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Israeli Privacy Protection Authority Publishes Guidelines on Data Protection in Tele-Health Services

The Israeli Privacy Protection Authority (PPA) published the final version of its guidelines on data protection and privacy obligations in tele-health services, following its March draft. The guidelines are directed to healthcare organizations, clinics, health practitioners, and relevant service providers involved in data processing operations throughout the tele-health value chain.

The guidelines map out the steps that healthcare providers and ...

Israeli Gov’t Probe Found Police’s Use of Spyware Uncompliant with Law and Policies

The special investigation team assigned to investigate the Israel Police’s use of spyware, found the Police’s practices to be highly under-supervised and incompliant with the law and internal procedures and policies.

The investigation into the Police’s spyware-tapping activities was launched amid investigative journalism publications by the Israeli newspaper Calcalist, alleging that the Police had warrantlessly penetrated the smartphones of individuals ...

Australia: Google is not Liable for Defamation in Google Search Results

The High Court of Australia found Google not liable for allegedly defamatory content in an article linked in a Google search result. The court’s majority opinion held that Google only serves as a “library” for the article and has no active role in this context.

The case came about from a lawsuit filed by a criminal defense attorney, whom the ...

T-Mobile to Pay $500 Million to Settle Its 2021 Data Breach

The U.S. mobile carrier T-Mobile agreed to pay $500 million to settle a class action lawsuit. The class action was filed by consumers following a cyberattack on T-Mobile’s systems last summer, which compromised the personal data of at least 76.6 million people – currently, the largest ever carrier breach on record.

According to the settlement authorized by the court, T-Mobile, ...

Florida Reforms Cybersecurity Incident Reporting Obligations

A new Florida law requires state and local government agencies to report to the state’s Cybersecurity Operations Center any ransomware incident within 12 hours; and any emergency-level, severe-level, or high-level cybersecurity incident – within 48 hours.

Such reports must specify at least the following information:

  • A summary of the facts surrounding the incident.
  • The date of the last data backup, ...

EU Court Takes a Broad View of the Term “Special Categories of Data”

The European Union’s high court has ruled that data capable of revealing a person’s sexual orientation (either by cross-referencing or inference) falls within the GDPR’s special categories of personal data (i.e., sensitive data), even if the data does not directly express the person’s sexual orientation.

The decision was delivered in a case questioning the lawfulness of a Lithuanian requirement from ...

An AI System Cannot be a Patent Inventor Under U.S. law

The U.S. Court of Appeals of the Federal Court has held that Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot be named the inventor of a patent, because the term “individual” in the U.S. Patent Act necessarily refers to human beings. The decision was delivered in an appeal filed by Dr. Stephen Thaler, whose application for patent protection for the products of his AI ...

Israeli Consumers Can Assert Lawsuits Against Facebook Under Israeli Law

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that individuals and small businesses in Israel who use Facebook’s advertisement services may, in certain cases, assert civil claims against Facebook in Israel and under Israeli law. The governing law provision in Facebook’s terms, which provides that all lawsuits against Facebook will be asserted in California courts and under California law, is inconsequential.

The court ...

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