What’s new in data privacy in 2022?

The year starts with news about yet another data protection law in the Middle East. Following Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the United Arab Emirates has adopted a comprehensive data protection law at the federal level. Again, the GDPR’s influence can be seen – resulting in a legal framework that can support the growth of the digital economy.

Professor Graham Greenleaf reports on legislative attempts in Australia and India. Both countries would benefit from EU adequacy. For India, the data localisation/export proposals may be one of the hurdles, as well as not guaranteeing full DPA independence. In Australia, the legislative review has the realistic prospect of EU adequacy in sight if the government chooses the more pro-privacy options it offers in the consultation. It has to be remembered that Australia was considered for an adequacy decision in 2001 but there was not enough political will to make the necessary amendments to Australian law. The current proposals in a discussion paper are potentially the most extensive proposed changes to the Privacy Act since the inclusion of the private sector in its scope (2000), our correspondents say.

In the EU, we have seen an interesting decision from Austria’s DPA concerning Google Analytics. The other EEA DPAs are paying attention. We will monitor developments in other EU jurisdictions as more cases are to follow soon.

Estonia’s new data protection law entered into force in January 2019 - read an analysis of the provisions and recent developments in this field.

Also in this issue: the European Data Protection Board provides much needed guidance on what is a ‘transfer’, and we look at data protection and ethical risks in data scraping.

If you are not yet following our sister publication, now is the time to subscribe to PL&B UK Report – we analyse the changes that Brexit will bring to the UK data protection regime, and we also interpret the regulators’ views and offer guidance to management. See www.privacylaws.com/reports

Laura Linkomies
Editor, Privacy Laws & Business

February 2022