A little privacy: week of June 14

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USA

Federal legislation reintroduced

Senator Gillibrand re-introduced federal legislation that would establish a new U.S. Data Protection Agency to create and enforce data protection rules at the federal level. The revised version of the legislation now includes authority to review Big Tech mergers involving large data aggregators, establishes an Office of Civil Rights to advance data justice and protection individuals from discrimination, grants enforcement powers and allows for penalties and fines to be levied against aggregators committing unlawful, unfair, deceptive, abusive or discriminatory data practices, and defines key terms for transparency. Gillibrand’s press release for the bill is available here. 

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Europe

RECOMMENDATIONS TO REPLACE GDPR IN THE UK

The UK taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform issued an independent report recommending, among other things, that the GDPR be replaced with a new UK framework for data protection “to give stronger rights and powers to consumers and citizens, place proper responsibility on companies using data, and free up data for innovation in the public interest”. The full report is available here.

The EU Court of Justice issued a ruling clarifying that “under certain conditions, a national supervisory authority may exercise its power to bring any alleged infringement of the GDPR before a court of a Member State, even though that authority is not the lead supervisory authority with regard to that processing”, but stressing that Judges follow the cooperation and consistency procedures in the GDPR. The ruling arose in response to a request for guidance from the Belgiam Privacy Commission in the context of its enforcement of data protection laws against Facebook, despite Ireland’s designation as Facebook’s lead supervisory authority. A full copy of the ruling is available here. 

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INDUSTRY

amazon blocking google floc testing

Amazon is reportedly blocking Google’s tests of its Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) system on Amazon properties. The full story, including potential motivations and implications, is available here.