On July 10, 2023, the European Commission adopted its adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (Framework). The adequacy decision concludes the long process to open up new means by which companies transfer personal data from the European Economic Area (EEA) to the United States.
The Framework will be administered by the US Department
2022 proved to be an historic year for privacy and data security. Connecticut and Utah joined the list of states that have now passed comprehensive data privacy laws, bringing the total to five (5) states. For the first time, federal privacy legislation advanced to a House Subcommittee, and though the American Data Privacy and Protection
On December 22, 2022, France’s National Commission for Technology and Freedoms (“CNIL”) fined Microsoft’s Irish subsidiary 60 million euro for failure to comply with Article 82 of the French Data Protection Law (known as the “Loi Informatique et Libertés”). Article 82 is France’s implementation of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive, and it generally requires that any
On November 22nd, an appeals court in Luxembourg issued a decision that highlights the tensions between anti-money laundering (“AML”) goals and privacy concerns, and could impact impending beneficial ownership regulations to be issued under the U.S. Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”). Specifically, the appeals court decided
On June 4, 2021, the European Commission adopted an updated and long-awaited set of standard contractual clauses (SCCs) for the international transfer of personal data. The previous SCCs were created prior to the implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and required substantive revisions to bring them in line with the GDPR and the Court of Justice of the European Union’s July 2020 Schrems II decision (previously covered here).
Continue Reading The European Commission’s Adoption of New SCCs
On July 16, 2020, the European Court of Justice (Court) ruled in the “Schrems II” case that the one of the most commonly used cross border data transfer mechanisms between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework (Privacy Shield), has been invalidated. The Court reasoned that when transferring
The successful management of COVID-19 relies on the quick analysis and collection of health data, which can raise privacy issues particularly in the European Union. In order to help data controllers manage their COVID-19 response plans under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other EU privacy laws, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) released a statement discussing how governments and companies can process personal data in response to COVID-19.
Continue Reading EDPB Clarifies Privacy Rules for COVID-19
The perplexing question of what U.S. companies must do to comply with EU “cookie” law became slightly more clear with the recent decision of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) in Planet49 GmbH, but numerous questions still remain. A main source of confusion about cookies is the interplay between two EU privacy laws, the
Following numerous privacy complaints, the State Office for Data Protection Supervision (BayLDA) recently conducted a random audit on 40 companies and found widespread problems with their cookie disclosures. The purpose of the audit was to determine whether website users were able to obtain transparent information regarding the use and tracking of their information by third-party
Since the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) took effect on May 25, 2018, US companies without facilities or employees in Europe have struggled to understand the extraterritorial scope of the GDPR. Under Article 3(2), US companies without an “establishment” in the EU are required to comply with the GDPR where their processing activities relate to the “offering of goods or services” to EU data subjects or where they “monitor” the behavior of EU data subjects. The meaning of these concepts is a particularly vexing question for US companies that have a website accessible to Europeans or have some European customers, but lack a physical presence in the EU.
Continue Reading EDPB Draft Guidelines on Extraterritorial Scope of the GDPR Provide Few Clear Answers for US Companies