Consumer Privacy

Subscribe to Consumer Privacy

At the end of June, the California legislature passed its Bill 375, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018.  The Act contains a number of concepts that would be familiar to those who are working to bring their companies and organizations into compliance with GDPR.  The new law defines a category of “Personal Information” that …

The clock is now ticking. On May 4th the European Parliament published the final text of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), and the rules of the game have significantly changed – at least in the context of EU data protection law. First, the GDPR changes the underlying approach to data protection law, with a new emphasis placed on accountability and risk-based approaches. “Privacy by Design” and “Privacy by Default” have been included in the regulatory ecosystem. Second, significant changes have been made to the obligations of “controllers” and “processors”. These include specific criteria for having compliant privacy notices and vendor management contracts. Third, enforcement is now a very real, and potentially risky, thing. With the possibility of administrative fines being up to 4% of a business’ global gross revenue, private rights of action by individuals, and non-profit privacy watchdog groups (also known as “Civil Society”) having the right to complain of a company’s privacy practices directly to the local Data Protection Authorities; compliance with the GDPR will now be one of those risks that any business who touches EU data will need to seriously consider. Fortunately, the GDPR won’t go into effect until May 25th 2018. However, businesses with significant data from the EU need to start considering how to comply now.…
Continue Reading

It is the beginning of 2016, and American companies are anxiously awaiting news of whether or not a new “Safe Harbor 2.0” will emerge. In October of 2015, the European Court of Justice declared invalid Safe Harbor 1.0 in the Schrems decision. This had an immediate effect on any American company collecting personal data from the EU by removing the legal basis for this kind of data transfer. As of October 2015, consumer, client, and even employee data cannot be legally transferred to the US under the Safe Harbor Framework.

Fortunately, the data protection regulators (“DPAs”)recognized the turmoil this decision created within the business community on both sides of the Atlantic. As a result, the Article 29 Working Party (which is the convention of DPAs from each of the EU Member States) issued an enforcement moratorium on enforcement actions until the end of January 2016, so that they could assess the effectiveness of data transfer tools available. As part of this moratorium, the Working Party called on “…Member States and European institutions to open discussions with U.S. authorities in order to find legal and technical solutions”; and that the “current negotiations around a new Safe Harbor could be part of the solution.”…
Continue Reading

The annual conference of the world’s data protection regulators is a three day exercise, with half of the conference being “closed door” for the regulators only, and the other half being a series of side meetings and presentations, which report out to interested attendees the results of the closed door meetings. This is a good meeting to gain insight in the next year’s trends in data protection regulation and enforcement across the globe. While this conference happens every year, the events in the European Court of Justice and the impending completion of the new General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) made this year’s conference particularly interesting. Here are some of the insights which were developed during the conference:…
Continue Reading

Today the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) issued its Judgment in the Schrems case, and in doing so, added another tremor to the ongoing seismic shift related to cross-border privacy law. The two major elements of today’s Judgment are: 1) that Commission Decision 2000/520/EC  of 26 July 2000 of the adequacy of the protection provided by the US Safe Harbor Framework (the “Safe Harbor Decision”) is invalid, and 2) even if the Safe Harbor Decision were otherwise valid, no decision of the Commission can reduce the authority of a national data protection authority to enforce data protection rights as granted by Article 28 of Directive 95/46/EC (the “DP Directive”).

Clearly, the first element brings a more immediate concern for all the companies participating in the Safe Harbor framework. However, the second element will have much longer term consequences for the stability of US-EU commerce and privacy law.…
Continue Reading

With the recent uptick in the U.S. of lawsuits filed as a result of a data breaches, state legislators in the U.S. have been busy updating the many different state laws that dictate how a company must respond if they have been hacked and personal information has been compromised. With no comprehensive federal law that sets forth a uniform compliance standard, companies operating in the U.S. must comply with a patchwork of 47 different states laws that set forth a company’s obligations in the event of a data breach.

Additionally, the trend is to have more than just notice requirements. Now companies have to develop proactive steps they must take to avoid a data breach in the first place. We first saw this with the Massachusetts law, and the model is expanding.

…
Continue Reading

In any case involving a data breach of customer or employee information, the first line of defense for the defendant is to assert that the plaintiff(s) lack standing to bring suit. In Remijas v. Neiman Marcus Group, the Seventh Circuit became the first United States Court of Appeals to tackle the issue of standing in the context of data breach litigation since the Supreme Court’s pronouncement on standing in Clapper. …
Continue Reading

On July 21, 2014, Russia adopted Federal Law No. 242-FZ, “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation for Clarification of the Procedure of Personal Data Processing in Information and Telecommunication Networks” (“Federal Law No. 242-FZ”), which introduces a number of changes to existing Russian data protection laws. Specifically, it amends Federal Law No. 152-FZ, “On personal data,” by establishing a localization requirement for personal data processing.

Effective Date

What makes Federal Law No. 242-FZ important is its effective date. It was initially scheduled to come into force on September 1, 2016. However, on December 31, 2014, Federal Law No. 526-FZ was enacted, which changed the effective date of Russia’s Data Localization Law to September 1, 2015.…
Continue Reading

The plethora of security incidents in the news have once again put security front and center of the international agenda. Predictably, this has triggered a number of responses from governments around the world. Some of these responses seem to have been ill-considered. However, one of the more comprehensive responses came out of the US President’s address to the Federal Trade Commission last week. A series of laws were proposed to address the increasing risks which are confronting individual security and privacy rights.

The President’s remarks at the FTC gives some valuable insight into where the US regulatory environment may end up in the next year or so. As a part of this analysis, one should focus on two very different agendas: Privacy and Security. These issues, while similar, are very different. Case in point, the UK PM’s comment around banning encryption could well result in increased security. However, it will absolutely damage individual privacy (and arguably also damage commercial security).…
Continue Reading

A company faced with a security breach has a lengthy “to do” list, things to accomplish with respect to its incident response plan. It must, among other things, determine the root cause of the vulnerability or breach, investigate and eliminate the vulnerability or breach, determine the full nature and extent of the breach, determine who to notify and finalize the notifications.

If the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) has its way, a unionized employer facing a security breach involving employee personal information would have yet another responsibility – bargaining over the impact of or response to the security breach.…
Continue Reading