Stefan Filipović is a privacy lawyer that began his career at the outset of GDPR enforcement in 2018. Throughout the years, he has built his expertise by working at a law firm focusing on IP and privacy, at a university as a researcher investigating legal challenges in regulating AI-based technology, and as a privacy officer and a counsel for a few Norwegian companies. Today he is a DPO at reMarkable.

For several years, he also volunteered at ICANN, and for a period of time, at NIST’s privacy workforce.

Beyond his focus on privacy compliance, he maintains a strong passion for information security, computer science, and risk management, as well as corporate governance and finance.

References:

• Stefan Filipović on LinkedIn 
• Black Box Thinking (Matthew Syed)
• Privacy is hard and seven other myths (Jaap-Henk Hoepman)

Nina Müller and Sergio Maldonado discuss a few recent events across the EU, the UK, and the US: Yahoo/Uber ePrivacy fines, Google Chrome (Incognito Mode) settlement, US Congress Social Media hearing, upcoming UOOM/ Global Privacy Control enforcement across various states, and Spain’s AEPD Guidelines to circumvent cookie consent requirements for high-level Digital Analytics. 

Please find relevant links and additional updates across all of our usual core sections (ePrivacy and regulatory updates; MarTech and AdTech; AI, competition, and digital markets; PETs and Zero-Party Data; future of media) on the PrivacyCloud website.

Could we re-interpret article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive so that the “strictly necessary” (to provide a service) consent exemption gives shelter to the core technical building blocks of advertising solutions making journalism possible? Can we not deal with personal data (should it be involved at all) or behavioral targeting (should it be the case) separately under the GDPR?

Peter Craddock helps us answer that question.

Our guest is a lawyer as well as a software developer, and he uses this dual background to help clients find legal solutions to technical problems and technical solutions to legal problems. Peter is based in Brussels and helps international companies with their global data strategy and with EU data litigation. He notably has strong expertise in the legal aspects of digital advertising and adtech, and has been one of the most prominent commentators of recent legal developments in that area.

References:

• Peter Craddock on LinkedIn
• Maybe no consent needed for advertising under ePrivacy "cookie" rule? (Peter Craddock)
• EDPB seeks to redefine ePrivacy – Part II: Overbroad notions and regulator activism?
• IAB Europe Responds to the EDPB Public Consultation on their Draft Guidelines 2/2023
• EDPB ePrivacy Guidelines: Comments Highlighting Risks to Businesses with Digital Activities (Keller and Heckman)
• Romain Robert: Pay or OK in AdTech - How it started and where it’s going (Masters of Privacy)
• Renzo Marchini: Unintended consequences of the EDPB Guidelines on storage and access under article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive (Masters of Privacy) 
• Cristiana Santos and Victor Morel: The problem with CMPs and TCF-based cookie paywalls (Masters of Privacy)
• Robert Bateman: Consent or Pay (Masters of Privacy)
• Peter Hense: How first party data will kill CMPs (Masters of Privacy)

Can we take Data Clean Rooms to the next level in terms of baked-in privacy?

Damien Desfontaines is a Scientist at Tumult Labs, a startup that helps organizations safely share or publish insights from sensitive data, using differential privacy. Before that, he led the anonymization consulting team at Google, and got his PhD in computer science at ETH Zürich. He maintains a blog that teaches you all about differential privacy. 

References:

• Damien Desfontaines on LinkedIn
• Nicola Newitt: the legal case for Data Clean Rooms (Masters of Privacy)
• Damien Desfontaines’ blog on Differential Privacy
• Tumult Labs: Resources and publications on Differential Privacy

Tejas Manohar is the co-founder and co-CEO of Hightouch. Prior to founding Hightouch, Tejas was an early engineer at Segment, a leading Customer Data Platform (CDP) acquired by Twilio. 

The following topics have been covered in this interview:

• Current limitations of Customer Data Platforms (CDP) as a core building block of the marketing data stack
• The value of composable CDPs and Reverse ETL
• Privacy compliance challenges of CDPs and customer data integration as a whole
• Potential overlaps with Data Clean Rooms

References:

• Tejas Manohar on LinkedIn
• Traditional CDP vs. Composable CDP: What is the difference?
• Revenge of the silos: How privacy compliance is cutting the customer journey short (Sergio Maldonado)

Molly Martinson is a lawyer at Wyrick Robbins, a Raleigh-based law firm with outstanding privacy compliance credentials. She advises clients on a whole range of applicable privacy frameworks (CCPA, CPRA, FCRA, CAN-SPAM, COPPA, HIPAA), data breaches, laws regulating data brokers, and laws governing website and mobile application privacy policies. She also regularly advises international and U.S.- based clients on the applicability and requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

Molly received her B.A., cum laude from Wake Forest University and her J.D. with honors from UNC Schoolors Writing Scholar. She also received the Gressman-Pollitt Award for Excellence in Oral Advocacy. Molly served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert N. Hunter, Jr. on the Supreme Court of North Carolina and the North Carolina Court of Appeals before entering private practice.

