For the last few years, Apple has positioned itself as a pro-privacy force in a landscape of 'shoddy' data privacy competitors. However their recent activities surrounding user data and advertising may point to a less than altruistic motive.
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The recently released data protection impact assessment for a Met Police scheme has caused concertation amongst privacy groups and human rights activists as potential large scale profiling of children's data has been further compounded by allegations of racial bias. Entitled 'Project Alpha', this scheme has proven a useful example of how personal data collected for safeguarding can be accidentally or deliberately weaponised.
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On March 25th 2022, amidst wider discussions on US-EU cooperation, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Joe Biden announced an ‘agreement in principle’ on a new EU-US data sharing system termed the Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework. Yet rather than relief, the announcement has been met with pronounced scepticism by privacy professionals in Europe. The emerging discourse is a product of a difficult relationship between its political ideals and practical realities.
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In October 2021, amid much fanfare Facebook (now Meta) hailed their ‘Metaverse’ as the future of social and working interactions. 4 months on from its announcement, Zuckerberg and Meta are finding that the future may be more resistant to their shaping than they imagined.
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This month (February 2022) the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) laid before Parliament the new International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA). This document, as well as its associated transfer addendum and a further document setting out transitional provisions follows a consultation undertaken by the Information commissioner’s office (ICO) in 2021.
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The Austrian Data Protection Authority (DSB) has issued its first ruling on a Schrems II model case. In it, the DSB ruled that the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) and Technical Organizational Measures (TOMs) implemented as part of the Google Analytics are not sufficient to protect its EU-US data transfers.
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Last month, Amazon’s Twitch streaming service confirmed that it had been the victim of a significant data breach. Around 125GB of data (including the source code for the mobile, desktop, and video game console versions, as well as the earnings of Twitch’s content creators) has been released by the hackers to the anonymous messaging-board website 4Chan.
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In a landmark case, Amazon has been fined $886m by Luxembourg’s National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) for serious breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Whilst the scale of the fine suggest that the GDPR is finally matching the promises of its inception, the circumstance of its reporting still leaves the consumer facing an uphill battle to hold illegal privacy practices to account.
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Regulatory watchdogs, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and various antitrust lawsuits are beginning to find that Silicon Valley won't give up its monopolies easily. At the heart of this stands the very consumers both parties claim to protect.
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The EU Commission has recently announced a new regulation which aims to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI). The regulation shares many similarities with the general data protection regulation (GDPR). Will this new AI regulation become the global standard, much like the GDPR is the global standard for data privacy?
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