In this week’s Privacy Tracker weekly legislative roundup, read about privacy advocates’ victory over surveillance legislation in Paraguay, the USA FREEDOM Act and updates on the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation and Safe Harbor. Also in the EU, Italy’s new cookie rules are in effect; the French CNIL has released its plans for the upcoming year of enforcement, and the UK is moving closer to the passage of the Investigatory Powers Bill. In the U.S., legislators are pushing for stronger privacy protections in Oregon with a student privacy bill, in New York with a drivers’ privacy bill, in Connecticut and Illinois with bills strengthening consumer protections and in California with CalECPA.

LATEST NEWS

The New Zealand Parliament has unanimously backed the Electronic Monitoring of Offenders Legislation Bill, which would allow courts to impose electronic monitoring for certain criminal offenders, reports The New Zealand Herald.

Paraguay voted down a controversial surveillance bill that would have required phone and Internet service providers to collect and store customer traffic information for a year, reports PanAm Post.

TechCrunch takes a look at COPPA and the future of U.S. legislation that aims to protect kids onlineby featuring the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2015.

ICYMI

Timothy Banks, CIPP/C, of Dentons Canada, explains the requirements that prevent data from leaving Canada in this Privacy Tracker blog post.

GLOBAL

U.S.

President Barack Obama signed into law the USA FREEDOM Act. Jedidiah Bracy, CIPP/E, CIPP/US, writes for The Privacy Advisor about this “first major national security reform in the U.S. since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.”

The California Senate moved unanimously to approve the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or Cal-ECPA, a bill that prohibits law enforcement from seizing digital documents without a search warrant, Silicon Angle reports.

The Connecticut General Assembly has tightened the state's data breach laws to include both a 90-day deadline by which breaches must be reported as well as a year of free identity theft protection for victims whose Social Security numbers were unlawfully shared, Government Technology reports.

CANADA

The Canadian government is moving to increase its ability "to collect biometric information on visitors to Canada,"CBC News reports, and that's "giving rise to privacy concerns and calls for closer scrutiny."

EU

Groupe PPEreleased a timetable for finishing up the European Parliament's data protection reform, including an agenda for the highly anticipated trilogue process.

The Article 29 Working Party published new guidance on data processor BCRs, the significance of which "cannot be overstated," writes Phil Lee, CIPP/E, for Privacy and Information Law Blog.

In a blog post for Hogan Lovells' Chronicle of Data Protection,Eduardo Ustaran, CIPP/E, examines the much-discussed one-stop-shop proposal.

Data Guidance reports France's Data Protection Authority, the CNIL, has promised a focus on "contactless payments, Binding Corporate Rules and wellness and health devices and services" in the coming year, and it plans to inspect 550 organizations in 2015, Hunton & Williams' Privacy and Information Security Law Blog reports.

MPs Tom Watson and David Davis, with civil rights group Liberty, will petition the UK High Court in opposition to the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, a measure that enabled the UK government to have "more surveillance power and Internet control" and allegedly competes with the European Convention on Human Rights, International Business Times reports.

ASIA PACIFIC

In a move to protect privacy and physical safety, the Japanese government plans to mandate a license to fly drones in "densely populated residential areas," as well as a measure that prohibits their use at night, The Asahi Shimbun reports.