Early this afternoon, the Article 29 Working Party (“Art. 29 WP”) held a press conference at which it presented its forthcoming opinion on the adequacy of the US-EU Privacy Shield. As background, the European Commission has put forth a draft “adequacy decision” in which it declares that on the basis of Privacy Shield, the United […]
Enforcement
EU Council Issues New Consolidated GDPR and Accelerates GDPR’s Legislative Timetable
Yesterday evening, the Council of Ministers issued a new consolidated version of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is the first “clean” version of the GDPR that (a) incorporates all revisions agreed upon from the time of the Commission’s original 2012 proposal to the December 2015 trilogue compromise text; and (b) numbers individual provisions […]
Department of Justice Indicts Seven Iranians for State-Sponsored Hacking
The Department of Justice has announced the indictment of seven Iranian hackers alleged to work for the Iranian government on charges stemming from a coordinated string of distributed denial of service (“DDoS”) attacks primarily against U.S. financial institutions from 2011 to 2013. One of the hackers is also charged with hacking into the supervisory control […]
EU Privacy Leaders Discuss US-EU Privacy Shield at Event Co-Hosted by A&B Partner
On March 22, 2016, the International Association of Privacy Professional (IAPP) hosted a podium discussion in Brussels on the new EU-US Privacy Shield. Alston & Bird co-hosted the event, which featured two top-notch privacy luminaries from EU legislative and oversight bodies: Mr. Giovanni Buttarelli, the present European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). Mr. Bruno Gencarelli, Head […]
HHS/OCR Announces Launch of HIPAA Audit Program Phase 2
Today, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’s (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced the launch of Phase 2 of its HIPAA Compliance Audit Program. (OCR’s announcement can be accessed at Audit Phase 2 Announcement and further information about Phase 2 can be accessed at Audit Phase 2 Information.) In this phase, OCR will […]