At a glance.
- UK continues EU data protection measures post-Brexit under transitional agreements.
- US remains committed to keeping Huawei out of 5G.
- The US Trusted Workforce 2.0 counterintelligence strategy will take a "whole of society" approach.
Brexit has little effect on data protection, at least through the end of 2020.
Cooley offers a look at how Brexit will change data protection regulation in the UK. In brief, not much: a transitional agreement with the EU leaves both GDPR and GDPR's EU-US Privacy Shield in place through December 31st, 2020. After that, Cooley predicts, British data protection regulations are still likely to track the GDPR closely. The British Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published an FAQ to help organizations negotiate the transition. Among the more important points the document makes are, as Cooley summarizes:
- Data transfers between the UK and the European Economic (EEA) Area will not be restricted.
- There is no need for organizations without offices, branches or other establishments in the EEA to appoint a European representative.
- The ICO will continue to be a “Lead Supervisory Authority” for relevant organizations established in the UK.
US continues to warn of the risk Huawei poses.
US Attorney General Barr joins other voices, notably those from the State Department, in praising Nokia and Ericsson as good alternatives to Huawei, Reuters reports. The companies are national champions of, respectively, Finland and Sweden, but Barr suggested they would be good prospects for US investment. As Reuters quotes the Attorney General's talk at a conference this week, “Putting our large market and financial muscle behind one or both of these firms would make it a far more formidable competitor and eliminate concerns over its staying power, or their staying power."
ODNI hopes Trusted Workforce 2.0 will help the US recover from a counterintelligence annus horribilis.
Bill Evanina, who directs the National Counterintelligence and Security Center within the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told a conference at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology that the forthcoming strategy would take a "whole of society” approach in recognition of the ways in which security threats, particularly insider threats, which he characterized as particularly serious, extend beyond the Federal Government to state and local governments, and to the private sector. “We’re going to look at everything and say it’s no longer just a government issue, it’s everyone’s issue,” Federal News Network quotes Evanina as explaining.