Korea amends its privacy laws; Greece adopts GDPR law

On 9 January 2020, South Korea’s national assembly adopted amendments to its major data privacy laws. This development is interesting in view of Korea’s ambitions to be assessed as EU-adequate. The same scenario applies to India although its Bill is at the start of its legislative stages.

Greece’s GDPR implementation has lagged behind other EU Member States but we are pleased to publish now a full report on the specifics of this new law. Some commentators say, however, that the law was rushed through, and there are some shortcomings in the text.

The EU Commission is already looking at whether certain aspects of the GDPR should be updated as the development of new technologies, especially AI, poses new challenges on whether it is possible to apply the regulation in this context. Our Biometric Identification Roundtable is putting recommendations and questions to the UK regulator on the UK Information Commissioner’s position regarding achieving a balance between data minimisation and Artificial Intelligence’s need for a vast amount of data. Can minimisation, necessity, accuracy, security and ethics be reconciled with these technological developments? Read more on AI and facial recognition. As the EU debates the route to take, our correspondent analyses existing regulation. The EU white paper on AI was adopted on 19 February just as we were going to print.(1)

Facebook is developing an Oversight Board – how will it work and what will be its relevance? Read a report on this topic which raises the question of applying good governance principles to such a large and powerful enterprise.

The much-awaited Court of Justice of the European Union Advocate General’s Opinion on Schrems II and Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) was issued last December. Despite positive messages, SCCs applicability is still limited on a practical level, our correspondent says. We await the final decision, expected in the first quarter of 2020.

Laura Linkomies
Editor, Privacy Laws & Business

February 2020

February 2020