Blogs

Starting on February 7, 2017, the Irish High Court will hear a case brought by the Irish Data Protection Authority (DPA) against Facebook Ireland Ltd and Mr Schrems over EU-US data transfers after the Snowden disclosures. After the ECJ invalidated the “Safe Harbor” decision, Facebook performed its data transfer to the US using the “Model Clauses”. Mr. Schrems […]

On November 4, 2016, Der Spiegel, a German newspaper, reported about an ongoing investigation on Facebook over hate posts. According to the complaint filed in Hamburg, Facebook is allegedly not removing illegal content, such as racist or violent posts, from its pages – even after being requested to do so. More information is available here in English. For […]

According to Italia Oggi, in 2016 60% of the received request to be forgotten from search results has been granted. The percentage concerns the request to be removed from search results after the European Court of Justice issued its famous “right-to-be-forgotten” decision in the Costeja case, C-131/12. According to the source, the percentage consider the cases where the  Garante […]

On January 6, 2016, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) released an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA): “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in the Recent US Elections.” The document is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment provided to the President by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National […]

On October 20, 2016, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) published Opinion 9/2016 on Personal Information Management Systems, PIMS. The opinion acknowledges that the recently adopted GDPR provides for increased transparency, powerful rights of access and data portability, giving individuals more control over their data. However, the EDPS highlighted how market conditions and business practices can […]

On October 27, 2016, the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali) authorized the transfer of personal data to the U.S. according to the EU-US Privacy Shield. With its decision, the Italian DPA has aligned itself with to the European Commission’s decision of adequacy, which recognized the Privacy Shield as granting an adequate […]

  On November 11, 2016, a court in Moscow upheld the decision of a lower court to block Russians from accessing LinkedIn. The court decision originated from a decision of the Russian data protection regulator (Roskomnadzor), which had found that LinkedIn had failed to maintain Russian data on Russian servers in breach of the Russian […]

    On November 7, 2016, China adopted a new cyber-security law that will come into force in June 2017. The new legislation has received some criticism. According to James Zimmerman, Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, “this is a step backwards for innovation in China that won’t do much to improve […]

Following ICO’s comments on Brexit, on October 24, 2016, the UK Secretary of State Karen Bradley MP used her interview before the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee to confirm UK’s participation to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect in the spring of 2018. The Secretary said that: “We will be members […]

On September 26, 2016, the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information issued an order prohibiting Facebook to collect and store data of German WhatsApp users.  The decision came after WhatsApp issued a statement informing its users that the application’s terms and privacy policy was updated, as a consequence of WhatsApp’s joining Facebook. […]