On 18 May 2017, the European Commission (“Commission”) fined Facebook €110 million ($122 million) for misrepresentations made in its application for competition clearance of the company’s acquisition of WhatsApp. In its merger application, Facebook claimed that it would be unable to automatically match Facebook users’ accounts and WhatsApp users’ accounts for marketing and other purposes. […]
Court Holds Forensic Investigator’s Report is Protected from Disclosure
Third-party forensic investigations performed at the direction of counsel are part-and-parcel of virtually every data breach. There has been little case law, however, directly addressing the extent to which the attorney-client privilege and/or work product doctrine protects those forensic investigations from disclosure. Last week, the Central District of California held that, under the specific facts […]
President Trump Signs Long-Awaited Cyber Executive Order
On May 11, 2017, President Trump signed a long-awaited executive order on cybersecurity (the “Order”). The Order directs executive agencies to complete a risk management report based on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (the “Framework”) and also requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies to undertake activities in support of effective cybersecurity risk […]
Outbreak of “WannaCry” and “Wanna Decryptor” Ransomware Affects Companies Across the Globe
On Friday, May 12, companies in countries across the globe witnessed an unprecedented malware outbreak as ransomware labeled “WannaCry” and “Wanna Decryptor” infected a large range of critical systems. The malware exploits a vulnerability in older versions of Microsoft’s Windows, locks the systems it infects, and threatens to delete files unless a bitcoin ransom is […]
Swire Discusses European Data Economy at European Political Strategy Centre Policy Hearing
Peter Swire, Alston & Bird Senior Counsel and Nancy J. and Lawrence P. Huang Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business, recently participated in a policy hearing held by the European Political Strategy Centre, the in-house think tank of the European Commission. Swire joined five other experts […]