Israeli Gov't discloses personal information of all dog owners

Wow... how the Israeli Government keeps respecting privacy, while demanding that every corporation be sure to dot the i's and cross the t's on its protection of privacy. This time, it’s the "dog database" smartphone app, which the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture began distributing through app stores in recent months. The app publicly discloses the personal information of all dog ...

A new bill seeks to enact the Right to be Forgotten in Israel

A new bill was proposed at the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) this week, by Knesset Member Ofer Shelah together with a group of other Knesset Members, seeking to amend the Protection of Privacy Law and enact the "Right to be Forgotten" (Privacy Protection Bill (Amendment - Right to be Forgotten), 5774-2014, available here, in Hebrew). The bill was presumably ...

Israeli court rules website banner ads aren't spam

Last month, the Israeli District Court for the Central District (Lod), dismissed a motion for class action certification of a lawsuit against Google alleging that website banner ads are unlawful spam pursuant to the Israeli anti-spam law (officially known as Article 30A of the Communications Law (Telecommunications and Broadcasts), 5742-1982; The Hebrew version of the law is available here). ...

Knesset advances legislation for new genetic database for babies

Despite widespread objections, last week the Science and Technology Committee of the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) approved, for first reading, the bill concerning the establishment of a genetic database for all babies born in Israel. The Knesset member promoting the bill is Mr. Meir Sheetrit, together with the Ministry of Health, as part of the proposal to amend the Genetic ...

Israel Tax Authority to mine web info about taxpayers

The Israel Tax Authority plans to launch a project for mining information about taxpayers from the Internet, as part of the ongoing fight against tax evasion. For this purpose, the Tax Authority will soon publish a tender for a data mining system capable of extracting data regarding indicative economic activity of taxpayers off the web. The information collected will then ...

Bank of Israel publishes draft guidelines on risk management in cloud computing

The Banking Supervision Department at the Bank of Israel (Israel’s central bank) recently published a draft directive letter to banks and credit card companies regarding the use of cloud computing services. The draft directive emphasizes that a banking corporation’s use of cloud services may expose it to “material operational risks related to information security, business continuity, command and control of ...

Unconventional arrest of Israeli blogger, for alleged invasion of privacy

Lory Shem Tov, an Israeli blogger, was arrested and interrogated for several hours a few days ago, on suspicion of invasion of privacy, for allegedly publishing personal documents regarding the General Manager of the Ministry of Social Affairs on the web, including information regarding his parking tickets and financial loans. The blogger is active in the struggle against the Ministry ...