Hristiyan Dimov, legal assistant at LIBRe Foundation, was the only participant from Bulgaria to participate in the “Privacy Law and Policy Summer Course”, organized by the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR).
The
course was held for the fifth consecutive year and presented an
overview of the current legislative frameworks and regulatory policies
of the EU and the US in the field of privacy and data protection related
to the Internet, electronic communications and online and social media.
The goal of the course was to acquaint participants with the
fundamental differences between the regulatory, judicial and legislative
aspects of privacy on both sides of the Ocean, and to give insight on
how technology and businesses will influence the future development of
the sector.
This year’s edition of the Course stood out with its special focus on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which will become enforceable on the 25th May 2018 and will put higher responsibilities on businesses, governments and national data protection authorities. The lecturers provided participants with insight on the practical issues related to the new obligations, introduced by the GDPR, such as, inter alia, the mandatory appointment of a data protection officer (DPO), the determination of a lead supervisory authority for cross-border organizations (a.k.a. the one-stop-shop principle), obligatory data-breach notifications, the right to data portability, the right to be forgotten and many other.
Another point of discussion was the ongoing initiative of the EU in reforming Directive 2002/58/EC for a better protection of privacy in terms of electronic communications. The draft framework is likely to affect for the first time over-the-top services, such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Gmail, etc. The reform is planned to be finalized by May 2018 but is very likely to pass the given due date.
More info about the summer course could be found here.