Germany boasts one of the world’s largest, most sophisticated, and international economies. Companies doing business in Germany are thus an increasingly relevant target for cyberattacks. Germany‘s Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) is the federal law enforcement agency charged with investigating cybercrime, and for coordinating federal-state cooperation in cybercrime matters. The BKA recently published […]
European Privacy & Cybersecurity
Belgian Supervisory Authority Sanctions News Media Company for Violating Cookie Rules
On May 25th, the Belgian Supervisory Authority (“GBA”) announced that it had imposed a fine of EUR 50,000 on a Belgium-based news media company for using cookies on its websites without complying with applicable cookie law requirements. The GBA decided to sanction the company mainly because although the company had obtained consent from website visitors […]
EDPB Issues Draft Guidelines on the Calculation of Administrative Fines
On May 16, 2022, the European Data Protection Board (‘EDPB’) published draft regulatory guidelines (‘draft guidance’) on the calculation of administrative fines for infringements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’). In the draft guidance, the EDPB sets out its methodology, consisting of five steps, for calculating administrative fines. The EDPB adopted these guidelines […]
EU and U.S. Reach Agreement In Principle on a Replacement for the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield
On March 25, 2022, the European Commission and the United States announced that they have reached an “agreement in principle” on a replacement for the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, which was invalidated by the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2020. The new framework will be designed to allow personal data to flow freely […]
Belgian Supreme Court rules that Data Protection Authority may impose administrative fines even where a data subject’s personal data were not processed
The Belgian Supreme Court ruled in a judgment of Oct. 7, 2021 that a data subject has the right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Authority against a processing practice that violates the GDPR (in this case, the data minimization principle in Article 6 of the GDPR), even where the data subject’s personal […]