Jessica Langdon reports: A 31-year-old man faces a 35-year prison sentence in a case involving identity theft, a crime a prosecutor told the judge is one of the most destructive and personal crimes. Jurors in 30th District Court found David Lee Fairchild guilty in November of fraudulently possessing 10 pieces of others peoples’ identifying information….
Category: Breach Laws
AU: ALRC renews data loss financial penalty call
Christina Zhou reports: The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has renewed its call for fines for failing to notify the privacy commissioner of data breaches after the UK introduced penalties of up to half a million pounds. The ALRC initially made the call in its report: For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice released…
New Chinese Tort Liability Law Contains Provisions Affecting Personal Data
Hunton & Williams provide more details on the newly passed Chinese tort law: Certain of its provisions relate, expressly or in a general sense, to personal information. These provisions can cause data users to incur liability to data subjects for the mishandling of personal information. In particular: The law (at Articles 2 and 6) states…
UK: Data breaches to incur up to £500,000 penalty
New powers, designed to deter personal data security breaches, are expected to come into force on 6 April 2010. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will be able to order organizations to pay up to £500,000 as a penalty for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act. The ICO has produced statutory guidance about how it…
Ie: Revenue set up VIP unit (but don’t the little people deserve privacy too?)
TJ McIntyre writes: One recent story which didn’t attract as much attention as it should have was the revelation that the Revenue have set up a special VIP unit to minimise leaks of confidential information about public figures. This emerged with the publication of an audit by the Data Protection Commissioner which found significant weaknesses…
UK: Tough new sanctions proposed for breaches of data protection law
The Ministry of Justice is running two consultation exercises in tandem concerning proposals to amend the Data Protection Act. The first proposal is to introduce custodial sentences of up to two years for data protection offences; the second proposal is to introduce new civil penalties, with an upper limit fine of £0.5m, for serious breaches…