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.
3. February 2020
On Thursday January 23rd a bipartisan group of US lawmakers have revealed a legislation which would reduce the scope of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless internet and telephone surveillance program.
The bill aims to reform section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which is expiring on March 15, and prevent abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under the PATRIOT Act, the NSA can create a secret mass surveillance that taps into the internet data and telephone records of American residents. Further, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows for U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on and store vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States, with American citizens often caught in the cross hairs.
The newly introduced bill is supposed to host a lot of reforms such as prohibiting the warrantless collection of cell site location, GPS information, browsing history and internet search history, ending the authority for the NSA’s massive phone record program which was disclosed by Edward Snowden, establishing a three-year limitation on retention of information that is not foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime, and more.
This new legislation is seen favorably by national civil rights groups and Democrats, who hope the bill will stop the continuous infringement to the fourth Amendment of the American Constitution in the name of national security.
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.
28. January 2020
In the UK, betting companies have gained access to data from 28 million children under 14 and adolescents. The data was stored in a government database and could be used for learning purposes. Access to the platform is granted by the government. A company that was given access is said to have illegally given it to another company, which in turn allowed access for the betting companies. The betting providers used the access, among other things, to check age information online. The company accused of passing on the access denies the allegations, but has not yet made any more specific statements.
The British Department for Education speaks of an unacceptable situation. All access points have been closed and the cooperation has been terminated.
27. January 2020
The German car rental company Buchbinder is responsible for leaking Personal Data of more than 3 Million customers from all over Europe. The data leak exposed more than 10 Terabyte of sensitive customer data over several weeks without the company noticing it.
A German cybersecurity firm was executing routine network scans when it found the data leak. The firm reported it twice to Buchbinder via e-mail, but did not receive a reply. After that, the cybersecurity firm reported the leak to the Bavarian Data Protection Authority (DPA) and informed the German computer magazine c’t and newspaper DIE ZEIT.
According to c’t, a configuration error of a Backup-Server was the cause of the leak. The Personal Data exposed included customers’ names, private addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers, rental data, bank details, accident reports, legal documents, as well as Buchbinder employees’ e-mails and access data to internal networks.
The data leak is particularly serious because of the vast amount of leaked Personal Data that could easily be abused through Spam e-mails, Fraud, Phishing, or Identity theft. It is therefore likely that the German DPA will impose a GDPR fine on the company in the future.
Buchbinder released a press statement apologising for the data leak and promising to enhance the level of their defense and cybersecurity system.
23. January 2020
Washington lawmakers introduced in January 2020, a law that would give state residents new privacy rights. The law is called “Washington Privacy Act” (WPA).
If passed, the Privacy Act would enact a comprehensive data protection framework for Washington that includes individual rights that are very similar and go beyond the rights in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as well as a range of other obligations on businesses that do not yet exist in any U.S. privacy law.
Furthermore, the new draft bill contains strong provisions that largely align with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and commercial facial recognition provisions that start with a legal default of affirmative consent. Nonetheless, legislators must work within a remarkably short time-frame to pass a law that can be embraced by both House and Senate within the next six weeks of Washington’s legislative session. If passed, the bill would go into effect on July 31, 2021.
The current draft provides data protection to all Washington State residents, and would apply to entities that conduct business in Washington or produce products or services targeted to Washington residents. Such entities must control or process data of at least 100,000 consumers; or derive 50% of gross revenue from the sale of personal data and process or control personal data of at least 25,000 consumers (with “consumers” defined as natural persons who are Washington residents, acting in an individual or household context). The draft bill will not apply to state and local governments or municipal corporations. The new bill would further provide all state residents, among other rights, the ability to opt out of targeted advertising.
The new draft bill will regulate companies that process “personal data,” defined broadly as “any information that is linked or reasonably linkable to an identified or identifiable natural person” (not including de-identified data or publicly available information “information that is lawfully made available from federal, state, or local government records”), with specific provisions for pseudonymous data.
22. January 2020
The Italian Data Protection Authority ‘Garante‘ fined the gas and electric company ‘Eni Gas es Luce – EGL’ for two violations of the GDPR.
Reason for the overall fine of €11,5 million is unsolicited telemarketing (€8,5 million) and activation of unsolicited contracts (€3 million).
The santions were determined taking into account the parameters indicated in the GDPR, which include the wide range of subjects involved (about 7200 customers), the pervasiveness of the conduct, the duration of the violation, the economic conditions of EGL.
Besides the fine, the Garante has ordered EGL to adopt corrective measures in order to process personal data in compliance with the GDPR and prohibited the processing of personal data of EGL’s telemarketing list without explicit consent.
The implementations will have to be introduced and communicated to Garante within established timescales, while the payment of sanctions will have to be made within thirty days.
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.
17. January 2020
The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) sees a significant risk for the security of personal data when accessing local WiFi networks and the mobile network in China. A request from the German newspaper “Handelsblatt” to the BfV revealed that the Officials warn travellers to China of an increasing risk of espionage.
For the stay in China, the BfV discourages travellers from using laptops and smartphones that contain personal data, especially contact information. Instead, the BfV recommends to acquire a travel laptop and a prepaid mobile phone that could be resetted or even be disposed of after leaving China.
According to Handelsblatt, the warning stems from cases in which the Chinese border police conducted mobile phone controls at the Chinese border of Xinjiang and installed a surveillance App on tourists’ smartphones.
In 2016, the BfV already cautioned of potential espionage by Chinese secret services targetting students and researchers.
10. January 2020
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – UK’s Data Protection Authority – has fined the national retailer ‘DSG Retail Limited’ £500,000 for failing to secure information of at least 14 million people after a computer system was compromised as result of a cyberattack.
An investigation by the ICO came to the conclusion that between July 2017 and April 2018 malware has been installed and collected personal data until the attack was detected. Due to the failure of DSG the attacker had access to 5.6 million payment card details and further personal data, inter alia full names, postcodes and email addresses.
The reason for the fine is seen in having poor security arrangements and failing to take adequate steps to protect personal data. The fine is based on the Data Protection Act 1998.
The director of the ICO, Steve Eckersley, said:
“Our investigation found systemic failures in the way DSG Retail Limited safeguarded personal data. It is very concerning that these failures related to basic, commonplace security measures, showing a complete disregard for the customers whose personal information was stolen. The contraventions in this case were so serious that we imposed the maximum penalty under the previous legislation, but the fine would inevitably have been much higher under the GDPR.”
The ICO considered the individual freedom of DSG’s customers to be at risk. Customers would have to fear financial theft and identity fraud.
Pages: Prev 1 2 3 ... 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 ... 67 68 69 Next 
