Photo of David Stauss [Former Attorney]

David Stauss [Former Attorney]

 

Formerly with Husch Blackwell, David routinely counseled clients on complying with privacy laws such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, the California Consumer Privacy Act, the Colorado Privacy Act, and other state privacy laws.

The fallout from the Schrems II judgment continued on Tuesday with an announcement from Switzerland’s Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) that the Swiss-US Privacy Shield regime “does not provide an adequate level of protection for data transfer from Switzerland to the US pursuant to [Switzerland’s] Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP).”

Keypoint: Representatives of the European Commission and EDPB advised that further guidance on cross-borders data transfers are forthcoming.

Last week, Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice, and Dr. Andrea Jelinek, Chair of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), appeared at a hearing conducted by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, and updated committee members on their work since the Schrems II decision.

Keypoint: Some additional changes to the CCPA regulations were made before they were filed with the Secretary of State and became effective.

As discussed in our prior post, on Friday, August 14, 2020, the California Office of Administrative Law (OAL) approved the California Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) final CCPA regulations and filed them with the California Secretary of State (SOS). The regulations were immediately effective.

Notably, the final text of the regulations submitted to the SOS was modified from the one filed with the OAL. The OAG published an Addendum to the Final Statement of Reasons setting forth the changes. Many of the changes are stylistic and grammatical. However, some of the changes are substantive and will impact compliance efforts. The most notable changes are discussed below:

Keypoint: The EDPB’s FAQs resolve some open questions, such as whether there will be a grace period for companies relying on Privacy Shield, but raise other questions, such as what “supplementary measures” companies need to put in place to use Standard Contractual Clauses and Binding Corporate Rules.

In the wake of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s Schrems II judgment, on July 23, 2020, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted a Frequently Asked Questions document to “provide initial clarification and give preliminary guidance to stakeholders on the use of legal instruments for the transfer of personal data to third countries, including the U.S.” The EDPB stated that the document will be updated, and further guidance provided, as it continues to examine and consider the judgment.

In a ground-breaking opinion issued today, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield Decision as a method for transferring personal data from the EU to the US. In short, the Decision was invalidated over Privacy Shield’s failure to adequately address US government surveillance activities.

Conversely, the Court upheld the use of standard contractual clauses for transfers of personal data to third countries but emphasized that the parties are under an obligation to ensure that the laws in the recipient country are sufficient.  Specifically, the Court held that GDPR Article 46(1) and 46(2)(6) “must be interpreted as meaning that the appropriate safeguards, enforceable rights and effective legal remedies required by those provisions must ensure that data subjects whose personal data are transferred to a third country pursuant to standard data protection clauses are afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed” in European law.

On June 24, 2020, the California Secretary of State announced that county election officials had validated enough signatures through the random signature validation process to make the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (a/k/a CCPA 2.0) eligible for the November 3, 2020 ballot. The final projected valid signatures based on the random sample validation process…

In early June, the California Attorney General filed final CCPA regulations with the California Office of Administrative Law. The final regulations were accompanied by a 59-page Final Statement of Reasons along with six appendices containing over 500 pages of comments on the regulations and the Attorney General’s responses to those comments. One of the many topics that the Attorney General’s office discussed was the final regulation’s requirements for drafting privacy policies. Given that the drafting of a privacy policy is a necessary part of CCPA compliance, it is worth analyzing those comments.

Keypoint: If passed, the bill would create a regulatory structure around the use of contact-tracing apps, including requiring operators of such services to obtain affirmative express consent, provide privacy disclosures, not transfer the data unless under certain circumstances, and delete the data on demand or within thirty days.

According to multiple sources, a bipartisan group of Senators plan to introduce a bill to regulate the use of contact-tracing and exposure notification apps. The bill, entitled the “Exposure Notification Privacy Act” is the latest in a series of bills that seek to regulate these new apps. Previous competing bills were submitted by Republican and Democrat Senators. The new bipartisan bill raises hopes that federal privacy legislation (albeit on a limited issue) may finally pass.

Below is a discussion of the Act’s relevant provisions.

Keypoint: If the California Privacy Rights Act is approved by voters in November, it would trigger a series of deadlines ultimately culminating in a January 1, 2023 effective date and July 1, 2023 enforcement date.

On May 4, 2020, privacy advocates reported that they were submitting over 900,000 signatures to qualify the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA or CCPA.20) for the November election. Assuming the initiative passes the signature verification process, it would be on the November 3, 2020 ballot and become law if approved by a simple majority of California voters.

If the CPRA does pass in November, it will trigger a complicated timeline of staggered effective and enforcement dates and regulatory rulemaking deadlines.