Heading into the Labor Day weekend, we are now at a time to pause, reflect and celebrate our accomplishments as workers. This is an especially important holiday to commemorate in a year during which so many people have been asked to continue to do their jobs under increasingly stressful conditions, adapt to arrangements that are constantly changing, and take on additional responsibilities — both professional- and caretaker-related. Although many of the parades to commemorate Labor Day will be postponed or held virtually this year, it will still be a day worth recalling the history of worker’s rights and laws that protect them.
The work of privacy professionals this year has also been particularly demanding. It feels like an entirely new field of privacy law has sprung up around COVID-19. Every day, there seems to be a new and complex question about employee and consumer data collection, contact-tracing methods and technology, or the coordination of the public policy aims of preserving both privacy and public health.
In addition, while new demands on privacy professionals have been on the rise, existing obligations — from the GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, to EU-U.S. data transfers — have not gone away. On the contrary, each of these legal issues seems to have required even more resources and attention from privacy professionals this year. And now, add to this mix the Brazilian General Data Protection Law, which is set to go into force by Sept. 16. Although administrative sanctions will not start to be enforced until August 2021, private lawsuits for violations of LGPD can begin immediately.
Given the emergence of this complicated patchwork of international privacy laws, the IAPP is hosting a web conference on “The LGPD, GDPR, CCPA and More – How to Abide by Multiple Privacy Laws” next Tuesday, Sept. 8. The webinar is intended for anyone aiming to move further along in their understanding of how to balance the legal requirements of this ever-expanding set of laws.
Considering all that is happening in the privacy world, one more thing to look forward to on the research front is this year’s Governance Survey. I think this year’s study will provide particularly important insights into privacy’s changing landscape. If you have about 20 minutes of time to work on it, please complete the survey, which is sponsored by FTI Consulting, to help us better understand your work in privacy and data protection, the challenges you are now facing, and how your organization is managing its privacy program during a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. No matter what sector of the economy you are in, whether your organization is large or small, or where you are at in your professional journey, each person’s response contributes significantly to the IAPP’s ability to benchmark the privacy profession globally.
This weekend may not turn out how many of us envisioned. Personally, I will be virtually hanging out with my lovely French and Canadian friends that I normally get to travel to and meet up with during this time of year. But I hope that no matter how you spend this holiday weekend, you spend it safely and happily.