EU Court Clarifies Boundaries of Journalism and Household Exceptions in Data Protection Law

The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has delivered a decision on data protection issues regarding a Latvian individual who published a video he filmed on YouTube, which shows police officers going about their duties in a police station. The Latvian privacy regulator found that he had infringed data protection laws for failing to inform the police officers of ...

Eu Commission and Japan Mutually Recognize Each Other As Adequate For Cross-Border Data Transfers

The European Commission and Japan have mutually recognized each other’s data protection laws as providing an adequate level of data protection. This mutual adequacy decision allows personal data to flow freely between EU countries and Japan, in accordance with European data protection law which generally restrict the transfer of personal data to destinations outside of the EU. The adequacy decision ...

EU Regulators Clarify GDPR Data Transfers in the Event of a No-Deal Brexit

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) – the panel of EU privacy regulators – has published an information note on data transfers under the GDPR in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The note explains that in the absence of an agreement between Europe and the UK, the UK will be deemed an inadequate “third country” after the Brexit on ...

French Privacy Regulator Imposes 50 Million Euro Fine on Google For GDPR Violations

The first significant fine in the GDPR-era was imposed by the French data protection authority (CNIL) on Google LLC, for the Internet’s giant’s alleged violations of the GDPR’s rules on user transparency and consent in Google’s Android operating system for smartphones.
The CNIL alleges that Google’s Android system does not provide sufficiently transparent notices to users about the processing activities ...

Painfully Outdated

The Privacy Protection Authority published draft guidelines on the use of drones in public spaces. Sometimes I wonder about the topics the Authority chooses to review in its guidelines, because from my experience they are not the most pressing issues. But I do know the authority is always well-intentioned and its fine people work their best to make do ...

Israeli Court Rules Police May Forcibly Take A Fingerprint from a Suspect to Unlock His Smartphone

The Tel Aviv District Court has permitted the Israeli police to forcibly take a fingerprint from a suspect in order to unlock his smartphone, in an unprecedented decision that reverses a lower court’s decision. The suspect in this case was arrested for possessing 37 grams of marijuana, but refused to unlock his smartphone, arguing that compelling him to provide his ...

Illinois Supreme Court Finds Unconsented Processing of Biometric Data Actionable For Liquidated Damages

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court of Illinois unanimously held that unlawful collection and processing of biometric data, in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008 (BIPA) is actionable per se for liquidated damages of up to 5,000 dollars and can be asserted in a class action suit. 

Illinois is one of only three states in ...

Us Federal Court Says Government Can’t Compel Suspects to Unlock Phones with Biometrics

A federal District Court in California has decided that police cannot force individuals to unlock their smartphones by using their biometric features. The decision was delivered in the court’s denial of a request for a search warrant, as part of an investigation of an alleged blackmail scheme carried out through the use of Facebook. The court was asked to order ...