Cross-border data transfers
Article 29 Working Party opinion on proposed amendments to adequacy decisions
19 December 2016 - Charlotte Mullarkey
The Article 29 Working Party (WP29) has published Opinion 04/2016 (the Opinion) on two European Commission draft Decisions aimed at curing the defects in the Commission determinations of the adequacy of protection (Adequacy Decisions) identified by the CJEU in Schrems. Although dated 31st October 2016, it appears to have been only published on Friday and the › Read More
What hangs in the balance in Microsoft’s win against the U.S. government?
21 July 2016 - Keren Livneh
On July 14, 2016, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a District Court decision ordering Microsoft to comply with a warrant issued in a U.S. narcotics trafficking investigation to produce a customer’s web-based emails, stored exclusively on servers in Ireland. The Second Circuit held that the Stored Communications Act (SCA), under which › Read More
Brexit and Data Protection Legislation – back to the drawing board?
08 July 2016 - Charlotte Mullarkey
We are at a very interesting time for data protection legislation in the EU with the recent adoption of the new GDPR. Many are asking whether the GDPR will in fact apply in the UK following the referendum result on 23 June. In the short term, data protection legislation in the UK remains the same › Read More
European Parliament voices concerns on the EU-US Privacy Shield
27 May 2016 - Peter van Dyck
On 26 May 2016, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the EU-US Privacy Shield. The European Parliament starts by stressing the importance of the economic relationship between the EU and the US, citing a total transatlantic trade in 2014 valued at USD 1,09 trillion. As such, the European Parliament underlines that having a streamlined › Read More
Are Model Clauses Now in Jeopardy?
26 May 2016 - David Smith
Max Schrems is busy again. As many predicted, this time he is going after Facebook’s use of model clauses. He argues that the reasoning for the invalidation of Safe Harbor applies equally to transfers to the US by way of model clauses because the data is subject to the same mass indiscriminate access by the › Read More
EU-US Privacy Shield: Trouble Ahead?
12 April 2016 - Peter van Dyck
On 29 February, the European Commission published the draft texts that constitute the EU-US Privacy Shield. The Article 29 Working Party quickly followed this up with a press release, welcoming the publication of the EU-US Privacy Shield, but stating (somewhat ominously) that the draft texts “have to be analysed with great attention as regards the › Read More