Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On September 26, 2018, the Centre for Information Policy Leadership (“CIPL”) at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP submitted formal comments to the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on the draft Indian Data Protection Bill 2018 (“Draft Bill”).

On September 26, 2018, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (“NTIA”) announced that it is seeking public comments on a proposed approach to advancing consumer privacy. The approach is divided into two parts: (1) a set of desired user-centric privacy outcomes of organizational practices, including transparency, control, reasonable minimization (of data collection, storage length, use and sharing), security, access and correction, risk management and accountability; and (2) a set of high-level goals that describe the outlines of the ecosystem that should be created to provide those protections, including harmonizing the regulatory landscape, balancing legal clarity and the flexibility to innovate, ensuring comprehensive application, employing a risk and outcome-based approach, creating mechanisms for interoperability with international norms and frameworks, incentivizing privacy research, ensuring that the Federal Trade Commission has the resources and authority to enforce, and ensuring scalability.

On September 26, 2018, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation convened a hearing on Examining Consumer Privacy Protections with representatives of major technology and communications firms to discuss approaches to protecting consumer privacy, how the U.S. might craft a federal privacy law, and companies’ experiences in implementing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”).

On September 26, 2018, Uber Technologies Inc. (“Uber”) agreed to a settlement (the “Settlement”) with all 50 U.S. state attorneys general (the “Attorneys General”) in connection with a 2016 data breach affecting the personal information (including driver’s license numbers) of approximately 607,000 Uber drivers nationwide, as well as approximately 57 million consumers’ email addresses and phone numbers. The Attorneys General alleged that after Uber learned of the breach, which occurred in November 2016, the company paid intruders a $100,000 ransom to delete the data. The Attorneys General alleged that Uber failed to promptly notify affected individuals of the incident, as required under various state laws, instead notifying affected customers and drivers of the breach one year later in November 2017. 

On September 23, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB-1121 (the “Bill”), which makes limited substantive and technical amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”). The Bill takes effect immediately,  and delays the California Attorney General’s enforcement of the CCPA until six months after publication of the Attorney General’s implementing regulations, or July 1, 2020, whichever comes first. 

On September 25, 2018, the French Data Protection Authority (the “CNIL”) published the first results of its factual assessment of the implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in France and in Europe. When making this assessment, the CNIL first recalled the current status of the French legal framework, and provided key figures on the implementation of the GDPR from the perspective of privacy experts, private individuals and EU supervisory authorities. The CNIL then announced that it will adopt new GDPR tools in the near future. Read the full factual assessment (in French).

The Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) in the UK has issued the first formal enforcement action under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018 (the “DPA”) on Canadian data analytics firm AggregateIQ Data Services Ltd. (“AIQ”). The enforcement action, in the form of an Enforcement Notice served under section 149 of the DPA, requires AIQ to “cease processing any personal data of UK or EU citizens obtained from UK political organizations or otherwise for the purposes of data analytics, political campaigning or any other advertising purposes.”

Recently, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (“ICO”) fined credit rating agency Equifax £500,000 for failing to protect the personal data of up to 15 million UK individuals. The data was compromised during a cyber attack that occurred between May 13 and July 30, 2017, which affected 146 million customers globally. Although Equifax’s systems in the U.S. were targeted, the ICO found the credit agency's UK arm, Equifax Ltd, failed to take appropriate steps to ensure that its parent firm, which processed this data on its behalf, had protected the information. The ICO investigation uncovered a number of serious contraventions of the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (the “DPA”), resulting in the ICO imposing on Equifax Ltd the maximum fine available.

Effective September 21, 2018, Section 301 of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (the “Act”) requires consumer reporting agencies to provide free credit freezes and year-long fraud alerts to consumers throughout the country. Under the Act, consumer reporting agencies must each set up a webpage designed to enable consumers to request credit freezes, fraud alerts, extended fraud alerts and active duty fraud alerts. The webpage must also give consumers the ability to opt out of the use of information in a consumer report to send the consumer a ...

On August 30, 2018, Apple Inc. announced a June update to its App Store Review Guidelines that will require each developer to provide its privacy policy as part of the app review process, and to include in such policy specific content requirements. Effective October 3, 2018, all new apps and app updates must include a link to the developer’s privacy policy before they can be submitted for distribution to users through the App Store or through TestFlight external testing.

As reported in BNA Privacy Law Watch, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (the “OPC”) is seeking public comment on recently released guidance (the “Guidance”) intended to assist organizations with understanding their obligations under the federal breach notification mandate, which will take effect in Canada on November 1, 2018. 

On September 7, 2018, the New Jersey Attorney General announced a settlement with data management software developer Lightyear Dealer Technologies, LLC, doing business as DealerBuilt, resolving an investigation by the state Division of Consumer Affairs into a data breach that exposed the personal information of car dealership customers in New Jersey and across the country. The breach occurred in 2016, when a researcher exposed a gap in the company’s security and gained access to unencrypted files containing names, addresses, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account information and other data belonging to thousands of individuals, including at least 2,471 New Jersey residents.

On September 4, 2018, the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) announced a collaborative project to develop a voluntary privacy framework to help organizations manage privacy risk. The announcement states that the effort is motivated by innovative new technologies, such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, as well as the increasing complexity of network environments and detail of user data, which make protecting individuals’ privacy more difficult. “We’ve had great success with broad adoption of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and we see this as providing complementary guidance for managing privacy risk,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Walter G. Copan.

On September 5, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held that a class action arising from a 2016 Uber Technologies Inc. (“Uber”) data breach must proceed to arbitration. The case was initially filed after a 2016 data breach that affected approximately 600,000 Uber drivers and 57 million Uber customers. 

On September 5, 2018, the Law of 30 July 2018 on the Protection of Natural Persons with regard to the Processing of Personal Data (the “Law”) was published in the Belgian Official Gazette.

This is the second step in adapting the Belgian legal framework to the EU GDPR after the Law of 3 December 2017 Creating the Data Protection Authority, which reformed the Belgian Data Protection Authority.

The Law is available in French and Dutch.

On September 5, 2018, the European Commission (the “Commission”) announced in a press release the launch of the procedure to formally adopt the Commission’s adequacy decision with respect to Japan.

On August 31, 2018, the California State Legislature passed SB-1121, a bill that delays enforcement of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) and makes other modest amendments to the law. The bill now goes to the Governor for signing. The provisions of the CCPA will become operative on January 1, 2020. As we have previously reported, the CCPA introduces key privacy requirements for businesses. The Act was passed quickly by California lawmakers in an effort to remove a ballot initiative of the same name from the November 6, 2018, statewide ballot. The CCPA’s hasty passage resulted in a number of drafting errors and inconsistencies in the law, which SB-1121 seeks to remedy. The amendments to the CCPA are primarily technical, with few substantive changes.