data privacy

Subscribe to data privacy via RSS

The dream of hack-proof communication just got a little closer to reality. On August 16, 2016, China launched the world’s first “quantum satellite,” a project the Chinese government hopes will enable it to build a communication system incapable of being hacked. Such a system, if perfected, would allow for encrypted communications between any two devices with absolute certainty that the encryption could not be broken, and with a built-in mechanism for alerting the sender/receiver if someone tried.

After nearly four years of negotiation and wrangling, European Officials announced yesterday that they had finally reached agreement on the language for the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (“Regulation), which will replace the aging 1995 Data Protection Directive (“Directive”).

In many ways, the announcement is welcome news as it…

On January 1, 2016, the Delaware Online Privacy and Protection Act (“DOPPA”) will go into force, a law that provides strong online privacy protection for its residents.  The new law targets three areas of compliance: (1) advertising to children; (2) conspicuous posting of a compliant privacy policy; and (3) enhancing the privacy protections of users of digital books (“e-books”).  The law grants the state’s Consumer Protection Unit of the Department of Justice the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of the law. This new Delaware law is substantially similar to three existing California laws that regulate the same practices. Given the similarities in language, DOPPA was clearly drafted with the California laws in mind.

The average American today generates more media than they did at any other point in history, and the ease with which our communications, photos, and videos are sent and stored digitally means most of us have more media stored in the cloud or on a single digital device than previous generations would have created in an entire lifetime. However, even as the amount of media we create and store has increased, the laws governing its search and seizure have failed to keep up. Under federal law and the laws of most states, the same information may be subject to different levels of protection from government authorities depending on whether that information is in the form of an e-mail stored in the cloud or a letter stored in a desk drawer.

California is attempting to change that equation. On October 8, 2015, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA, SB 178), a sweeping bill

Over the course of the coming weeks, we will examine the various options available to companies in light of the European Court of Justice’s (CJEU) decision invalidating the US-EU Safe Harbor framework, including model contracts, binding corporate rules (BCRs), consent and reliance on derogations.

News out of Germany, however, indicates that a one-size-fits all approach to data transfers from the EU to the U.S. may be difficult to achieve.

The past few years have seen exponential growth in the use of technology in the classroom, with applications ranging from the increased availability and use of e-books to the displacement of physical classrooms through Massive Open Online Courses (also known as MOOCs). One of the fastest growing segments of the education technology market relates to online educational services and applications, which are designed to track individual student progress and use the data gathered to deliver an individualized learning experience to each user. However, while online educational services and applications hold significant potential, the gathering of massive amounts of data has also sparked fears about what data will be collected, from whom, how it will be used, and whether, if at all, it will be deleted. This fear is especially prevalent when it comes to online educational services and applications targeted at children.

The US-EU Safe Harbor has been back in the news recently as Germany’s data protection commissioners met at the end of January and expressed impatience at the delay in implementing what many view as necessary reforms to the program. The European Court of Justice also recently heard a challenge to Facebook’s reliance on the Safe Harbor for the transfer of user data in what many see as an important test case; this lawsuit will be the topic of a future blog post.

On January 27, 2015 the Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC”) issued a report detailing best practices and recommendations that businesses engaged in the Internet of Things (“IoT”) can follow to protect consumer privacy and security. The IoT refers to the connection of everyday objects to the Internet and the transmission of data between those devices. According to Gartner estimates the IoT services spending will reach $69.5 billion in 2015. The potential benefits of IoT growth include enhanced healthcare through connected medical devices, convenience and cost savings through home automation and improved safety and convenience through connected cars.