Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On October 2, 2019, the UK Court of Appeal handed down its judgment on the appeal in Richard Lloyd v. Google LLC, in which Richard Lloyd, a consumer protection advocate, seeks to bring a representative action on behalf of four million Apple iPhone users against Google LLC in the United States. Previously, the High Court had refused to grant permission for the proceedings to be served outside the UK. The Court of Appeal reversed the High Court’s judgment, granting permission for service outside the UK and allowing the representative action to proceed. The judgment is significant as it paves the way for representative actions (equivalent to class actions) for data protection infringements in the UK.

On October 15, 2019, Hunton Andrews Kurth will host a luncheon seminar in our Brussels office on Addressing GDPR Challenges: An Interactive Session on Handling Data Breaches. In this roundtable discussion, our speakers will lead a dialogue to share experiences on handling data breaches under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

On October 1, 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) issued its decision in an important case involving consent for the use of cookies by a German business called Planet49. Importantly, the Court held that (1) consent for cookies cannot be lawfully established through the use of pre-ticked boxes, and (2) any consent obtained regarding cookies cannot be sufficiently informed in compliance with applicable law if the user cannot reasonably comprehend how the cookies employed on a given website will function.

On September 17, 2019, the Belgian Data Protection Authority (the “Belgian DPA”) imposed a fine of EUR 10,000 on a shop for the disproportionate use of customers’ electronic identity cards (the “eIDs ”) – a national identification card.

On September 27, 2019, the Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP submitted comments on Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s Proposals to Modernize the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) (the “Comments”).

On September 24, 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the “CJEU”) released its judgments in cases C-507/17, Google v. CNIL and C-136/17, G.C. and Others v. CNIL regarding (1) the territorial scope of the right to be forgotten, referred to in the judgement as the “right to de-referencing,” and (2) the conditions in which individuals may exercise the right to be forgotten in relation to links to web pages containing sensitive data. The Court’s analysis considered both the EU Data Protection Directive and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

On September 23, 2019, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (“OPC”) announced that it completed its consultation on transfers for processing and that the OPC’s current guidelines for processing personal data across borders remain unchanged. Under these guidelines, consent for transfers to data processors generally is not required.

On September 24, 2019, Alastair Mactaggart, drafter of the 2018 California ballot initiative that served as the basis for the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”), announced that he is filing a new initiative for California’s November 2020 ballot, the California Privacy Enforcement Act (“CPEA”).

On September 20, 2019, the Philippines National Privacy Commission (“NPC”) announced it has filed its notice of intent to join the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (“CBPR”) system. The Philippines would be the ninth member of the CBPR system, joining the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia and Chinese Taipei.

On September 20, 2019, Bloomberg Law reported that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra anticipates that draft regulations implementing the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) will be published this October. According to Bloomberg’s reporting, the Attorney General aims to issue final regulations by January 1, 2020, the CCPA’s compliance deadline. Under the CCPA, the Attorney General may begin enforcement of the law six months after the publication of final regulations or July 1, 2020, whichever is sooner ...