WP29’s comments on the EU Commission’s Privacy Shield Decision: again not an endorsement

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On July 26, 2016, the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) released a statement on the decision of the European Commission on the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. The statement refers to the Privacy Shield approved by the European Commission on July 12, 2016 (see here) and addresses the changes brought to the text of the document after the last rounds of negotiations. Particularly, the WP29 highlighted that a number of the concerns the group previously highlighted (see here and here) remain. The WP29’s Read more [...]

Privacy Shield officially adopted by the EU Commission … but American organizations “targeting Europe” might want to consider whether GDPR compliance would make more sense

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On July 12, 2016, the European Commission officially approved the Privacy Shield, issuing the decision of adequacy (“Decision”). The Privacy Shield is supposed to provide a safe mechanism to transfer personal data from the EU to the US for those organizations that comply with the framework.  Compared to the Safe Harbor (which the Privacy Shield substitutes) the Privacy Shield contains stronger obligations on U.S. companies, clearer safeguards for data subjects, transparency on U.S. government’s Read more [...]

hMillennials are less concerned with privacy than older generations, ICO’s Annual Track 2016 finds

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On April 2016, the Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO) issued the Annual Track 2016, a research that assesses the level of awareness of UK population of its information/privacy rights. According to the document, the most important social issue for UK citizens is health care. Only 15% is concerned with protection of personal information. And the younger generations seem less concerned than the older ones. The survey highlights a mistrust of UK individuals towards the handling of Read more [...]

Data Protection Authority comments on Brexit

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On June 24, 2016, the British Information Commissioner Officer (ICO), issued a press release in consideration of the recent referendum results. “The Data Protection Act remains the law of the land irrespective of the referendum result. If the UK is not part of the EU, then upcoming EU reforms to data protection law would not directly apply to the UK. But if the UK wants to trade with the Single Market on equal terms we would have to prove ‘adequacy’ – in other words UK data protection Read more [...]

Privacy Shield not robust enough to withstand ECJ’s future legal scrutiny, European Data Protection Supervisor opines

Posted on by Federica Romanelli
On May 30, 2016, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) – whose mission is to advise the EU institutions on the data protection implications of their policies — published Opinion 4/2016 on the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield draft adequacy decision. According to the press release the Privacy Shield as it stands is not robust enough to withstand future legal scrutiny before the Court. Significant improvements are needed should the European Commission wish to adopt an adequacy decision, to Read more [...]