Latest news with #DataProtectionCommission
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
O'Donovan to visit Arts Council in wake of controversies at State agency
Minister for Culture Patrick O'Donovan is due to visit the Arts Council today in the wake of several controversies and issues at the State agency. Mr O'Donovan will meet a select number of staff at the national art agency's Dublin city centre office. The Minister is understood to have wanted to meet the Arts Council before the Dáil recess after several months of public controversy for the body. The meeting comes as the Data Protection Commission (DPC) has confirmed it has written to the council after concerns were raised about personal information collected from artists applying for grants. It had emerged that concerns had been raised within the council that sensitive personal data may not have been stored and handled in line with General Data Protection Regulation requirements. READ MORE About 1,700 people had applied for a bursary earlier this year via a form that collected information about an applicant's gender, ethnicity, sexual identity and religion. The data protection concerns became public following the release of internal council emails to news website The Currency. Stephanie O'Callaghan, the creative arts director at the agency, had warned colleagues that artists had raised concerns about the questions asked during the application process. The Data Protection Commissioner has now written to the council seeking more information about the issue. In a statement, the Data Protection Commission said: 'The DPC made contact with the Arts Council last week in relation to this matter and we are currently engaging with them. We are not in a position to comment any further at this stage.' It is the second time in recent months that the council has come to the attention of the DPC. It was claimed that a former employee had taken files from the council office in a separate alleged data breach. Feargal Ó Coigligh, the secretary general at the Department of Culture, ordered the council to carry out a review of the incident. In February, Mr O'Donovan revealed that the council had spent €6.7 million on a botched IT project, with almost nothing to show for it. The project was designed to reform the system that the council uses to receive and process funding applications from artists. The doomed project was finally shelved towards the end of 2023 with an estimated loss of at least €5.3 million.
HKFP
11-07-2025
- Business
- HKFP
China denies asking firms to collect data illegally after new EU probe on TikTok
Beijing denied on Friday asking firms to 'illegally' collect and store users' personal information, after an Irish regulator helping the European Union regulate data privacy began investigating Chinese social media giant TikTok. 'The Chinese government attaches great importance to and protects data privacy and security in accordance with the law,' foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said. Beijing 'has never and will never require companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data', Mao said. 'We hope that the European side will respect the market economy and fair competition, and provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from all countries,' she told a regular news conference. The social media giant has been in the crosshairs of Western governments for years over fears that personal data could be used by China for espionage or propaganda purposes. However, TikTok has insisted that it has never received any requests from Chinese authorities for European users' data. TikTok was fined 530 million euros (US$620 million) in May by the Data Protection Commission over sending personal data to China, although the Chinese social media giant had insisted this data was only accessed remotely. TikTok, which has 1.5 billion users worldwide, is a division of Chinese tech giant ByteDance.
Daily Express
11-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Express
China denies asking firms to collect data illegally after new EU probe
Published on: Friday, July 11, 2025 Published on: Fri, Jul 11, 2025 By: AFP Text Size: TikTok was fined €530 million in May by the Data Protection Commission over sending personal data to China. (AP pic) BEIJING: Beijing denied today asking firms to 'illegally' collect and store users' personal information, after an Irish regulator helping the EU regulate data privacy began investigating Chinese social media giant TikTok. 'The Chinese government attaches great importance to and protects data privacy and security in accordance with the law,' foreign ministry spokesman Mao Ning said. Beijing 'has never and will never require companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data', Mao said. 'We hope that the European side will respect the market economy and fair competition, and provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from all countries,' she told a regular news conference. The social media giant has been in the crosshairs of Western governments for years over fears that personal data could be used by China for espionage or propaganda purposes. However, TikTok has insisted that it has never received any requests from Chinese authorities for European users' data. TikTok was fined €530 million in May by the Data Protection Commission over sending personal data to China, although the Chinese social media giant had insisted this data was only accessed remotely. TikTok, which has 1.5 billion users worldwide, is a division of Chinese tech giant ByteDance. * Follow us on our official WhatsApp channel and Telegram for breaking news alerts and key updates! * Do you have access to the Daily Express e-paper and online exclusive news? Check out subscription plans available. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express's Telegram channel. Daily Express Malaysia
Fast Company
10-07-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
EU probes TikTok again over data transfers to China
TikTok is facing a fresh European Union privacy investigation into user data sent to China, regulators said Thursday. The Data Protection Commission opened the inquiry as a follow-up to a previous investigation that ended earlier this year with a 530 million euro ($620 million) fine after it found the video sharing app put users at risk of spying by allowing remote access their data from China. The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok 's lead data privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because the company's European headquarters is based in Dublin. During an earlier investigation, TikTok initially told the regulator it didn't store European user data in China, and that data was only accessed remotely by staff in China. However, it later backtracked and said that some data had in fact been stored on Chinese servers. The watchdog responded at the time by saying it would consider further regulatory action. 'As a result of that consideration, the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok,' the watchdog said. 'The purpose of the inquiry is to determine whether TikTok has complied with its relevant obligations under the GDPR in the context of the transfers now at issue, including the lawfulness of the transfers,' the regulator said, referring to the European Union's strict privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation. TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, has been under scrutiny in Europe over how it handles personal user information amid concerns from Western officials that it poses a security risk. TikTok noted that it was the one that notified the Data Protection Commission, after it embarked on a data localization project called Project Clover that involved building three data centers in Europe to ease security concerns. 'Our teams proactively discovered this issue through the comprehensive monitoring TikTok implemented under Project Clover,' the company said in a statement. 'We promptly deleted this minimal amount of data from the servers and informed the DPC. Our proactive report to the DPC underscores our commitment to transparency and data security.' Under GDPR, European user data can only be transferred outside of the bloc if there are safeguards in place to ensure the same level of protection. Only 15 countries or territories are deemed to have the same data privacy standard as the EU, but China is not one of them.
Leader Live
10-07-2025
- Business
- Leader Live
TikTok faces fresh European privacy investigation over China data transfers
The Data Protection Commission (DPC) opened the inquiry as a follow-up to a previous investigation that ended earlier this year with a 530 million euro (£456 million) fine after it found the video sharing app put users at risk of spying by allowing remote access to their data from China. The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok's lead data privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because the company's European headquarters is based in Dublin. During an earlier investigation, TikTok initially told the regulator it did not store European user data in China, and that data was only accessed remotely by staff in China. However, it later backtracked and said that some data had in fact been stored on Chinese servers. The watchdog responded at the time by saying it would consider further regulatory action. 'As a result of that consideration, the DPC has now decided to open this new inquiry into TikTok,' the watchdog said. 'The purpose of the inquiry is to determine whether TikTok has complied with its relevant obligations under the GDPR in the context of the transfers now at issue, including the lawfulness of the transfers,' the regulator said, referring to the European Union's strict privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, has been under scrutiny in Europe over how it handles personal user information amid concerns from Western officials that it poses a security risk. TikTok noted that it was the one that notified the Data Protection Commission, after it embarked on a data localisation project called Project Clover that involved building three data centres in Europe to ease security concerns. 'Our teams proactively discovered this issue through the comprehensive monitoring TikTok implemented under Project Clover,' the company said in a statement. 'We promptly deleted this minimal amount of data from the servers and informed the DPC. Our proactive report to the DPC underscores our commitment to transparency and data security.' Under the GDPR, European user data can only be transferred outside of the bloc if there are safeguards in place to ensure the same level of protection. Only 15 countries or territories are deemed to have the same data privacy standards as the EU, but China is not one of them.
