UK Information The Commissioner (ICO), Christopher Graham, announced at the IAPP Data Protection Intensive on 25-26 April 2012, that enforcement of the cookie law will be ''pragmatic and realistic'', when the moratorium on enforcement is lifted on 26 May 2012. / read more

The Canadian Federal, British Columbia and Alberta Privacy Commissioners released on 17 April, accountability guidance for the private sector entitled 'Getting Accountability Right with a Privacy Management Program', which aims to help companies develop a privacy management program compliant with the accountability requirements under Canadian law. / read more

April 2012 / read more

Three years have gone by since the European Parliament shocked and awed everyone by tweaking the e-Privacy Directive and introducing the most controversial word in the data protection glossary ­ consent ­ in the provision that deals with internet cookies. / read more

The European Commission (EC) has proposed a new draft Regulation on the processing of personal data. Significantly, the draft Regulation shifts substantial statutory compliance obligations on to data processors. This note highlights the areas of the draft Regulation that will be of most concern to data processors should it be adopted in its current form. Philip James and Ben Seth, lawyers at Pitmans SK Sport & Entertainment, discuss the important changes that might take place. / read more

The current developments with regard to Swiss banking secrecy remain one of the hottest topics in Switzerland from a political as well as from a legal point of view. The proposed changes to the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act and the recent decision of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court regarding the administrative assistance process, only highlight a string of numerous complex and simultaneously overlapping developments, whose final conclusion remains open at the moment. Dr. Georg G. Gotschev, Attorney at Law at Gotschev Law Firm, rounds off the latest developments. / read more

The European E-Privacy Directive, focusing largely on the use of cookies to capture personal information and browsing behaviour on the internet, came into force in May 2011. Following a year's grace, advertising companies and companies utilising cookies to track customers and target their advertising need to begin the process of self-regulation and documentation to ensure they adhere to the new regulations, which require, amongst other things, explicit consent from online users. John D'Arcy and Charlotte Wilberforce, of customer experience and analytics consultancy firm Foviance, discuss the task online companies face when using cookies and the impact on user experience. / read more

The principles of privacy are explicit in all constitutions of Latin America. Privacy principles also appear in the Pact of San José (American Convention on Human Rights), as well as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, despite the constitutional policy developments on privacy, issues of data protection are poorly developed, let alone the level of regulatory harmonisation. Notably, doctrines and jurisprudence have tried to fill in this gap, but these attempts are in their early stages of development. With the advancement of Latin America's commercial relations with Europe, it is expected that privacy developments will be accelerated. / read more

Chong Kin Lim, Head of the Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) Law Practice Group at Drew & Napier LLC, answers our questions about the recently proposed Data Protection Bill and the Do Not Call Registry. / read more

A new French law on identity protection was published on 28 March 2012. The French Parliament began reviewing the bill over a year and a half ago, but during this time it received surprisingly little attention from the public or media compared to the importance of the matter at stake. The bill purported to introduce national biometric ID cards, information from which would be stored in a centralised database. The purpose of the bill was identity protection, but its wording left some worried that a government could find other reasons to use the database. While the Conseil Constitutionnel (the body responsible for reviewing the constitutionality of laws in France) found no problems with the national biometric ID cards, it ruled the creation of the database unconstitutional. On the other hand, just a few days before this ruling, a decree by the Ministre de l'Intérieur created the 'fichier ARES', a database that will store information for five years on all individuals who contest speeding or parking tickets. Raphaël Dana, Associate at Sarrut Avocats, discusses. / read more