On 23 January 2019, the European Commission adopted its decision finding that the level of data protection in the EU and Japan are equivalent. In parallel, Japan adopted its equivalent decision. It is the first time ever that such reciprocal adequacy decisions are adopted. These adequacy decisions create the world’s largest data area of safe […]
On 6 December 2018, the Australian Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 (Cth) (the Act) was rushed through both houses of Federal Parliament without amendment and received royal assent on 8 December 2018. According to its Explanatory Memorandum, the Act is intended to ‘introduce measures to better deal with the challenges posed […]
This week has brought further uncertainty on the route to Brexit. The planned vote in the UK Parliament on the Withdrawal Agreement – intended to establish an orderly transition period for the UK to withdraw from the EU between 30 March 2019 and 31 December 2020 – has been postponed leaving considerable uncertainty as to […]
In a recent case, the Austrian Data Protection Authority (ADPA) decided for the first time on the permissibility of a consent for the use of cookies, as well as the concept of freely given consent under the GDPR. The case involves the cookie consent on the website of an Austrian newspaper. In this decision, the […]
The Local Court (Amtsgericht) Diez (in a final decision dated 7 November 18, case number 8 C 130/18) was the first German court – and as far as we know the first court EU-wide – to decide on a claim for immaterial damages under Art. 82 (1) GDPR. The main question was how to calculate […]
The Belgian DPA has released a first status update six months after the GDPR became applicable. Some interesting statistics relate to the number of data breach notifications and complaints received. In the six months since May 25th, the Belgian Data Protection Authority was notified of 317 data breaches (compared to last year when only 13 […]
The new Finnish national GDPR implementation act, the Data Protection Act (FIN: Tietosuojalaki) was finally passed on Tuesday 13 November at the second Parliamentary Plenary Session, together with the new act implementing Directive 2016/680/EU on the processing of personal data by competent authorities in criminal matters, the Act on Processing Personal Data in Criminal Matters […]
The State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Baden-Wuerttemberg (LfDI) was the first German data protection authority to impose a fine under the GDPR. The fine of € 20,000 sanctions the violation by a social media company of its obligation to ensure data security of processing of personal data pursuant to Art. 32 […]
