Bit of a technical one for the privacy nerds here. There's an interesting update from the ECJ: The Advocate General proposes to rule that under the Data-Protection-Directive the operator of a website who has embedded on its website a third-party plugin (such as the Facebook Like button), which causes the collection and transmission of the user’s … Continue reading Who’s in control? (wonkish)
I don’t know about you, but I am getting very tired of news stories reporting that the UK economy has shrugged off Brexit fears. Every time I read these articles I feel like finding a convenient rooftop from which to should “we haven’t left yet, idiots!” One of the consequences of not having left the … Continue reading Brexit means nothing…yet
Possibly slightly melodramatic; mind you, I like the song. The world that’s ending is the brave, new and, above all, anonymous world of the untamed internet. What’s happened? European bureaucracy – what else? A shopkeeper in Munich offered a free, open-access WiFi point. The mechanised army of the MPAA found someone using that bandwidth to … Continue reading It’s the end of the world as we know it
Microsoft and Amazon have both revealed that they are building data centres in the EU. In Microsoft’s case, Deutsche Telekom will be the data “trustee”; I assume this is in part an anticipatory response to the ongoing Stored Communications Act lawsuit presently in progress in Dublin (in brief, a case to determine whether US government … Continue reading Death of the internet or birth of better privacy?
So this month we’ve seen the ECJ torpedo the Safe Harbour agreement which allows businesses handling personal data on EU citizens to transfer it to the US. I wrote about it here and here. The immediate effect was for affected businesses to look for other ways to legitimise carrying on as they had before, such … Continue reading Schrems and Safe Harbour – it gets worse (where’s your data second reprise)
A few days ago, I wrote about European Court of Justice Advocate General Yves Bot. He had decided that Facebook shouldn't have transferred data about an Austrian student to its US data centres. At the time, this was just an opinion. Now it's an official ruling by the ECJ. This is where it gets interesting. … Continue reading Safe Harbor is officially dead. Now what? (Where’s your data: reprise)
If your company handles personal data, you’ve just been served a wake-up call by a Frenchman. Yves Bot, who serves as an Advocate General at the European Court of Justice, has just given an opinion – which is non-binding, but usually followed by the Court – to the effect that Facebook shouldn’t have stored an … Continue reading Where’s your data? A French magistrate may just have killed SafeHarbor.
A bigger picture 