UK

General Observations 1. Welcomes the fact that the GDPR has become a global standard for the protection of personal data and is a factor for convergence in the development of norms; welcomes the fact that the GDPR has placed the EU at the forefront of international discussions about data protection, and…

The ePrivacy Regulation is finally at a decisive turning point because the Council of the European Union has reached an agreement on the final version of the text. The approval of the ePrivacy Regulation by the Council of the European Union After negotiations that lasted over 4 years, the ePrivacy…

Brussels is set to allow data to continue to flow freely from the EU to the UK after concluding that the British had ensured an adequate level of protection for personal information. A draft decision by the European Commission, seen by the Financial Times, is expected to be approved this week. It will…

The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (“the Agreement”) between the EU and the UK contains good news for data protection practitioners. The free flow of data between the EEA[1] and the UK can continue after the end of 2020. This is extremely welcome. Recent research showed that the cost of having to put in…

In an unprecedented move, the Privacy Campaigners at the Open Rights Group (ORG) have today announced that they are taking the UK’s privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to court over the regulator’s failure to stop unlawful practices by the Digital Advertising Technology (AdTech) industry. A complaint was made…

The metaphor of the ticking clock resonates with the state of EU-U.K. Brexit negotiations. First used in 2017 by Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, to describe the lack of progress being made, the ticking clock has come to symbolize the urgent need for both sides to agree on…

The ICO has fined Marriott International Inc £18.4million for failing to keep millions of customers’ personal data secure. Marriott estimates that 339 million guest records worldwide were affected following a cyber-attack in 2014 on Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. The attack, from an unknown source, remained undetected until September 2018,…

On October 27, 2020, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) published its enforcement notice against credit reference agency Experian Limited (“Experian”) under Section 149 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (“DPA”) (the “notice”). The notice requires Experian to make fundamental changes to its offline direct marketing practices, and was issued after the ICO undertook…

A radical “pro-tech” plan championed by Dominic Cummings to rewrite Britain’s data protection laws is endangering future cooperation with the EU worth billions to the British economy, Brussels has warned. The government’s newly published national data strategy, promising a “transformation” long sought by Boris Johnson’s chief adviser and the former…

In a recent hearing at the US Senate, the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple testified before the US Senate concerning antitrust issues. As the BBC’s James Clayton (North America Technology Reporter) noted, “central to the interrogation will be whether these tech giants are simply too big”. This issue…