Seyfarth Synopsis: On May 12, 2021, President Joe Biden issued a very broad, 34 page “Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity.” The Executive Order, or “EO”, can be found here. This order comes six months after the notorious SolarWinds attack, and mere weeks after other high-profile attacks have invaded our networks, and shut
There have been seminal events in the cybersecurity space since 2012, but there has likely been no event in recent times bigger than the SolarWinds attack which was first announced in December 2020. Though it likely had “nation-state” origins, the SolarWinds attack raised a number of serious issues for US companies and indeed the US
This was originally published as a Seyfarth Legal Update.
Seyfarth Synopsis: As the world progresses with COVID vaccinations, the scenario where you have to show a COVID passport before crossing a border, taking a public mode of transportation, or entering a public space like a cinema no longer seems like a scene out of a dystopian sci-fi movie. Colloquially dubbed the “COVID passport,” the concept refers to various forms of a certificate of COVID vaccination and/or negative test status recognized on a national or inter-state basis, the use of which remains a controversial topic at this juncture, giving rise to technical, legal and ethical concerns.
Having said that, some countries have already adopted or proposed adopting various versions of COVID passports on a national or inter-member states basis, such as the “Green Pass” for visiting certain premises or events within Israel[1], the “Green Health Code” for domestic travel and entry into certain premises within mainland China[2], and the proposed “Digital Green Certificate” for travelling between member countries of EU and abroad[3]. The decentralized initial approach and the practical challenges of implementing an universally recognized COVID passport remains as the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Continue Reading Overview of Technology and Data Privacy Issues Arising from COVID Passports
California has once again decided it needed to pass privacy legislation to protect the residents of the great state from the nefarious actions of Big Tech. However, this time they did it with a ballot initiative and not via the thoughtful (mostly) mechanism of the legislative process. The proponents of the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) touted this as an improvement over the CCPA – but is it really? To listen to the proponents of the CPRA, it aims to strengthen California consumer privacy rights, while for the most part, avoiding the imposition of overly-burdensome requirements on a business, particularly those businesses that are already CCPA compliant. So, what’s changed, really?
Continue Reading California Prop 24 – Is the New Privacy Law Really New (Or Is the Sky Falling)
Today, the Court of Justice of the EU has handed down its judgment in the highly-anticipated Facebook Ireland case (aka Schrems II) and invalidated the Privacy Shield Decision. For those of you who have followed this case, the CJEU took a “left turn at Albuquerque” in its decision since the primary contention of Mr. Schrems was that the Commission Decision around Standard Contractual Clauses (“SCCs”) was invalid.
While the Court did opine on the SCC issue, it didn’t stop there. The Court actually took up a broader scope and addressed the validity of the Privacy Shield decision. In a mentally acrobatic exercise, we ended up with a judgment that preserved the SCCs decision (kind of), but invalidated the Privacy Shield Decision – even after there had been multiple renewals of the adequacy finding of Privacy Shield in the past. Additionally, along with the logical gymnastics around Privacy Shield, the SCCs aren’t quite out of the woods yet.
Continue Reading CJEU Invalidates EU-US Privacy Shield Framework
From court closures and the way judges conduct appearances and trials to the expected wave of lawsuits across a multitude of areas and industries, the COVID-19 outbreak is having a notable impact in the litigation space—and is expected to for quite some time.
To help navigate the litigation landscape, we are kicking off a webinar
Monday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra submitted of the Final Regulations under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to the California Office of Administrative Law (OAL). Under the California Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the OAL has 30 business days plus 60 calendar days (due to a COVID-related executive order) to determine whether the regulations meet the requirements of the APA. This final submission comes after various public forums, hearings, commentary, and revisions to the regulations.
Continue Reading The CCPA Regulations Are Finally Here
While a lot of ink has been spilled on the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) over the last 18 months, one of the things which has become quite apparent to those of us who view privacy through a lens which considers both EU and US perspectives is that the CCPA is actually not an EU-style law. Except for the right to delete data, all the consumer rights in the CCPA actually existed (albeit in a much less aggressive form) for many categories of information under prior California law. When one considers the number of carve-outs to the deletion right, the CCPA actually looks a lot like what is the more traditional approach to privacy that is prevalent under US jurisprudence.
Continue Reading Europe’s Privacy Law is Coming – Just Not Via California
While the United States largely hit the brakes as of March in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra made clear his intentions to begin enforcement of the Act on July 1, 2020, as originally planned. This announcement came despite many organizations’ pleas to defer enforcement in order to relieve the additional stress imposed on organizations as they respond to the COVID-19 crisis, and continue to work towards ensuring their compliance with the CCPA. While Becerra has not yet published his final regulations on the Act, there are aspects of the regulations that we expect to be largely intact in their current form once the final regulations are out as a result of reviewing the three drafts General Becerra has already produced.
Continue Reading What We Can Expect from the CCPA Regulations
The rush for California to get all of the “rules of the road” ready for next year has seemed to cause a bit of confusion with California’s privacy law. Draft regulations were published the same day the Governor signed into law a series of amendments to the underlying law. It is all a bit confusing, However, now that the Governor has signed the last raft of amendments, and the dust has somewhat settled, the question on everyone’s mind is: What changed in the California Consumer Protection Act (“CCPA”)? How does this effect the draft regulations that the Attorney General published?
Fortunately, there are a number of significant changes which help clarify the CCPA, as well as materially change the scope of the CCPA – even if the AG didn’t include some of these changes into the initial draft regulations announced earlier this month. The most impactful changes across industries are as follows:
Business employees
To start off, the issue of employee coverage under the CCPA has been a fractious one. On one hand, business has rightly claimed that the relationship with an employee is not the same as the relationship with a customer. On the other hand, privacy advocates have claimed that employees shouldn’t give up privacy rights just because they are employees.
Continue Reading CCPA Amendments – What did California Actually Do?