Following a two-year grace period, EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) entered into force on May 25, 2018. For many companies, preparing for the GDPR was a multi-year project involving multiple teams and input or assistance from across the organization. On this blog, we have outlined the items we have seen as particularly time- or resource-intensive.
On June 29, 2018, the Data Protection Authority (DPA) of the German state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) announced it would be surveying GDPR compliance among companies under its jurisdiction. Germany has 16 state-run DPAs with general [...] Read more
With the entry into application of the GDPR on May 25, 2018, the EU Member States were expected to have adopted national legislation implementing the regulation. To date, however, only 30% of Member States have effectively passed legislation, which still leaves the legal landscape to be precarious. The GDPR allows for deviations and specifications in several areas, for instance to introduce specific conditions or limitations for the processing of biometric, genetic, or health data; to create specific protection regimes for employee data; or to restrict the rights the GDPR grants to individuals. [...] Read more
Shortly after the GDPR’s entry into application on May 25, 2018, several EU Supervisory Authorities have activated online Data Protection Officer (“DPO”) notification tools, allowing organizations to communicate the contact details of their DPO to the Supervisory Authorities, which is a requirement under Article 37 GDPR.
While the DPO Guidelines of the Article 29 Working Party (“WP29”; replaced by the European Data Protection Board, “EDPB”) do not emphasize the requirement to notify DPOs, Supervisory Authorities (“SAs”) view these notifications as important, and have made available [...] Read more
The GDPR entered into force on May 25, 2018. One of the GDPR’s core going-forward obligations is the duty to conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) over processing activities that create a “high risk” to individuals’ privacy. DPIAs constitute an important aspect of GDPR compliance, as they arguably replace the notifications of processing systems and activities to European Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) which pre-GDPR privacy law often obligated companies to make. Instead of notifying DPAs, the GDPR now requires companies to internally conduct DPIAs that document “high [...] Read more
The GDPR entered into force on May 25, 2018. One of the GDPR’s core going-forward obligations is the duty to conduct Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) over processing activities that create a “high risk” to individuals’ privacy. DPIAs constitute an important aspect of GDPR compliance, as they arguably replace the notifications of processing systems and activities to European Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) which pre-GDPR privacy law often obligated companies to make. Instead of notifying DPAs, the GDPR now requires companies to internally conduct DPIAs that document “high [...] Read more
Today Alston & Bird’s Jan Dhont, Peter Swire, and DeBrae Kennedy-Mayo, with support from Senzing, Inc., are publishing a White Paper titled The Importance of Accurate Retrieval of Data Subjects’ Personal Data in Complying with GDPR Individual Rights Requirements.
The General Data Protection Regulation, which enters into effect on May 25, 2018, goes considerably beyond existing law in setting forth individual rights that allow data subjects to control how their personal data is used. This Paper addresses an important issue for implementing individual rights – how can those companies [...] Read more
On February 28, 2018, the Belgian Privacy Commission issued a recommendation on the position it takes with regard to data protection impact assessments (or “DPIAs”) as foreseen in the GDPR. A DPIA under the GDPR is similar in scope and impact to its predecessor, the PIA (or “privacy impact assessment”) and requires businesses to assess processing operations that are likely to present a high risk to individuals’ rights. Such “high risk” is, for instance, likely to present itself in processing operations involving sensitive data, systematic monitoring, or vulnerable individuals such [...] Read more
On April 11, Justice Caroline Costello of the Irish High Court referred the Schrems 2.0 case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) with 11 questions for the ECJ to answer. Per Justice Costello, the sole issue in the case is whether the European Commission’s Decisions regarding standard contractual clauses (SCCs) are valid, which is reflected in the 11 questions posed.
The reference asks the ECJ to determine:
Whether provisions of EU law related to national security, public security, defense, and state security apply to transfers of data outside the EU under SCCs;
Whether [...] Read more
The Council of the European Union published a new draft of the ePrivacy Regulation (link here) for discussion purposes on 22 March. This draft aims to facilitate discussions as we are moving towards the final version of the ePrivacy Regulation. As such, the changes outlined below are not final, but rather indicative of the direction that the ePrivacy Regulation is taking. Of particular interest to companies are the provisions relating to cookie settings, and direct marketing communications:
Cookie Settings
The new draft clarifies that a one-off consent for a cookie in the context [...] Read more
On February 16, 2018, the Brussels Court of First Instance rendered a judgment in proceedings brought by the Belgian Privacy Commission’s against Facebook. The case forms one part of two-tiered litigation brought by the Commission in regards to alleged monitoring practices vis-à-vis Belgian internet users. In parallel to the proceedings that resulted in the judgment cited above, the Belgian Privacy Commission had also initiated a procedure referred to as “summary proceedings” against Facebook – and Facebook defeated the Privacy Commission’s claim before the Brussels Court of Appeal in [...] Read more
