Photo of Kelly McMullon

Kelly M. McMullon is special international labor, employment & data protection counsel in the Labor & Employment Law Department and member of the Firm’s International Labor & Employment, Privacy & Cybersecurity and Sports Groups. Kelly has been recommended in Legal 500 UK for her “responsiveness and practicality.”

Kelly assists clients in a variety of sectors including financial services, asset management, life sciences, fintech, consultancy, retail, sports, leisure and manufacturing in a wide range of contentious and non-contentious matters.

In her employment practice, she provides general day-to-day counselling and advice on all employment-related issues, including hires, terminations, grievances and redundancies, as well as the employment aspects of transactions.

In her data protection practice, Kelly provides strategic advice as well as practical support and guidance on all aspects of data protection compliance, including international transfers of personal data, data breaches, direct marketing and employee data protection concerns. She also provides advice on the data protection aspects of transactions.

Kelly also has experience working with businesses on CSR and ESG initiatives, human rights and modern slavery issues.

Kelly is a contributor to Proskauer’s International Labor and Employment Law and Proskauer on Privacy blogs and is the Editor for Proskauer on Privacy’s “International Data Privacy” chapter. She regularly provides training and speaks on employment and data protection issues.

Her pro bono experience includes counselling not-for-profit organizations on data privacy and employment-related issues.

The European Commission has released proposals for new legislation that seeks to create stronger privacy in electronic communications. The draft Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation (the “Regulation”) is intended to replace the ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC) and will also bring the law in line with the new rules as set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) as part of the process to modernize the data protection framework in the EU. As a regulation (rather than a directive) it will apply uniformly across the EU as there will be one single set of rules which will crease more legal certainty, save for certain prescribed areas where EU Member States can have their own rules.

The CJEU (the European Union Court of Justice) has handed down a decision which makes clear that general and indiscriminate retention of electronic communications is unlawful. National legislation of each European Member State should ensure that mass surveillance only occurs where it is strictly necessary in order to combat serious crime as well as terrorism and meets other stringent requirements.

The references were made by the Swedish and UK courts and concerned the interpretation of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC, as amended by Directive 2009/136/EC) (the “Directive”), in light of the rights granted by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the “Charter”), particularly, the right to privacy (Article 7) and the right to protection of personal data (Article 8), and the decision of the CJEU in Digital Rights Ireland (C‑293/12 and C‑594/12).

TalkTalk, a major UK telecoms company, has been fined £400,000 for a data breach after they were hacked. This is a record fine given by the ICO (the UK’s data protection authority).  Significantly the fine was imposed after a change of leadership this summer when Elizabeth Denham (previously the Information

The European Parliament has approved the reformed General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”). Given this is a Regulation (rather than a Directive), this legislation will apply automatically in every Member State (without need for additional domestic legislation) when it comes into force on May 25 2018.

Many of the requirements are similar to those set out in Directive 95/46/EC (the “EU Directive”), however there are certain key differences.  The table below summarises the key changes.