Category: General Data Protection Regulation
14. April 2020
The French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) has released a guidance on teleworking on April 1st, which is intended to help employers master the new working situation. In particular, it is supposed to bring clarity on the IT requirements in order to ensure a safe and well-functioning remote working environment.
In particular, the guidance touches on these following points to form a basis for coping with teleworking from an employer’s perspective:
- It is recommended that employers formulate an IT Charter or internal regulation on how to use the teleworking systems which are to be followed by the employees,
- Necessary measures have to be taken in case the systems have to be changed or adapted to the new situation,
- It should be ensured that employee work stations have the minimum requirements of a firewall, anti-virus software and a tool blocking access to malicious websites,
- To keep from being exposed on the internet and ensure security, a VPN is recommended to be put in use.
Furthermore, the CNIL has also given guidance on the cases where an organization’s services are mainly performed over the internet. In such cases, it recommended to follow a few necessary requirements in order to make sure the services can be delivered safely and smoothly:
- Web protocols that guarantee confidentiality and authentication of the processes (such as https and sftp), and keeping them up to date,
- Double factor authentication,
- No access to interfaces of non-secure servers,
- Reviewing logs of access to remotely accessible services to detect suspicious behaviors,
- Ensuring that the used equipment follows latest security patches.
The CNIL also offered some best practices for employees to follow in cases of working remotely, to give both sides pointers on how to deal with the changing situation.
Specifically, employees are being recommended to ensure their WIFI is secure by using encryption such as WPA 2 or WPA 3, along with a secure password. In addition, the CNIL recommends work equipment given by the employer, as well as using a VPN provided by the company. In the case of using own devices, a firewall and an anti-virus software are the necessary requirements to ensure security of the equipment, as well as updating the operating system and software to the newest patches.
Lastly, the CNIL warns of increased phishing attempts in relation to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Overall, the guidance and best practices the CNIL has published indicate a need for continuous and active vigilance in regards to teleworking, as well as the sharing of personal data in the process.
This guidance is in line with our past assessment of the remote working situation, which you are welcome to check out in the respective blogpost in our Series on Data Protection and Corona.
16. March 2020
On 25 February 2020, the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (DPA) published a guidance on Cookies and other tracking tools. Previously, the Authority had found that Greek websites and service providers have been largely failing to comply with the rules on the use of Cookies and other trackers set out by the ePrivacy Directive and the GDPR, and reaffirmed by the European Court of Justice’s ruling on Planet 49.
The guidance states that it will be relevant to HTTP/S Cookies, Flash Cookies, local storage applying to HTML 5, device fingerprinting, OS identifiers, and material identifiers.
The Greek DPA reiterated that, generally, providers are obliged to obtain the user’s consent if they are using any tracking tools – irrespective of whether the processing of personal data is taking place. It also outlined that technically necessary trackers are exempt from the obligation to consent. Furthermore, the guidance goes into detail on how information and consent can be made available on websites specifically.
Lastly, the Authority has given Greek website providers a grace period of two months to implement the provisions of this guidance and thereby become compliant with the European rules on tracking tools.
12. March 2020
The Dutch Data Protection Authority has fined the Royal Dutch Tennis Association (“KNLTB”) with EUR 525,000 for selling personal data of more than 350,000 of its members to sponsors who had contacted some of the members by mail and telephone for direct marketing purposes.
In 2018, the KNLTB illegally provided personal data of its members to two sponsors for a fee. One sponsor received personal data from 50,000 members and the other sponsor from more than 300,000 members. It turned out that the KNLTB sold personal data such as name, gender and address to third parties without obtaining consent of the data subjects.
The KNLTB found that it had a legitimate interest in selling the data. However, the data protection authority rejected the existence of a legitimate interest for the sale of the data and therefore decided that there was no legal basis for the transfer of the personal data to the sponsors. The KNLTB has objected to the fine decision. The Dutch Data Protection Authority will assess this.
