Bill Goodwin

Migration campaign group Front-Lex has filed a complaint to Europe’s data protection watchdog, calling for a ban on Europol’s data processing operations that do not comply with EU law, following an investigation by Computer Weekly, Solomon and Correctiv

Under pressure to deliver in the fight against serious cross-border crime, Europol built and operated a shadow data analysis platform containing large volumes of sensitive information, which operated without key legal and technical safeguards

EU General Court upholds EU-US Data Privacy Framework, bringing certainty to businesses that exchange data with the US – for now. An appeal may be in the offing

An obscure British government committee is to be asked this month to advise Home Secretary Yvette Cooper whether to go ahead with government demands that Apple provide British agents with a secret backdoor to break into the companies iCloud Advanced Data Protection system, enabling British spies to secretly copy and read users’ private data.    The government committee, called the Technical Advisory Board (TAB), is charged with reviewing secret legal orders given to internet communications companies to arrange surveillance of their users, and to copy their emails and files, or to monitor their calls and videos.   Enquiries by Computer Weekly this week revealed, astonishingly, that the Home Office had failed to renew the contracts for TAB members. According to a leak to the Washington Post, previously reported here, the Home Office issued a “Technical Capability Notice” to Apple in January, ordering them to remove “electronic protection” to “allow access to data that is otherwise unavailable due to encryption.”  The company has 28 days to ask the Home Secretary to review the order.  

Tech companies brace after UK demands back door access to Apple cloud Tech companies brace for more attacks on encryption The UK has served a notice on Apple demanding back door access to encrypted data stored by users anywhere in the world on Apple’s cloud service. Technology companies are bracing themselves for more attacks on encryption after the UK government issued an order requiring Apple to create a back door to allow security officials access to content uploaded on the cloud by any Apple phone or computer user world-wide. The government has used powers under UK surveillance laws to issue a secret order requiring Apple to provide the UK with the ability to access all encrypted material stored by any Apple users on its cloud servers anywhere in the world, the Washington post revealed.

Meta, the company which owns Facebook, has been fined €1.2bn and has been ordered to suspend transfers of data from Facebook users in the Europe to the US. The fine, issued by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, is the largest imposed by the…

The European Union and the US have reached a high-level agreement to allow transatlantic data sharing under a deal that promises better privacy rights for EU citizens and stronger oversight of US intelligence gathering. President Joe Biden and Ursula…

For countries in the European Union, finding a way to legally transfer personal data to the US is a problem with no easy answers. There has been much talk, legal advice, technical fixes and short-term solutions, but none can address the underlying…

The US should reform its surveillance legislation as a matter of urgency if the EU and US are to reach an agreement on transatlantic data-sharing, according to a study for an influential European parliamentary committee. A study commissioned by the…

Businesses in the UK will be able to continue to exchange data with Europe following a long-awaited decision that the UK’s data protection regime is compatible with Europe’s data protection rules. After a year of talks between the UK and European…

Organisations have 18 months to update data transfer agreements, known as standard contractual clauses, or SCCs, to continue sharing data outside the European Union Organisations in Europe have been given 18 months to introduce data transfer…

The Irish High Court has dismissed a legal challenge by Facebook against a draft decision by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) to suspend Facebook Ireland’s transfer of data about European residents to the US. Justice David Barniville…

The Irish High Court will issue a judgment on a legal challenge by Facebook to overturn a draft decision by Ireland’s data protection commissioner to suspend the company’s data-sharing with the US. The news follows a last-minute agreement between…

The European Commission is to issue updated standard contractual clauses (SCCs) that will allow organisations in the EU to exchange data with the US, but they may arrive too late to incorporate into UK law The European Commission (EC) will issue…

The EU and the US have begun talks over a possible successor to the Privacy Shield agreement that could put data-sharing between the EU and the US on a legal footing. The EU and the US Department of Commerce said today that they had initiated…

Austrian lawyer Max Schrems has stepped up pressure on the Irish data protection commissioner to take action over Facebook, following a judgment by the European Court of Justice to strike down the EU-US data-sharing agreement, Privacy Shield.…

European businesses will have to conduct time-consuming assessments of US law to ensure their data transfers to the US are lawful, following the European Court of Justice’s decision to strike down the EU-US data-sharing agreement, Privacy Shield, it…

Europe’s highest court today struck out the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement, overturning the legal basis that allows more than half a million US companies to exchange data with Europe. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Privacy Shield…

A ruling by the European Court of Justice will have ramifications for hundreds of thousands of companies that share data with the US. The case aims to balance US surveillance laws with the rights of EU citizens to keep their data private Europe’s top…

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has backed lawyer and privacy activist Max Schrems and Facebook in a legal opinion which found that the contractual agreements widely used by companies to share data between the European Union (EU) and the US are…