Cecile Martin

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DataGuidance spoke with Cécile Martin, Special International Counsel at Proskauer Rose LLP, at the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Conference in Brussels in November 2016. Cécile discussed the passing of the Digital Republic Bill and its implications for organizations, as well as the latest developments regarding employee monitoring in France and the upcoming changes with the GDPR.

Proskauer Counsel Cécile Martin was recently interviewed by DataGuidance’s “Privacy This Week” covering new guidance issued by the French data protection authority (‘CNIL’) on June 15, 2016. The guidance highlights the main changes in relation to the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’). On June 16, 2016, CNIL launched an online…

Co-authored by Geoffrey Roche

On March 10, 2016, the French data protection agency (« CNIL ») pronounced a €100.000 ($111,715) fine against Google Inc. for failure to comply with its formal injunction of May, 2015 ordering the company to extend delisting to all the search engine’s extensions.

Just one week after the milestone decision rendered by the CJEU (http://curia.europa.eu/juris/celex.jsf?celex=62014CJ0362&lang1=fr&type=TXT&ancre) to invalidate the Safe Harbor program established 15 years ago between the U.S. and the EU to facilitate the transfer of personal data from the EU to the U.S., a German data protection authority (DPA) of the state of Schleswig-Holstein (one of the German DPAs) issued a position paper where it states that, in its opinion:

  • Given the mass surveillance conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies, data subjects may not be able to provide effective informed consent to the transfer of their data to the U.S., which means that such a legal basis may not be able to be used to legally transfer personal data from Europe to the U.S.;
  • Model contractual clauses are not a reliable a tool to transfer personal data from Europe to the U.S. and data exporters should consider suspending such transfers under the model contracts.  To reach this conclusion, the German DPA relied on the fact that the clauses require the data importer to represent that it has no reason to believe that the legislation applicable to it prevents it from fulfilling the instructions received from the data exporter. However, the German DPA agency reasoned, U.S. data importers are not in a position to give such a representation.

Just one week after the milestone decision rendered by the CJEU (http://curia.europa.eu/juris/celex.jsf?celex=62014CJ0362&lang1=fr&type=TXT&ancre) to invalidate the Safe Harbor program established 15 years ago between the U.S. and the EU to facilitate the transfer of personal data from the EU to the U.S., a German data protection authority (DPA) issued…

A few months after the European Court of Justice ruled on May 13, 2014 that search engines are considered personal data controllers under the EU Data Protection Directive of 1995 and, as such, should provide data subjects with a right to be forgotten, a French Tribunal enforced this principle in X & Y v. Google France.

In a summary proceeding on September 16, 2014, the Paris Tribunal (Tribunal de Grande Instance) held that Google must erase from its search engine, under penalty of €1,000 per day, all links leading to defamatory content published on Facebook (see attached judgement: TGI Paris – Ordonnance du 16 septembre 2014).

In France, before implementing a whistleblowing process, a company must inform and consult with its employees’ representatives, inform its employees and notify the French Data Protection Agency (CNIL).

There are two possible ways to notify the CNIL of a whistleblowing system:

  1. request a formal authorization from the CNIL (this is quite burdensome and difficult to obtain), or
  2. opt for the standard whistleblowing authorization (AU-004).