Welcome to The Privacist's Playbook!

This is Edition #0 of The Privacist's Playbook. Thank you for joining.

You may be asking yourself - So, what is The Privacist's Playbook all about?

The Privacist's Playbook is Faraday HQ's newsletter. Each edition features bite-sized news snippets, policy updates, industry matters, and tips to stay ahead of best practices in the digital privacy realm. Editions may also dip into topics such as information security, and cryptography as there will inevitably be some overlap there. The Playbook aims to provide not only a collated set of salient digital privacy resources, but also commentary/analysis where relevant.

The newsletter will be organised into sections relating to each of the above topics so you can easily find what you're looking for if certain sections pique your interest more than others. While Faraday HQ is based in Aotearoa, New Zealand, The Privacist's Playbook dives into topics concerning digital privacy on both a local and global scale.

In terms of the frequency of this newsletter, we'll be aiming to publish each edition on a biweekly basis (whether this is once every two weeks, or twice a week... who knows; even Merriam doesn't know).

So long as you subscribe, you won't have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of The Privacist's Playbook goes delivered directly into your inbox. If you prefer to read the editions online, each new edition will be made available on our site as soon as they are published.

Let's dive in

News Snippets

Evolution of Customer Attribution

Anonymity, pseudonymity, obfuscation and other techniques are proposed in light of strengthening consumer digital privacy rights. One of the latest propositions, 'pseudonymous supercookies' are the latest proposed technique large tech companies are employing to scoot around consumer privacy regulation. Chris Stokel-Walker at Wired dives into the latest on the proposed implementation and implications of supercookies on consumer privacy.

Meta's Cross-border Data Transfer Debacle - From Dublin to the US

When it shared an updated draft order with other EU regulators, Ireland's data privacy authority, The Data Protection Commission, took a step closer to a decision that would prohibit EU-U.S. data transfers by Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram. Take a look at the latest from Dublin on the progress of the decision.

Legal & Policy Updates

On TechLaw - GDPR & AI

Eric Sinrod & Jonathan Armstrong at Cordery dive into the interactions between GDPR-based TechLaw and the development of AI in the latest episode of TechLaw10.

To Pay or Not to Pay?

The NCSC published a high-level overview of the NCSC and ICO (UK) joint letter asking the UK Law Society to re-think their approach to advising clients on matters of ransomware. In their letter, both bodies double down that payment of ransomware ransoms may not always give rise to safe return of data, nor guarantee the privacy, safekeeping, or deletion of the data by the ransomware group if a ransom payment is made.

Moves Made to Reign in Illegal Online Content

Only a handful of days ago, the EU Parliament took the leap and adopted both the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA). As is usual with broad techlaw, the enforcement of the landmark rules is still contentious. Foo Yun Chee at Reuters dives into the latest on the adoption of the landmark ruling.

Industry Matters

Who doesn't love Synthetic Data?

Trying to stay ahead of policy and adopt privacy-preserving strategies that go beyond best practices? The team at Statice has written up a case study on how one of their users in the Insurance industry, Die Mobiliar, uses their product to truly synthesise their customer's sensitive data.

Updates at the OPC Aotearoa

Te Mana Mātāpono Matatapu, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, welcomed Michael Webster into the Commission as the new Privacy Commissioner on the 5th of July 2022. We are looking forward to watching the Commissioner flourish in the new role.

The Turing Institute ~ Upcoming Virtual Event on Synthetic Data

Researchers from The Alan Turing Institute in the UK have joined arms with researchers from Roche to hold The Turing-Roche knowledge share series: Synthetic data. This event will explore and dive into the subject of synthetic data, which is data that has been intentionally synthesised to imitate the quality, utility, and value of precise, sensitive data points.

Florimond Houssiau, Research Associate at the Alan Turing Institute, Marta Battle, and Finn Janson, both Data Scientists at Roche, will speak at the event on the 25th of July at 3 PM (UK Time, UTC +1).

Digital Privacy Tips

Data Governance? How do I do that?!

OneTrust recently succinctly enumerated its top six data governance best practices. The most important of which being knowing your data, keeping data private and secure by default, and setting goals and metrics to ensure your governance practices remain strong and endure.

What in the World does AI and ML Mean for Digital Privacy?

AI and ML are acronyms that seem to be thrown around in the industry as the looming storm that will erode digital privacy. Taking the leap to dive into the prospective implications of AI and ML can be daunting. Luckily, The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) is here to save the day in their published Privacy Expert's Guide to AI and Machine Learning.

Want some books to add to your Mid-Winter (or Summer, if you're in the northern hemisphere!) reading list? Check out FPF's Privacy Book Club archives for several privacy-related titles for some 'light reading' for the weeks ahead.

That's a Wrap!

This concludes Edition #0 of The Privacist's Playbook. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any feedback on the content, format, style, or anything else — I'd love to hear it. Get in touch on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Email.

- Jacques.