The Centre for Information Policy Leadership released recommendations on the draft e-Privacy Regulation as part of trilogue discussions. Among its comments, CIPL said the regulation should be consistent with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, fill in gaps of the GDPR related to electronic communication data and designate data protection authorities as sole regulators. It also notes a ban on cookie walls and consent for cookies at the browser level should be removed. CIPL also published a... Read More

In documents submitted to the European Commission, Google said it supports a temporary derogation from the ePrivacy Directive to combat the "sexual exploitation of children online," Euractiv reports. In its comments on the commission's consultation on the topic, Google also supports the creation of a center to help with law enforcement and prevention on an EU level. ZDNet reports Google voiced its support for a new security standard for smartphone virtual private network applications.Full Story... Read More

On Feb. 21, the Croatian presidency published its proposals to break the ePrivacy Regulation deadlock. Seven previous EU presidencies (the holder rotates every six months) have tried and failed to find a compromise between member states. In a radical departure from previous drafts, the presidency has suggested changes to Articles 6 and 8 that would see “legitimate interest” as a legal basis to process metadata and collect information from the terminal equipment — potentially replacing user con... Read More

The Croatian Presidency of the Council of the European Union is just the latest EU presidency to try to tackle the ePrivacy Regulation. Finland, Romania, Austria and Bulgaria were among the countries that could not figure out ePrivacy during their presidencies, and now it's Croatia's turn at the plate. While the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs pushed forward a version of ePrivacy back in October 2017, however, progress since that vote has essentially been nonexistent. Cro... Read More

This week, the Permanent Representatives Committee of the Council of the European Union once again rejected the latest draft of the ePrivacy Regulation.   The Nov. 22 vote means that the member states still cannot agree on a common position. Despite the best efforts of the current Finnish Presidency, it's back to the drawing board again in the new year under the Croatian Presidency as the window of opportunity for agreeing on a general approach at the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Co... Read More

What chance does the ePrivacy Regulation have of getting anywhere during the first half of this year? As the first month of the Romanian presidency of the Council draws to a close and as elections for the next European Parliament loom, the outlook is not good. When the Austrian presidency warned in July that it was "not sure if a common position in this topic is reachable" during its six-month term, it wasn't kidding. As it foresaw, the changes proposed during that period did not leave major pl... Read More

When the European Parliament voted Thursday to move forward with negotiations around the ePrivacy Regulation, it dealt a bitter defeat to industry lobbyists who have been accused of running a "populist" campaign against the law. According to the pleas of some lobbyists, the regulation holds Europeans hostage and will put Europe on a par with Zimbabwe in the free-media stakes. It will turn web browsers into "private gatekeepers" and hinder Europe's ability to move to 5G mobile connectivity. "... Read More

Members of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee handed privacy and data protection advocates a big win Thursday when they put Rapporteur Marju Lauristin's proposals on the ePrivacy Regulation to the vote. The MEPs approved Lauristin's report 31 to 25 and granted a mandate for further negotiations. It’s a hugely significant piece of legislation that will impact data protection landscape for decades to come. Most privacy advocates were thrilled: End-to-end encryption got the thumbs... Read More

On June 21, MEP Marju Lauristin, rapporteur of the new European ePrivacy Regulation, presented her draft report and sought feedback from fellow MEPs on how to update communications rules for 500 million Europeans. The current laws date back to 2002, predating most of the messaging tools now commonly used, so a revamp is long overdue.  During the debate, major sticking points seemed to be the draft's provisions on consent, allowances for security exemptions and whether the draft aligns with the ... Read More

Marju Lauristin has spent most of her life as a teacher, though that's the most modest way to describe her. Specifically, she's a professor emeritus of more than 40 years. She has been at University of Tartu since 1995, and her academic career has focused on social sciences and media studies.  But now she's playing head of the class on the global privacy stage as rapporteur for the ePrivacy Regulation. Lauristin isn't new to politics; she has been in the game for 30 years or so. In fact, she w... Read More

The ePrivacy draft regulation, published by the European Commission on Jan. 10, updates and upgrades Directive 2002/58/EC (the “ePrivacy directive”), the source of the infamous “cookies banner.” Under its official name – Proposal for a Regulation Concerning the Respect for Private Life and the Protection of Personal Data in Electronic Communications, the draft ePrivacy regulation reorganizes and even re-conceptualizes the system of protecting the privacy of electronic communications. Armed with... Read More

The European Commission's draft ePrivacy Regulation, published earlier this month as the EU works to replace the ePrivacy Directive (aka "the cookie law"), is a game changer for online privacy. It is a big push for a structured framework on technology enablers for companies doing business within Europe. The regulation makes a minimal effort to address the actual use of "cookies," and getting user consent through cookie banners has been left in the dust. Instead, the regulation goes into great le... Read More

The battle lines for Europe’s new ePrivacy Regulation have been drawn, as the European Commission presented its formal proposals on Tuesday. Alongside other communications on the data economy, data protection rules for the EU institutions, and a consultation (expect more on this in this week’s IAPP Europe Data Protection Digest), Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip and Commissioner Věra Jourová unveiled their plans for data protection in the realm of electronic communications. A leak of an ... Read More