In an effort to improve international privacy rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council yesterday established a special rapporteur on the right to privacy. Special rapporteurs are expert individuals appointed with specific mandates to investigate, monitor, and report on particular human rights concerns that range from access to water to extrajudicial killings. Yesterday’s Resolution on … Continue Reading
Regulators and courts in the EU are increasingly vigilant in relation to privacy practices and policies of large online companies. In recent years and months, the pressure increases not only through privacy-specific regulations and enforcement, but also through the application of consumer legislation. As the below examples from France and Germany show, some courts or … Continue Reading
Pursuant to a press release of the German Federal Ministry for Justice and Consumer Protection, the German Government approved a draft law to strengthen the private enforcement of certain data protection law provisions that aim to protect consumers. In particular, the draft law empowers consumers and other qualified associations to send cease-and-desist letters and to … Continue Reading
The German Federal Ministry of the Interior recently published its revamped proposal for an “IT Security” Law. A similar proposal had already been adopted by the previous German Government in March last year (see InsidePrivacy, German Government Proposes Cybersecurity Law, March 22, 2014). However, that proposal ultimately failed to clear the legislative process in time … Continue Reading
On Tuesday, 19 November, the Regional Court of Berlin ruled against Google in a case brought by the Federation of German Consumer Associations (vzbv). The vzbv had initiated an action for injunction against Google, requesting it to stop using certain clauses in its Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. In Germany, consumer associations have a … Continue Reading
Only a few days after the leading parliamentary committee waved through the proposed amendments to the European Commission’s legislative proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation (see here and here), the EU Member States’ governments have decided to postpone the adoption of the Regulation to 2015. Germany and the UK, in particular, supported the delay, albeit … Continue Reading
Germany has passed a law which amends several existing laws, including the Telecommunications Act, clarifying in particular the obligations of telecommunications providers to disclose customer data to law enforcement authorities. The existing disclosure obligations relate to “customer data”, which is data of subscribers collected for the purpose of establishing, regulating the contents of, modifying or … Continue Reading
The data protection authority in Hamburg, Germany, issued an administrative fine in the amount of € 145,000 against Google for its illegal WiFi data collection activities. This fine fell just short of the maximum amount for such fines under German data protection law, which is € 150,000 (in cases of negligence). Between 2008 and 2010, … Continue Reading
Following the German Government’s adoption of a cybersecurity strategy back in February 2011, and only a couple of weeks after the publication of the European Commission’s CyberSecurity Strategy and proposal for a Directive on Network and Information Security (see InsidePrivacy EU Adopts CyberSecurity Strategy and Proposes Network and Information Security Directive, February 7, 2013), Germany … Continue Reading
By Kurt Wimmer and Josephine Liu The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has released a report warning that terrorists are increasingly using the Internet to spread propaganda, recruit and train supporters, finance their activities, and plan terrorist attacks. Besides providing an overview of the existing legal frameworks to address terrorists’ use of the … Continue Reading