References:

• Molly Martinson on LinkedIn
• California Consumer Privacy Act
• Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act
• Colorado Privacy Act
• Utah Consumer Privacy Act
• Summary of the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (National Law Review)
• Connecticut Data Privacy Act
• Florida Privacy Protection Act
• Montana Consumer Privacy Law
• Oregon Consumer Privacy Act
• Global Privacy Control
• Wyrick Robbins

Romain Robert is member of the litigation chamber of Belgium’s Supervisory Authority. He worked in various Brussels law firms between 2002 and 2011. Between 2007 and 2011, he was also a researcher at the Research Centre in Law and Society at the University of Namur. In 2011, he joined Belgium’s Supervisory Authority as a legal advisor. He worked as legal officer at the Policy and Consultation Unit of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) as of 2015 and joined the Secretariat of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) in May 2018. In April 2020, Romain joined NOYB - an NGO conducting strategic litigation to enforce digital rights - where he was Program Director until July 2023.

References:

• Romain Robert on LinkedIn
• EDPS Opinion on the Proposal for a Directive on certain aspects concerning contracts for the supply of digital content
• Sergio Maldonado, How the Digital Content Directive will break the GDPR
• NOYB
• Robert Bateman: Consent or Pay
• EDPB Guidelines 05/2020 on consent
• Giovanni Buttarelli (former EDPS), “Privacy 2030: A Vision for Europe” (IAPP)

Renzo Machini is a London-based partner at Fieldfisher's Data and Privacy team. He holds CIPP/E, CIPT and FIP certifications from the IAPP and is well versed in Cloud Computing, Big Data and other technologies overlapping with privacy and GDPR compliance. He has authored 

"Cloud Computing: A practical introduction to the legal issues" and, prior to becoming a solicitor, he worked for five years as a software engineer at Logica (now CGI), a major independent UK software house.

With Renzo we are directly addressing the biggest elephant in the ePrivacy room today: What are the unintended consequences of the EDPB’s recent Guidelines on the technical scope of article 5.3 of the ePrivacy Directive?

References:

• Renzo Marchini on LinkedIn
• EDPB, Guidelines 2/2023 on Technical Scope of Art. 5(3) of ePrivacy Directive
• Renzo Marchini, “New Guidance released on the technical scope of Art 5(3) ePrivacy Directive - a landgrab by the EDPB”
• Renzo Marchini, “Cloud Computing: a practical introduction to the legal issues.” (Cambridge University Press).

Nina and Sergio run through the most relevant news of the past three months at the usual intersection of marketing, data, privacy, and technology - stopping at a few less commented and yet quite relevant fines, guidelines, or upcoming legal frameworks.

In particular, this episode covers: 

• Dark patterns in recent EU enforcement actions 
• EDPB Guidelines on the technical scope of the ePrivacy Directive
• The 23andMe data breach
• 40 states suing Meta over Insta/FB’s impact on the mental health of teenagers

Best of all, we managed to avoid OpenAI’s drama.

With Nina Müller and Sergio Maldonado.

References:

• [ES] AEPD fine resulting from the use of dark patterns in the acceptance of third party recipients (Expansion)
• Irish watchdog fines TikTok €345M for mishandling kids' data (The Register)
• 23andMe user data targeting Ashkenazi Jews leaked online (NBC News)
• EDPB Draft Guidelines 2/2023 on Technical Scope of Art. 5(3) of ePrivacy Directive 
• Dozens of states sue Meta over youth mental health crisis (The Verge)
• Masters of Privacy - Arielle Garcia: How privacy awareness leads to respectful, effective marketing

Arielle Garcia combines a really good understanding of the advertising industry with award-winning expertise in privacy and responsible data use. She is the founder of ASG solutions, a consultancy firm specifically focused on helping marketers drive sustainable growth through respectful marketing and was previously UM Worldwide’s Chief Privacy Officer.

She holds a JD from Fordham University and has been recognised as a Top Woman in Media and AdTech by AdExchanger in 2023 (as well by others in prior years). In 2021 she was inducted to the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement due to her impact on the industry.

What we have covered in this episode:

1. The bigger picture of privacy challenges in the digital marketing industry
2. Cookie and pixel inventories
3. Does more data mean better results?
4. Privacy consequences of the new “black box” offerings from the walled gardens
5. Unconsented signals and Conversions APIs
6. US-specific concerns regarding the use of health-related data in programmatic advertising
7. Aligning customer expectations of privacy with business results

References:

• Arielle Garcia, An Industry In Conflict: It’s Time For Tough Questions And Hard Decisions (Ad Exchanger)
• Arielle Garcia on LinkedIn
• Arielle Garcia on X