Assessing the Impact of the Barbados’ Proposed Data Protection Bill on the Barbadian Private Sector
*Jan Yves Remy is a former Sidley Austin Associate and now serves as the Deputy Director at Shridath Ramphal Centre for International Trade Law, Policy and Services at the University of the West Indies in Barbados. As with all posts, this article is for your informational purposes only; Sidley Austin does not have offices in or practice law in Barbados.
Today, more than 120 countries have privacy and data protection laws or regulations in place. Many of the new or modernized laws tend to be based on comprehensive legislation, rather than sectoral rules, as data needs to move across industry groups and borders. With its new data protection bill, Barbados is planning to join the ranks; this is a significant move, and it is one fueled at least in part by the entry into force of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) on May 25, 2018. The GDPR was designed to harmonize data protection laws across Europe and to protect EU residents’ data privacy rights; and, its coming triggered significant privacy and data protection compliance activities amongst organizations doing business in the EU and working with the personal data of EU residents.
Jamaica’s New Privacy Protection Bill
On 10 October 2017, Jamaica introduced into its House of Parliament a comprehensive Bill for privacy and data protection, entitled “An Act to Protect the Privacy of Certain Data and for Connected Matters.” The new law would cover personal data, including data in an “accessible record” such as a health record or an educational record. If passed, the new law will be named the “Data Protection Act, 2017.” (more…)
Fate Unclear for Obama Administration Cyber Sanctions
On December 28, 2016, former President Obama issued Executive Order 13757, Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency with Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities (E.O. 13757). E.O. 13757 amends an earlier Executive Order 13694 (E.O. 13694) of April 1, 2015[1], under which the President declared a “national emergency” to deal with the “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy posed by malicious cyber-enabled activities conducted by persons outside the United States in relation to the November 2016 election. Through the December 2016 amendment, President Obama took “additional steps” to deal with such malicious cyber activities in view of their increasing use “to undermine democratic processes or institutions.”