As we wrote in July 2020, the European Court of Justice issued a landmark decision that invalidated the Privacy Shield as untenable under the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The decision sparked negotiations between the United States and the European Union on a workable data privacy framework. And after a two-year long hiatus, the U.S. and the EU agreed on a replacement for the Privacy Shield.… More
Tag Archives: Privacy Shield
Privacy Shield: We’ve Lost the EU but We’ve Still Got Switzerland!
In the wake of the Schrems II decision invalidating the the EU-US Privacy Shield, the US Department of Commerce has decided it should make lemonade out of the Schrems lemons. The Department recently issued a set of FAQs, which go on at length about how the Swiss-US Privacy Shield is still in place and the steps that businesses can take to participate:
The Swiss-U.S.… More
FTC Seeks to Hold Companies to GDPR/Privacy Shield Promises
As if having to deal with all the EU’s Data Protection Authorities wasn’t challenge enough for companies trying to comply with GDPR, the FTC has now asserted that it has a role in GDPR enforcement. In particular, the FTC says it has a role in making sure that US companies live up to the GDPR-related promises that they make. This position came to fruition in a proposed FTC settlement with California-based employment training company,… More
Privacy Shield: Article 29 Working Party Calls Upon the European Commission and US Authorities to Restart Discussions
On November 28, 2017, the EU’s Article 29 Working Party issued its report on the First Annual Joint Review of the EU-US Privacy Shield, which was conducted on September 18-19, 2017.
In this 38 page report, the WP analyzed the Privacy Shield’s commercial and government aspects (as it did in its earlier opinion, issued in April 2016 when the Privacy Shield was still a draft;… More
Schrems II Judgment Rendered
A 152 page judgment was rendered today by the Irish High Court in Schrems II: DPC v Facebook.
Not surprisingly, the court decided to refer the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union to make a decision about the validity of the three decisions issued by the Commission for the Standard Contractual Clauses.
Ms. Justice Caroline Costello referred these issues because she concurred with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s view there are “well founded”… More
EU Updates on Schrems II and the Privacy Shield
The current challenge to Facebook’s privacy practices in Ireland (“Schrems II”) may be coming to a head. You will recall that in Schrems I, the challenge to Facebook’s privacy practices led to a decision issued by the European Court of Justice that invalidated the US-EU Safe Harbor. Following the invalidation of the Safe Harbor, Facebook switched to the Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC) and the Schrems complaint was reformulated to challenge the SCC.… More
General Data Protection Regulation: What It Means For US Healthcare/Life Science Companies (Part Three)
This is the third post in a three-part series designed to provide a summary of some of the GDPR features that are likely to have the most substantial impact on healthcare/life science related businesses. (Links for Part One and Part Two)
GDPR Features that Apply Specifically to the Healthcare/Life Science Sectors
Even though the GDPR is a general regulation,… More
General Data Protection Regulation: What It Means For US Healthcare/Life Science Companies (Part Two)
This is the second post in a three-part series designed to provide a summary of some of the GDPR features that are likely to have the most substantial impact on healthcare/life science related businesses. (Links for Part One and Part Three)
New General Features of the GDPR
Some of the GDPR general features may be of particular interest for companies in the healthcare/life science sectors.… More
General Data Protection Regulation: What It Means For US Healthcare/Life Science Companies (Part One)
This is the first post in a three-part series designed to provide a summary of some of the GDPR features that are likely to have the most substantial impact on healthcare/life science related businesses. (Links for Part Two and Part Three)
The clock is ticking: on May 25, 2018, in less than a year from now, the General Data Protection Regulation (“the GDPR”) will apply in all Member States of the European Union (“EU”) and will replace the Directive 95/46/CE (“the Directive”).… More
How Can Yahoo E-Mail Scanning Impact the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield?
Reuters reported earlier this month that, according to three former employees, Yahoo Inc. had “complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo mail accounts at the behest of the NSA or FBI.” Yahoo responded that the article was misleading, but did not deny the scanning had occurred.
The New York Times reported further details about this scanning: Yahoo had modified a system intended to scan emails for child pornography and spam in order to satisfy a secret court order requiring it to search for messages containing a computer “signature” tied to the communications of a state-sponsored terrorist organization.… More