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Editorial [2000] PLBIRp 32; (2000) 55 Privacy Laws and Business International Report 1

Editorial

In July, we held a very successful annual conference, which provided comprehensive information on how to comply with the new data protection laws. In this issue, we bring you a taste of some of the topics that were dealt with in presentations on CCTV (p.17), the UK Freedom of Information Bill (p.15) and France's progress with adopting a new law (p.6). All other reports from the conference are available to order (p.21).

New legislative developments that have taken place during the summer include Germany's draft data protection bill (p.2), and new data protection laws of Denmark (p.3), Norway (p.8) and the Netherlands (p.2). It is already evident that there are differences in the implementation of the EU Data Protection Directive. This is also the case with regard to the sectoral Telecommunications Data Protection Directive, and has led to discussions about the need to update it. The changes are proposed by the European Commission, and include several important aspects, such as including e-mail in the restrictions on unsolicited communications (p.10).

On the EU-US front, the Safe Harbour package has now been officially approved and should start to operate in November. It now remains to be seen how credible the agreement is, and how many US organisations decide to join this voluntary arrangement (p. 12).

Laura Linkomies, Associate Editor

PRIVACY LAWS & BUSINESS