5. February 2020
On 28 January 2020, Indonesian President Joko Widodo introduced a draft data protection law to the Parliament of Indonesia. When the bill passes through Parliament, Indonesia will be the fifth country in Southeast Asia to have a national data protection law, following Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
The proposal has numerous parallels to the European GDPR. It grants an array of data subject rights, like the right to access, the right to erasure and the right to restrict processing of personal data. The bill also contains a broad definition of processing and the general principle of consent, whilst allowing the processing of personal data for the performance of a contract, for compliance with a legal obligation, or for the purposes of legitimate interests.
Interestingly, the bill categorises violations against the data protection rules as criminal offenses and punishes intentional unlawful processing with up to 7 years of criminal imprisonment or punitive fines of up to 70 billion Indonesian Rupiah (4.6 million Euros). If the offender of the law is a corporation, the management or beneficiary owner can be held liable and face a prison sentence.
The Indonesian Minister of Communications and Information stresses the importance of the new date protection bill for the data sovereignty of individuals and hopes for opportunities for innovation and business in Indonesia.
31. January 2020
On Data Privacy Day, Facebook launched its new privacy tool, which gives its users control over how they are tracked across the net.
In a blog post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced its “Off-Facebook Activity” tool, which had been promised since May 2008, to social network’s worldwide audience. It originally had slow roll-outs throughout different countries since August 2019, but is now officially available globally.
Facebook is known for its vast reaching tracking of internet activity, ranging from doorbell apps over sellers’ websites to health apps. It had been criticized by law-makers for its tracking practices, especially considering the social network keeps tracking your data when you deactivate your account.
Now, wanting the start into the new decade to be more privacy oriented, Mark Zuckerberg is prompting Facebook users to review their privacy settings. On top of deleting your tracking history, it is now possible to turn off future tracking altogether. Though it is important to keep in mind that Facebook does not stop advertisers and businesses from targeting ads based on other factors.
Overall, the tool is supposed to complement Facebook’s Privacy Checkup feature, to allow for users to regulate their privacy more thoroughly, and more importantly, on their own terms.
21. January 2020
On 14 January 2020, the French data protection authority (“CNIL”) published recommendations on practical modalities for obtaining the consent of users to store or read non-essential cookies and similar technologies on their devices. In addition, the CNIL also published a series of questions and answers on the recommendations.
The purpose of the recommendations is to help private and public organisations to implement the CNIL guidelines on cookies and similar technologies dated 4 July 2019. To this end, CNIL describes the practical arrangements for obtaining users’ consent, gives concrete examples of the user interface to obtain consent and presents “best practices” that also go beyond the rules.
In order to find pragmatic and privacy-friendly solutions, CNIL consulted with organisations representing industries in the ad tech ecosystem and civil society organisations in advance and discussed the issue with them. The recommendations are neither binding or prescriptive nor exhaustive. Organisations may use other methods to obtain user consent, as long as these methods are in accordance with the guidelines.
Among the most important recommendations are:
Information about the purpose of cookies
First, the purposes of the cookies should be listed. The recommendations contain examples of this brief description for the following purposes or types of cookies:
(1) targeted or personalised advertising;
(2) non-personalized advertising;
(3) personalised advertising based on precise geolocation;
(4) customization of content or products and services provided by the Web Publisher;
(5) social media sharing;
(6) audience measurement/analysis.
In addition, the list of purposes should be complemented by a more detailed description of these purposes, which should be directly accessible, e.g. via a drop-down button or hyperlink.
Information on the data controllers
An exhaustive list of data controllers should be directly accessible, e.g. via a drop-down button or hyperlink. When users click on this hyperlink or button, they should receive specific information on data controllers (name and link to their privacy policy). However, web publishers do not have to list all third parties that use cookies on their website or application, but only those who are also data controllers. Therefore, the role of the parties (data controller, joint data controller, or data processor) has to be assessed individually for each cookie. This list should be regularly updated and should be permanently accessible (e.g. through the cookie consent mechanism, which would be available via a static icon or hyperlink at the bottom of each web page). Should a “substantial” addition be made to the list of data controllers, users’ consent should be sought again.
