April 2011

I’ve recently had the opportunity to participate in or moderate several panels on cloud computing, addressing issues such as governance, security, privacy, and legal liability.  
One issue that frequently comes up is whether cloud computing is really new or different.  That depends on how you look at it.  As a legal matter, the model itself…

Email marketing company Epsilon announced last week that its databases had been hacked, compromising customer names and e-mail addresses for a number of major companies that outsource their marketing communications to Epsilon.
The Epsilon data breach illustrates some of the security challenges when dealing with cloud computing environments.  Although there are security risks associated with…

Although concerns about locational privacy are hardly new, recent developments suggest that policymakers and government officials are taking a close look at the privacy issues raised when geolocation data is collected via smartphones.

  • The Wall Street Journal reports that a federal grand jury in New Jersey is probing the data collection practices of smartphone applications.  According

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On Tuesday the German Working Group on Data Retention endorsed the Czech Constitutional Court’s decision to annul a Czech data retention law.  The Czech court held that the law, which included a blanket obligation on telecommunication companies to retain Czech citizens’ telephone, mobile phone, e-mail and Internet access records, was incompatible with Czech citizens’ fundamental right…

Originally published as Covington E-Alert in April 2011

THE REACH REGULATION AND SUBSTANCES OF VERY HIGH CONCERN

The European Union’s Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006 on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (“REACH Regulation”) requires the European Chemicals Agency (“ECHA”) to identify so-called Substances of Very High Concern (“SVHCs”) and to list them in…