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On March 8, 2023, the Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill was introduced to the UK Parliament by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. If enacted, the Bill will make changes to the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018, and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. The Bill would facilitate certain types of data processing by redefining the parameters of what constitutes “personal data,” removing certain requirements and prohibitions, applying exemptions, and creating greater legal certainty regarding the permissibility of certain forms of personal data processing.

On October 7, 2022, President Biden signed Executive Order (EO) 14086, “Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities,” which provides a new framework for legal data transfers between the European Union (EU) and the United States.

On March 25, 2022, the European Union (EU) announced that the United States and the EU had reached an agreement in principle to replace the EU-U.S Privacy Shield framework, which the European Court of Justice (CJEU) struck down in its July 2020 Schrems II decision. Since the Schrems II decision, U.S. and EU negotiators have been hammering out a workable data transfer mechanism to permit the transfer of EU data to the United States.

On 2 February 2022, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) published the final form of its much-anticipated new International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) and the International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.

In celebration of Data Privacy Day, we are highlighting some of these laws as well as some global data privacy and protection questions, expectations, and trends that lie ahead in 2022. Without further ado, below are some of the privacy laws from around the world that we anticipate will go into effect in 2022 or that recently went into effect.