Over the previous couple of years, the region of South-Eastern Europe, or more specifically, the Western Balkans, has enjoyed a globally acknowledged position of an investment hot-spot. This comes as no surprise if we take into account how the socialist past of encompassing countries has provided their contemporary incarnations with a number of state-owned companies in core industries, all of which now present viable targets for Private Equity funds and M&A activities in general ...
Most people probably associate cyber-crime with issues of national security—what with Russia dominating so much space in the headlines, lately. However, cybersecurity breaches can have a palpable and damaging effect on everyday individuals, due to how often they’re tied to corporate security breaches involving highly sensitive personal information like credit card numbers, social security numbers, and contact information ...
How retailers can harness technology to beat e-commerce at its own game. “It's official: Singapore malls are dead, as occupancy reaches its lowest level in 10 years,” screams one headline. “At some suburban malls, retailers confront the sound of silence,” another chimes in. As e-commerce takes hold, shoppers are eschewing brick and mortar in favour of the convenience of point and click ...
Corporations and governments are ferreting out and squirreling away voluminous, detailed and private information about each and every one of us – and they are not afraid to use it. Should we be worried? Singapore’s Health Minister recently revealed that confidential details of 14,200 HIV-positive people, stolen from a government public health database, had been leaked online by a disgruntled US citizen who had been in a romantic relationship with a local doctor ...
Earlier this month, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez introduced Bill C-18 (Online News Act) in Parliament. This bill, which was largely inspired by similar legislation in Australia, aims to reduce bargaining imbalances between online platforms and Canadian news outlets in terms of how these ?digital news intermediaries? allow news content to be accessed and shared on their platforms ...
On June 2nd, 2014, President Michelle Bachelet entered a bill into Congress which seeks to modify Law N° 19.496 on the Protection of the Rights of Consumers (“CPA”). The message of the bill recognizes that the tools provided by the current legislation to address violations to the rights of consumers are not sufficiently efficient or dissuasive: in several cases it is less expensive for providers to pay a fine for breach of the CPA, than to comply with such regulation ...
On July 10th, 2023, the Chamber of Deputies approved in its Second Constitutional Procedure the bill of law that, among other matters, aims to recognize Internet access as a Public Telecommunications Service (bulletin No. 11,632-15) (the "Bill"), through various amendments to Law No. 18,168, the General Telecommunications Law ("GTL"). As a result of the abovementioned approval, the Bill has been returned to its chamber of origin (i.e ...
On Monday, April 1st, 2024, the Chilean Government introduced in the Chamber of Deputies a bill which aims, on one hand, to establish regulations to facilitate and promote the transfer of technology and knowledge and, on the other, to enable and stimulate the creation and development of science and technology-based companies (“EBCT”) from higher education institutions ...
On April 26th, 2022, the Senate unanimously approved in particular (first constitutional procedure) the Bill that establishes a Framework Law on Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure. As a result, the legislative proposal passed to the second constitutional procedure waiting to be discussed by the Chamber of Deputies ...
The UK data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”), has released a statement warning organisations to assess the public risks of using emotion analysis technologies, with those failing to do so risking investigation and enforcement action ...
On January 19, 2019, federal Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore of the Northern District of California denied the Government’s application for a search warrant that sought: “all digital devices” present at a California residence; (Order at 3), and “any individual present at the time of the search to press a finger (including thumb) or utilize other biometric features…for the purposes of unlocking the digital devices found in order to permit a search of
On Nov. 19, 2018, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking[1] requesting public comment on criteria for identifying emerging technologies essential to U.S. national security that would be subject to increased export controls ...
The era of cryptocurrencies has come: whilst they were initially used as a specific means of payment and as a source of investments other functions are now being explored, such as the possibility of cryptocurrencies being directly contributed to a company in the context of its incorporation ...
Dispute is heating up over IRS’s attempts to get personal information about users of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Last November, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) filed a petition in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. It sought the court’s permission to serve a “John Doe” summons on Coinbase, Inc., a virtual currency exchanger in San Francisco ...
Dispute is heating up over IRS’s attempts to get personal information about users of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Last November, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) filed a petition in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. It sought the court’s permission to serve a “John Doe” summons on Coinbase, Inc., a virtual currency exchanger in San Francisco ...
In an earlier post, we started discussing the IRS’ “John Doe” summons to Coinbase, a virtual currency exchange, to obtain information about every Coinbase user, who, at any time during the period of January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2015, conducted transactions in a convertible virtual currency as defined in IRS Notice 2014-21. One such user filed a motion to intervene in the proceeding and to quash the IRS’ summons ...
Following the recently reported hack of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s social media account yesterday (10 January 2024), the SEC formally announced that it had approved the launch of 11 Bitcoin ETFs in the US. As the announcement states, these approvals are not an endorsement of cryptocurrency as an “investment” or of any of the issuers of the ETFs themselves ...
In a recent appeal by a pharmacy, Doorstep Dispensaree Limited (“Doorstep”), against a Monetary Penalty Notice and an Enforcement Notice issued against it by the Information Commissioner’s Office (the “ICO”), Doorstep was partially successful, specifically against the level of fine imposed by the ICO under the Monetary Penalty Notice ...
Last week, 49 state attorneys general announced a $49.5 million settlement with Blackbaud, Inc. (Blackbaud) over the software company’s data-security practices and its response to a breach in 2020 that exposed the personal information of millions of individuals. Blackbaud provides software solutions to nonprofit organizations, including charities, schools and healthcare agencies, to help them connect with donors and manage data about their constituencies ...
A recent significant enforcement action brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Blackbaud Inc. highlights the importance of public companies maintaining disclosure controls and procedures relating to cybersecurity incidents ...
Blockchain is a distributed ledger of data entries. The entries are processed and managed by a series of different computers, or ‘nodes’, which can be running on different servers. Every computer connected to the system keeps a copy of this ledger, meaning that different parties can view and manage the same information in real time. It also makes it exceptionally safe and secure. The energy sector has been relatively slow to adopt blockchain technology ...
In August 2016, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) co-sponsored the Use of Blockchain in Health IT and Health-related Research Ideation Challenge, soliciting whitepapers on how blockchain technology can be used in health care ...
In a prior issue, we discussed how blockchain technology is poised to change the way various industries work. Many have theorized this technology is a game-changer that threatens to usher in a new way of conducting business worldwide. Those industries have continued to invest in blockchain technology at an ever-increasing rate. Banks and other financial institutions have not been left out of this as several have joined large consortiums that aim to study and implement this technology ...
