Gloria González Fuster

Key developments

• 🇪🇺 Are adopted on the 27 April 2016:
  • The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC, OJ L 119, 4.5.2016, 1–88;
  • The ‘Law Enforcement Directive’ (LED) (on data protection for the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, and on the free movement of such data): Directive (EU) 2016/680, OJ L 119, 4.5.2016, 89–131;
  • the ‘EU PNR Directive’: Directive (EU) 2016/681 on the use of passenger name record (PNR) data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime, OJ L 119, 4.5.2016, 132–149.
• 🇪🇺 🇺🇸 The European Commission adopts:
  • Communication Transatlantic Data Flows: Restoring Trust through Strong Safeguards, COM(2016) 117 final, 29.2.2016;
  • a Decision declaring that the ‘EU-U.S. Privacy Shield’ provides for an ‘adequate level of protection’ for data transfers, on 12 July 2016.

• US President Obama signs on 24 February 2016 the Judicial Redress Act, which extends protections of the US Privacy Act to some foreigners. Watch President Obama explain sign it here.

Also this year

• ⚖️ The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rules in Verein für Konsumenteninformation (C-191/15), on 28 July 2016; in Breyer (C‑582/14), on 19 October 2016; and in Tele2 Sverige (C‑203/15 and C‑698/15), on 21 December 2016.
• ⚖️ The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decides in Szabó and Vissy v Hungary, on 12 January 2016.
• Council Decision (EU) 2016/920 of 20 May 2016 on the signing, on behalf of the European Union, of the Agreement between the United States of America and the European Union on the protection of personal information relating to the prevention, investigation, detection, and prosecution of criminal offences, OJ L 154, 11.6.2016, 1–2.
• 🇺🇳 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD): 19-20 April 2016, Geneva: Ad Hoc Expert Meeting on Data Protection and Privacy: Implications for Trade and Development.
• 🇩🇪 The German Competition authority Bundeskartellamt announces it has initiated proceedings to investigate if Facebook has abused its possibly dominant position by infringing data protection rules (2 March 2016).
• The Article 29 Working Party publishes its 17th annual report, covering 2013.
• The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) publishes:
  • Opinion 4/2016 on the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield draft adequacy decision (30 May 2016);
  • Opinion 8/2026 Coherent enforcement of fundamental rights in the age of Big Data (23 September 2016).

Literature

• Agar, Jon (2016), The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer, The MIT Press.
• Corley, Morgan (2016), ‘The Need for an International Convention on Data Privacy: Taking a Cue from the CISG‘, Brook. J. Int’l L., 41 (2), 721-779.
• González Fuster, Gloria and Dariusz Kloza (eds.) (2016), The European Handbook for Teaching Privacy and Data Protection at Schools, EAP.
• Gutwirth, Serge, Ronald Leenes and Paul De Hert (eds.) (2016), Data Protection on the Move: Current Developments in ICT and Privacy/Data Protection, Springer.
• Hijmans, Hielke (2016), The European Union as a constitutional guardian of internet privacy and data protection, University of Amsterdam Dissertation.
• Jones, Meg Leta (2016), Ctrl + Z: The Right to Be Forgotten, NYU Press.
• Lake, Jessica (2016), The Face That Launched a Thousand Lawsuits: The American Women who Forged a Right to Privacy, Yale University Press.
• Magallanes Martínez, Víctor Hugo (2016), ‘Derecho a la protección de datos personales. Su diseño constitucional‘, Estudios en derecho a la información 2, 25-45.
• Mantelero, Alessandro (2016), ‘Personal data for decisional purposes in the age of analytics: From an individual to a collective dimension of data protection’, Computer Law & Security Review 32(2), 238-255.
• (Dis)Obedience in Digital Societies – Perspectives on the Power of Algorithms and Data
• O’Neil, Cathy (2016), Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Crown Books.
• Piñar Mañas, José Luis, María Álvarez Caro, and Miguel Recio Gayo (ed.) (2016), Reglamento general de protección de datos: Hacia un nuevo modelo europeo de privacidad, Reus.
• Solove, Daniel J. (2016), ‘A brief history of information privacy law‘, Proskauer on privacy, GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 215.

Music

• 🎵 JPEGMAFIA x Freaky, ‘Big Data + The Internet Ain’t Safe‘ (from The 2nd Amendment). Listen to it on Bandcamp.

Films

• 🎬 Snowden (2016), by Oliver Stone.

In memoriam

• Paul Armer (9 November 1924 – 6 January 2016). Programmer and Head of Computer Science Department at The RAND Corp. (1947-1970); Director of the Computation Center at Stanford University (1970-78); various positions at Harvard University, The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and On-Line Business Systems(1978-81); Executive Secretary at the Charles Babbage Institute (1981-86); Assistant to the President, On-Line Business Systems. Read announcement here.

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