A constitutional challenge to a spy bill in the Bahamas has led to it being amended, according to the minister of state for legal affairs. After two years of inaction, Thailand has a new data protection bill. The U.K. Court of Appeals has deemed the so-called snoopers charter in violation of EU law. The Irish government has reportedly approved the Minister for Justice's passenger name record proposal. And in the U.S., Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., has introduced legislation requiring major credit reporting agencies to obtain consent prior to releasing credit files to lenders, insurers and credit card companies; and state legislatures including Washington, Nebraska and Virginia, continue to tackle privacy issues. Read all this and more in this week’s Privacy Tracker weekly legislative roundup.
LATEST NEWS
Bahamas’ Minister of State for Legal affairs Ellsworth Johnson has said changes have been made to the country’s so-called spy bill, reports The Bahama Journal.
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Lawmakers in Ghana are pushing for a law to make illegal the secret recording of conversations and sexual intercourse, reports Modern Ghana.
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RTE reports, Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan has said the Irish government approved his proposal for complying with the EU Passenger Name Record directive.
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Under a law to be included in Ireland’s proposed Data Protection Bill 2018, the Irish Examiner reports, public agencies would not face the same fines as private companies upon violating the law.
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Lexology offers an outline of Spain’s draft GDPR implementation law, passed by the council of Ministers in November 2017.
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Lexology reports that a new Personal Data Protection Bill has been drafted in Thailand, with a public hearing scheduled through Feb. 6.
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The Data Protection Report offers an analysis of the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act of 2018, passed in December, which contains privacy and security provisions related to drones.
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U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., has introduced legislation requiring major credit reporting agencies to obtain consent prior to releasing credit files to lenders, insurers and credit card companies, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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Florida’s Judicial Committee of the state Constitution Revision Commission rejected a proposal that would have amended the state’s constitutional right to privacy, reports WLRN.
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Nebraska senators advanced a bill aiming to require organizations in the state that collect personal data to uphold appropriate security measures, reports The Associated Press.
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Virginia’s Senate passed a bill that would exempt college students’ cellphone numbers and email addresses from the Freedom of Information Act, reports The Roanoke Times.
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A bill in the Washington state Senate would keep private certain footage from police body cameras, extending protections in a 2016 law set to expire in 2019, reports The Spokesman-Review.
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ICYMI
In this Privacy Tracker post, Renato Monteiro and Bruno Bioni offer an analysis of Brazil’s Bill on the Protection of Personal Data in front of the House.
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In this Privacy Tracker post, Tilburg University Professor and Morrison Foerster Senior Of Counsel Lokke Moerel discusses the ways in which the "scope provisions of the national GDPR implementation laws wildly differ and will lead to unacceptable accumulation and incompatibility of applicable laws."
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In this exclusive for The Privacy Advisor, Olivia Manning, CIPP/US, CIPM, looks closely at whether companies will need to identify new lead supervisory authorities for their UK BCRs post-Brexit.
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The ripple effects of Brexit are still making their way through the privacy world, and one such consequence could have very interesting implications for the EU's proposed ePrivacy Regulation, writes IAPP Content Director Sam Pfeifle in this post for Privacy Perspectives.
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In her third piece analyzing the results of the 2107 ICDPPC Census of global data protection authorities, IAPP Westin Fellow Müge Fazlioglu, CIPP/US, looks at median and mean budget and staffing for DPAs the world over.
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US
White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Rob Joyce said the Trump administration will seek to take on an increased role in shaping internet governance rules, CyberScoop reports.
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In a blog post for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Dave Maass writes that California lawmakers rejected an amendment to state law that would have allowed drivers to shield their license plates when parked.
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ASIA PACIFIC
Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission stated that the majority of public responses to the proposed mandatory breach notification regime was supportive in nature and echoed the need for the PDPC to provide guidance, Channel News Asia reports.
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A joint review by the Law Commission and the Ministry of Justice offered 67 recommendations for New Zealand’s Search and Surveillance Act 2012 to add clarity to the law and to ensure it is up to date with the effects of recent technology, NZ Herald reports.
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Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission has released a guide on basic data-anonymization techniques, Bloomberg reports.
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CANADA
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada said the country’s digital privacy laws give citizens the ability to dispute online search results, The Globe and Mail reports.
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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has released a draft report on protecting online reputations, with part of the paper focusing on the reputation of children, CBC News reports.
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Memos released from Canada’s Communications Security Establishment state there is legislation before the Parliament that would give the agency the ability to disable computers located abroad, and possibly "corrupt information sitting on foreign servers," The Globe and Mail reports.
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EUROPE
The U.K. Court of Appeals ruled the country’s Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act of 2014 violated European Union law, Bloomberg reports
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