Real choice between accepting or rejecting cookies
Users must be offered a real choice between accepting or rejecting cookies. This can be done by means of two (not pre-ticked) checkboxes or buttons (“accept” / “reject”, “allow” / “deny”, etc.) or equivalent elements such as “on”/”off” sliders, which should be disabled by default. These checkboxes, buttons or sliders should have the same format and be presented at the same level. Users should have such a choice for each type or category of cookie.
The ability for users to delay this selection
A “cross” button should be included so that users can close the consent interface and do not have to make a choice. If the user closes the interface, no consent cookies should be set. However, consent could be obtained again until the user makes a choice and accepts or rejects cookies.
Overall consent for multiple sites
It is acceptable to obtain user consent for a group of sites rather than individually for each site. However, this requires that users are informed of the exact scope of their consent (i.e., by providing them with a list of sites to which their consent applies) and that they have the ability to refuse all cookies on those sites altogether (e.g., if there is a “refuse all” button along with an “accept all” button). To this end, the examples given in the recommendations include three buttons: “Personalize My Choice” (where users can make a more precise selection based on the purpose or type of cookies), “Reject All” and “Accept All”.
Duration of validity of the consent
It is recommended that users re-submit their consent at regular intervals. CNIL considers a period of 6 months to be appropriate.
Proof of consent
Data controllers should be able to provide individual proof of users’ consent and to demonstrate that their consent mechanism allows a valid consent to be obtained.
The recommendations are open for public consultation until 25 February 2020. A new version of the recommendations will then be submitted to the members of CNIL for adoption during a plenary session. CNIL will carry out enforcement inspections six months after the adoption of the recommendations. The final recommendations may also be updated and completed over time to take account of new technological developments and the responses to the questions raised by professionals and individuals on this subject.
10. January 2020
To date, the Polish Data Protection Authority (DPA) have issued 134 decisions and imposed GDPR fines in 5 cases. In 4 cases, the Polish DPA fined private companies and in one case, it fined a public institution.
The fines for the companies ranged from 13.000€ to 645.000€. Reasons for the fines were failures in protecting personal data on websites resulting in the unauthorised access of personal data, inadequate technical and organisational measures, and an insufficient fulfilment of information obligations according to Art. 14 GDPR.
It is also noteworthy that the Polish DPA has imposed a 9.350€ fine on the Mayor of a Polish small town. Under Art. 83 (7) GDPR, each member state of the EU may lay down rules on whether and to what extent administrative fines may be imposed on public authorities. The Polish legislators decided that non-compliant public authorities may receive a GDPR fine of up to 23.475€.
The Mayor received the GDPR fine since he failed to conclude a data processing agreement with the entities to which he transferred data in violation of Art. 28 (3) GDPR. Moreover, the Mayor violated the principle of storage limitation, the principles of integrity and confidentiality, the principle of accountability and furthermore kept an incomplete record of processing activities.
Recently, the Polish DPA also published the EU Project T4DATA’s Handbook for Data Protection Officers (DPO) in order to help define a DPO’s role, their competencies and main responsibilities.
3. January 2020
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) came into effect on January 1, 2020 and will be the first step in the United States in regulating data privacy on the Internet. Currently, the US does not have a federal-level general consumer data privacy law that is comparable to that of the privacy laws in EU countries or even the supranational European GDPR.
But now, several other US States have taken inspiration from the CCPA and are in the process of bringing forth their own state legislation on consumer privacy protections on the Internet, including
- The Massachusetts Data Privacy Law “S-120“,
- The New York Privacy Act “S5642“,
- The Hawaii Consumer Privacy Protection Act “SB 418“,
- The Maryland Online Consumer Protection Act “SB 613“, and
- The North Dakota Bill “HB 1485“.
Like the CCPA, most of these new privacy laws have a broad definition of the term “Personal Information” and are aimed at protecting consumer data by strenghtening consumer rights.
However, the various law proposals differ in the scope of the consumer rights. All of them grant consumers the ‘right to access’ their data held by businesses. There will also be a ‘right to delete’ in most of these states, but only some give consumers a private ‘right of action’ for violations.
There are other differences with regards to the businesses that will be covered by the privacy laws. In some states, the proposed laws will apply to all businesses, while in other states the laws will only apply to businesses with yearly revenues of over 10 or 25 Million US-Dollars.
