The Privacy Advisor Podcast

As a consumer, it can be really difficult to figure out who's tracking your data online. Many companies hide behind algorithms claiming they're the "secret sauce" to their business model, which sometimes frustrates regulators and laymen alike. That's why award-winning journalist Julia Angwin and investigative journalist Surya Mattu, both of the non-profit news organization The Markup, recently developed and released Blacklight, a web site that allows users to scan any site for potential privacy violations, including what's being tracked and who's sharing your personal data. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, Angwin and Mattu talk about the tool and why the team is passionate about user empowerment. 

There have been no shortage of hearings in the last couple of years on potential federal privacy legislation in the U.S. This week was no exception, as the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held another. But this hearing was under different circumstances, namely, it was held in the middle of the COVID-19 global pandemic. That garnered some conversation about the need for a comprehensive law more than ever, as did the release this week of the SAFE Data Act, which consolidates previously released legislation into one bill, with some nuance. In this episode of the podcast, IAPP Senior Research Fellow Muge Fazlioglu discusses the bill's provisions, and Sara Collins of Public Knowledge discusses how that featured into this week's hearing. 

As children around the globe either head back to school or continue their school year, depending on geolocation, many new privacy and data protection concerns present themselves. Whether it be heightened data collection on student health to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at school or new technologies implemented to facilitate virtual learning, there are all sorts of new unprecedented risks. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, former White House Senior Advisor for Privacy Marc Groman and the Future of Privacy Forum's Director of the Education Privacy Project Amelia Vance discuss how we can help protect children's privacy — and whose job that is. 

If Brazil gave birth to its data protection law this week, it was a really fast labor.  Privacy professionals awoke to the news Thursday that overnight, in an unprecedented move, the Brazilian Senate approved an amendment allowing the General Personal Data Protection Law to go into effect (almost) immediately. The decision reverses a vote Tuesday to delay the implementation of the LGPD to Dec. 31, 2020. How could this have happened? What does it mean for those covered by the law? In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, Dirceu Santa Rosa talks to Angelique Carson, CIPP/US, about why there's some fear surrounding the news. 

In a highly anticipated decision, Europe's highest court decided July 16 that the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement is invalid. The ruling will impact thousands of companies who'd used Privacy Shield to transfer data from the EU to the U.S. Additionally, the court decided to uphold another data transfer mechanism, standard contractual clauses, but with conditions. The news is a game-changer and casts much uncertainty upon the stability of cross-border agreements. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, IAPP Research Director Caitlin Fennessy, Hintze Law's Susan Lyon-Hintze and Future of Privacy Forum's Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna discuss the decision and what privacy pros should be thinking about in the coming days and weeks.   

There's no shortage of tech companies and apps aiming to help thwart the spread of COVID-19, in addition to government efforts. But with so many different apps being deployed and so much sensitive data being swept up, is this one of those moments in time that we're putting safety ahead of privacy in ways that can't be undone? In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, the Future of Privacy Forum's Polly Sanderson and the International Digital Accountability Council's Quentin Palfrey discuss both the apps themselves as well as the greater ecosystem surrounding contact tracing. 

Recently, Jay Edelson and his team at Edelson PC have filed three different class-action lawsuits related to unwanted surveillance: One against security company ADT, one against a Chicago hospital and another against biometric start-up Clearview AI. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, Edelson talks about why he chose to file the suits and why he thinks they're important cases for privacy rights generally. He also talks about the status of his firm's historic settlement with Facebook over violations of Illinois biometric privacy law. 

When the world was turned upside down with the COVID-19 pandemic and then the murder of George Floyd in the U.S., any momentum we’d started to see on passing a federal privacy bill was lost — at least temporarily. But Cam Kerry is aiming to change that by re-igniting bi-partisan conversations with a report proposing how we might overcome the impasse we've found ourselves at in two crucial areas: federal pre-emption and a private right of action. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, Kerry discusses how to bridge the divide. 

There is so much privacy news related to the pandemic lately that it sometimes feels like that's the only news. But the world continues to spin, if more quietly, as most of its population works from the comfort of their homes. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, Angelique Carson chats with Brussels-based freelance journalist Jennifer Baker about two government data breaches, the latest on activist Max Schrems and his complaints, as well as recent criticisms on the level of DPA enforcement now that the GDPR has turned two.

Especially now, while most of us are stuck indoors hiding from the invisible monster that is the COVID-19 disease, it's not difficult to imagine better days — days when we can safely travel again to faraway islands with blue-glass waters and sandy beaches. Or, you could do what Alex White did and move there. The former deputy chief privacy officer of South Carolina didn't move to the island for a vacation, though. He took the job as the country's first-ever privacy commissioner, a position created with the passage of Bermuda's privacy law in 2016. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, White talks to host Angelique Carson, CIPP/US, about the challenges of starting up a new office — especially in the midst of a global pandemic — and why he thinks privacy professionals should think of themselves as, of all things, GPS devices.