Congress, a proposal to reform the SCA advanced in the House; and in the courts, Microsoft sued to challenge a provision of the SCA as … Continue Reading
By Amanda Potter and Alex Stout As we highlighted in a post last month, the FCC has proposed sweeping new privacy rules on broadband providers. Since our last post, the FCC has released its proposal in the form of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. This proposal would institute new customer privacy and data breach rules … Continue Reading
By Mikhail Turetsky, Ksenia Koroleva and Lore Leitner On July 13, 2015, the Russian President signed Federal Law No. 264-FZ (the Law), which introduced a range of amendments into Russian legislation (the Amendments). In particular, the principle of the “right to be forgotten”, a concept not previously recognized under Russian law came into effect on … Continue Reading
By Ulrich Wuermeling, Jennifer Archie & Lore Leitner On March 17, 2016, the Civil Liberties Committee convened to discuss whether the Privacy Shield framework that will replace Safe Harbor provides adequate protection to the data of EU citizens. A number of experts were questioned including: the US lead negotiator, the EU Data Protection Supervisor, members of the … Continue Reading
By Matt Murchison and Alex Stout Last week, the FCC announced that Chairman Tom Wheeler had circulated a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on implementing Section 222’s privacy obligations for broadband providers. Section 222’s requirements were originally crafted for telephone companies, and were first applied to broadband providers as part of the 2015 Open Internet … Continue Reading
By Ulrich Wuermeling, Gail Crawford and Jennifer Archie Earlier this week, the European Commission announced that a “political” agreement has been reached on a new framework for data flows from the EU to the US. The announcement highlights a few changes from the old Safe Harbor regime, such as more direct and active oversight by US … Continue Reading