As more US states are beginning to introduce privacy laws, there is an increasing possiblity of a federal US privacy law in the near future. Proposals from several members of Congress already exist (Congresswomen Eshoo and Lofgren’s Proposal and Senators Cantwell/Schatz/Klobuchar/Markey’s Proposal and Senator Wicker’s Proposal).
6. November 2019
On October 30th, 2019, the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information issued a fine of around 14.5 million euros against the real estate company Deutsche Wohnen SE for violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
During on-site inspections in June 2017 and March 2019, the supervisory authority determined that the company used an archive system for the storage of personal data of tenants that did not provide for the possibility of removing data that was no longer required. Personal data of tenants were stored without checking whether storage was permissible or even necessary. In individual cases, private data of the tenants concerned could therefore be viewed, even though some of them were years old and no longer served the purpose of their original survey. This involved data on the personal and financial circumstances of tenants, such as salary statements, self-disclosure forms, extracts from employment and training contracts, tax, social security and health insurance data and bank statements.
After the commissioner had made the urgent recommendation to change the archive system in the first test date of 2017, the company was unable to demonstrate either a cleansing of its database nor legal reasons for the continued storage in March 2019, more than one and a half years after the first test date and nine months after the GDPR came into force. Although the enterprise had made preparations for the removal of the found grievances, nevertheless these measures did not lead to a legal state with the storage of personal data. Therefore the imposition of a fine was compelling because of a violation of article 25 Abs. 1 GDPR as well as article 5 GDPR for the period between May 2018 and March 2019.
The starting point for the calculation of fines is, among other things, the previous year’s worldwide sales of the affected companies. According to its annual report for 2018, the annual turnover of Deutsche Wohnen SE exceeded one billion euros. For this reason, the legally prescribed framework for the assessment of fines for the established data protection violation amounted to approximately 28 million euros.
For the concrete determination of the amount of the fine, the commissioner used the legal criteria, taking into account all burdening and relieving aspects. The fact that Deutsche Wohnen SE had deliberately set up the archive structure in question and that the data concerned had been processed in an inadmissible manner over a long period of time had a particularly negative effect. However, the fact that the company had taken initial measures to remedy the illegal situation and had cooperated well with the supervisory authority in formal terms was taken into account as a mitigating factor. Also with regard to the fact that the company was not able to prove any abusive access to the data stored, a fine in the middle range of the prescribed fine framework was appropriate.
In addition to sanctioning this violation, the commissioner imposed further fines of between 6,000 and 17,000 euros on the company for the inadmissible storage of personal data of tenants in 15 specific individual cases.
The decision on the fine has not yet become final. Deutsche Wohnen SE can lodge an appeal against this decision.
24. September 2019
The French data protection authority “CNIL” updated its existing catalogue of questions and answers (“FAQs”) to inform about the impact of a no-deal brexit and how controllers should prepare for the transfer of data from the EU to the UK.
As things stand, the United Kingdom will leave the European Union on 1st of November 2019. The UK will then be considered a third country for the purposes of the European General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). For this reason, after the exit, data transfer mechanisms become necessary to transfer personal data from the EU to the UK.
The FAQs recommend five steps that entities should take when transferring data to a controller or processor in the UK to ensure compliance with GDPR:
1. Identify processing activities that involve the transfer of personal data to the United Kingdom.
2. Determine the most appropriate transfer mechanism to implement for these processing activities.
3. Implement the chosen transfer mechanism so that it is applicable and effective as of November 1, 2019.
4. Update your internal documents to include transfers to the United Kingdom as of November 1, 2019.
5. If necessary, update relevant privacy notices to indicate the existence of transfers of data outside the EU and EEA where the United Kingdom is concerned.
CNIL also discusses the GDPR-compliant data transfer mechanisms (e.g., standard contractual clauses, binding corporate rules, codes of conduct) and points out that, whichever one is chosen, it must take effect on 1st of November. If controllers should choose a derogation admissible according to GDPR, CNIL stresses that this must strictly comply with the requirements of Art. 49 GDPR.
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