The Privacy Advisor Podcast

Recently, The New York Times announced it had hired journalist Kashmir Hill to its Business beat. Hill, most recently of Gizmodo, has long covered privacy in a distinct and unique first-person style, often through experimentation of her own with technology products and services. There was the time she tried to quit using the top five technology companies to see what her life would become, or the time she connected her entire home to the Internet of Things. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, Hill talks to host Angelique Carson, CIPP/US, about covering the privacy beat and what she hopes to do with it at her new gig. 

It's been three years since journalist Angelique Carson, CIPP/US, was directed by her boss to start something called a podcast that could help serve the IAPP membership, allowing them in-depth insights from their peers on how to thrive in the privacy profession and detailed looks at some of the industry's most important news. Since then, The Privacy Advisor Podcast has grown by the thousands in downloads and listeners. To celebrate, in this fun-loving, 100th-episode special anniversary edition, Jay Edelson, a plaintiff's attorney and founder of Edelson PC, aims to give listeners some insight to the woman behind the microphone, grilling Carson on how she approaches interviews on the podcast, the massive shift in the privacy landscape since she started reporting in the space, and why she's so darn out-of-the-loop on pop culture. 

In this special edition of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, two of the people completely immersed in EU General Data Protection compliance discuss the last year of their lives. Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon describes the last year as "a washing machine stuck on the spin cycle; it’s been an incredible year of change for us as a data protection authority.” And Hogan Lovells’ Eduardo Ustaran calls the year “unprecedented.” The two talk about the ongoing struggles as companies and regulators sort things out, and opine as to whether individuals are genuinely better off as a result of the regulation.

While it's true privacy and data protection laws are undergoing shifts in many parts of the world, this is especially true for Latin America where there is no shortage of legislative action. Brazil approved its general data protection law last year, and it will come into effect in early 2020. Just as the U.S. is seeing with the California Consumer Privacy Act, Brazil's law is now being amended in all kinds of ways ahead of implementation. Amendments to the LGPD, the acronym used for its formal name in Portuguese, will also establish a new national DPA, and those approvals are expected to reach the country's Senate within weeks. In this episode of the podcast, Rosa Maria Franco, the IAPP's managing director for Latin America and based in Mexico, and Dino Santa Rosa of Brazil discuss the legal landscape in both Mexico and Brazil and what that means for the privacy profession in each jurisdiction.

There's been no shortage of press about the California Consumer Privacy Act. Sessions on the topic were among the most attended at the IAPP's Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C., last week. But what's difficult is keeping pace with all of the amendments being voted up or down on any given week. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, host Angelique Carson, CIPP/US, chats with Frankfurt Kurit's Tanya Forsheit, who's on the front-lines of the issue in both advising clients and testifying at hearings on the CCPA in Sacramento. Forsheit offers tips on how to start compliance efforts given the law is in flux, the status of the AG's attempts to expand the CCPA's private right of action, and what we can read into, if anything, about stalled efforts for a privacy bill in Washington State. 

On May 1, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held its third hearing on how to craft a potential federal privacy bill. Witnesses included repesentatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Future of Privacy Forum, Common Sense Media and the Irish Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, host Angelique Carson welcomes back frequent guest Joseph Jerome, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, to discuss the highlights and lowlights of this most recent hearing and whether we're finally pushing proverbial the ball forward on how to do things right in the U.S. 

In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, New Zealand Privacy Commissioner John Edwards discusses the privacy landscape in New Zealand and ongoing updates to the country's privacy law of 1993. Th regulator is unique in that he does not have fining powers, but he says that's working just fine. Edwards also discusses what he says are necessary reforms to the way social media platforms respond to modern-day terrorist attacks. Specifically, he's frustrated with Facebook's response to the attacks on two of the country's mosques, after the terrorist live-streamed the act and the company took nearly 30 minutes to remove it.

History was made Friday night, April 12, when the largest ever privacy class-action verdict was announced. A federal jury in Oregon decided it would tell health supplement marketer ViSalus to pay $925 million in damages after it was charged by a certified class of 800,000 people with making 2 million illegal robocalls. It’s unusual not only in that it’s the highest amount ever awarded, but also in that privacy class—action cases often don’t ever go to trial. In this episode of The Privacy Advisor Podcast, Jay Edelson, whose firm argued the class-action for the plaintiffs' bar, talks us through the legal victory, the significance of the ruling and what it could mean for the future of privacy litigation in the U.S. 

Eduardo Ustaran is global co-head of the Hogan Lovells Privacy and Cybersecurity practice, and he's widely recognized as one of the world's leading privacy and data protection lawyers. In this episode of the podcast, host Angelique Carson talks to Ustaran about what's happening in the U.K. on Brexit and what that might mean for data protection in the region. He also gives us a download on progress related to the ePrivacy Regulation. With Romania at the helm, fulfilling residency of the Council of the European Union, the ball seems to be inching even closer towards the line. 

On Capitol Hill this week, Congress held two back-to-back hearings on a potential U.S. federal privacy bill. The aim was to gain insights from expert witnesses on what such a bill should contain. At the first hearing, at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, industry and advocates debated how prescriptive a federal law should be. At the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Wednesday, lawmakers asked witnesses whether a U.S. law should model itself on the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, or perhaps California's Consumer Privacy Act. While industry didn't like that idea, witnesses did agree that the CCPA should be the floor upon which a federal law is built.