Case Law & Court Rules

On August 18, 2015, the UK Information Commissioner Office (“ICO”) issued an enforcement notice against Google because it contravened the first and the third data protection principles by referencing to an article detailing the delisting of a link that followed a “request to be forgotten”. According to the ICO, Google contravened the third data protection […]

On July 1, 2015, the Rechtbank Den Haag (the Dutch District Court of the Hague) found the practice of the Dutch government to intercept Dutch law firms illegal. A Dutch law firm, Prakken d’Oliveira, accused the Dutch government of spying on the law firm’s privileged conversations. The CCBE intervened in the process to highlight the […]

  On July 28, 2015, the UK Supreme Court granted permission to appeal the Court of Appeal’s decision in Vidal-Hall -v- Google. In March 2015, the Court of Appeal gave the leeway for UK data subjects to sue Google in England for cookies violations even if there was no pecuniary loss. More information on the ‘Safari Workaround’ […]

On June 25, 2015, the advocate general of the Court of Justice of the European Union (“ECJ”) filed his opinion in the case 230/14, Weltimmo s.r.o. v Nemzeti Adatvédelmi és Információszabadság Hatóság (“Weltimmo”). According to the Advocate General, in order to determine which EU data protection law applies, authorities shall consider where the companies’ activity […]

On July 28, 2015, the Hamburgische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit, the Hamburg Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) adopted a decision against Facebook’s policy forbidding users to utilize pseudonyms for their accounts. The German DPA issued an injunction against Facebook Ireland Ltd for infringement of the German Telemedia Act (Telemediengesetz), and the Personal ID Act (Personalausweisgesetz). […]

On July 21, 2015, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that pocket-dialed conversations happening because the person operating the device fails to take simple precautions to prevent such exposure cannot be considered private. In this case, Mr. Huff – Chairman of the Kenton County, Kentucky (CVG), Airport Board – inadvertently placed a pocket-dialed call to […]

On June 22, 2015, the Supreme Court affirmed, in a 5-4 decision, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the law must give hotel owners a right to object to police demanding to see their registries at any given hour of the day. The Court struck as facially unconstitutional Los Angeles Municipal Code § […]

The European Court of Justice is called to decide whether server logs shall be considered as ‘personal data’ under the EU’s Directive 95/46/EC. Case C-582/14. Server logs are automatically created and typically set behind webpages to record which pages have been viewed, when, and by which dynamic IP address. The IP address is the number […]

On June 4, 2015, the Minnesota District Court dismissed a data breach class action for lack of constitutional standing because the plaintiffs did not allege injury in fact. Carlsen v. GameStop. In this class action, Plaintiffs subscribed to a videogame magazine accessible through the web. The terms of service for the online subscription included a privacy […]

As we previously reported (see here) on May 7, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that the controversial surveillance program according to which the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting Americans’ phone records was not authorized under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act (ACLU v. Clapper, 2015 U.S. […]