Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On September 5, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held that a class action arising from a 2016 Uber Technologies Inc. (“Uber”) data breach must proceed to arbitration. The case was initially filed after a 2016 data breach that affected approximately 600,000 Uber drivers and 57 million Uber customers. 

On September 5, 2018, the Law of 30 July 2018 on the Protection of Natural Persons with regard to the Processing of Personal Data (the “Law”) was published in the Belgian Official Gazette.

This is the second step in adapting the Belgian legal framework to the EU GDPR after the Law of 3 December 2017 Creating the Data Protection Authority, which reformed the Belgian Data Protection Authority.

The Law is available in French and Dutch.

On September 5, 2018, the European Commission (the “Commission”) announced in a press release the launch of the procedure to formally adopt the Commission’s adequacy decision with respect to Japan.

On August 31, 2018, the California State Legislature passed SB-1121, a bill that delays enforcement of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) and makes other modest amendments to the law. The bill now goes to the Governor for signing. The provisions of the CCPA will become operative on January 1, 2020. As we have previously reported, the CCPA introduces key privacy requirements for businesses. The Act was passed quickly by California lawmakers in an effort to remove a ballot initiative of the same name from the November 6, 2018, statewide ballot. The CCPA’s hasty passage resulted in a number of drafting errors and inconsistencies in the law, which SB-1121 seeks to remedy. The amendments to the CCPA are primarily technical, with few substantive changes.

On August 29, 2018, Bloomberg Law reported that four Senate Commerce Committee members are discussing a potential online privacy bill. The bipartisan group consists of Senators Jerry Moran (R-KS), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Brian Schatz (D-HI), according to anonymous Senate aides.

On August 22, 2018, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra raised significant concerns regarding the recently enacted California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) in a letter addressed to the CCPA’s sponsors, Assemblyman Ed Chau and Senator Robert Hertzberg. Writing to “reemphasize what [he] expressed previously to [them] and [state] legislative leaders and Governor Brown,” Attorney General Becerra highlighted what he described as five primary flaws that, if unresolved, will undermine the intention behind and effective enforcement of the CCPA.

On August 28, 2018, plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against Nielsen Holdings PLC ("Nielsen") and some of its officers and directors for making allegedly materially false and misleading statements to investors about the impact of privacy regulations and third-party business partners’ privacy policies on the company’s revenues and earnings. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. 

Recently, the Sixth Circuit rejected Travelers Casualty & Surety Company’s request for reconsideration of the court’s July 13, 2018, decision confirming that the insured’s transfer of more than $800,000 to a fraudster after receipt of spoofed emails was a “direct” loss that was “directly caused by” the use of a computer under the terms of American Tooling Company’s ("ATC's") crime policy. In doing so, the court likewise confirmed that intervening steps by the insured, such as following the directions contained in the bogus emails, did not break the causal chain ...

As reported on Hunton's Insurance Recovery blog, the Second Circuit has rejected Chubb subsidiary Federal Ins. Co.’s request for reconsideration of the court’s July 6, 2018, decision, confirming that the insurer must cover Medidata’s $4.8 million loss under its computer fraud insurance policy. In July, the court determined that the loss resulted directly from the fraudulent emails. The court again rejected the insurer’s argument that the fraudster did not directly access Medidata’s computer systems. But the court again rejected that argument, finding that access indeed occurred when the “spoofing” code in emails sent to Medidata employees ended up in Medidata’s computer system.

Recently, the Department of Commerce updated its frequently asked questions (“FAQs”) on the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks (collectively, the “Privacy Shield”) to provide additional clarification on a wide range of topics, including transfers of personal information to third parties, the application of the Privacy Shield Principles to data processors, and the relation of the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (“CLOUD Act”) to the Privacy Shield. Certain key insights from the updated FAQs are outlined below:

• Data processors. When ...