von Peter Schaar (21. März 2024) Seit letztem Herbst sind wir Zeugen eines unwürdigen Gerangels um die Wahl des oder der Bundesbeauftragten für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit, dessen reguläre Amtszeit Anfang Januar 2024 endete. Der bisherige Amtsinhaber, Prof. Ulrich Kelber, hatte frühzeitig erklärt, dass er für eine weitere fünfjährige ...

Text messages (SMS, WhatsApp messages etc.) have become a widespread means of communications, often replacing e-mail altogether. This is true for private individuals as well as for government officials. It is well known how important text messages were for Angela Merkel. Whether this is is also the case with her successor is not yet known. The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also uses text messages intensively. For example, she communicated in ...

Sir Bruce Slane, New Zealand’s first Privacy Commissioner, at the end of his term of office in 2003 highlighted the importance of privacy by drawing a parallel to the air we breathe: both are invisible and we only notice it once it’s gone. So when Scott McNealy said in 1999: “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it” he might as well have said: “You don’t have any air to breathe, so just stop breathing.” Twenty years later, Mark Zuckerberg uttered: “The future is ...

By Peter Schaar, European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection, former Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. On November 1, 2021, China's data protection law will come into force. Will this dispel all concerns about China's handling of personal data? Can European companies trust that their data will be processed ...

September 28 is the International Freedom of Information Day. A good occasion to remind the new majority in the Federal German Parliament that the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Offcial Documents (Tromsoe Convention) entered into force in December 2020, but not in the Federal Republic of Germany, a country which has been a member of the Council of Europe for 70 years now. Nevertheless the past ...

Vaccines developed in record time to protect against Covid-19 have been called the key out of the pandemic, even though it is not yet clear whether vaccinated people can continue to transmit the virus. At the same time, it is reported that manufacturers may not be able to meet their delivery commitments, or may be delayed. The question of liability for vaccine damage, which has naturally played an important role ...

Vaccines developed in record time to protect against Covid-19 have been called the key out of the pandemic, even though it is not yet clear whether vaccinated people can continue to transmit the virus. At the same time, it is reported that manufacturers may not be able to meet their delivery commitments, or may be delayed. The question of liability for vaccine damage, which has naturally played an important role in the negotiations between the EU Commission and the ...

From Peter Schaar, 23.11.2020 In the discussion on measures to contain the corona pandemic, data protection is increasingly coming under scrutiny. Is the second wave of corona and the continuing sharp rise in the number of infections due to the fact that in Germany - unlike in some Southeast Asian countries - not all available personal data is collected and used? ...

Von Peter Schaar, 16.07.2020 With its decision today, the European Court of Justice has again underlined the importance of the fundamental right to data protection guaranteed by Article 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Almost five years after its landmark decision of 6 October 2015, in which the highest European court declared the then Safe Harbor Agreement invalid ("Schrems I"), the European ...

Berlin, 26 March 2020 The containment of infections with the novel coronavirus is an unprecedented challenge for democratic societies in terms of its scale and globality. They must face the pandemic and its consequences with determination while preserving their fundamental values. Another cause for concern, however, is the uncertainty in the application of data protection rules. ...