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Privacy Act 2020 comes into force on 1 December 2020
The new privacy legislation comes into force as this edition of Fineprint is published; it updates the law to reflect the needs of the digital age. Although we published an article on this topic in the Winter edition (page 5), we remind you that the key changes relate to:
- Reporting data breaches
- Compliance notices
- Decisions on access requests
- Strengthening overseas connections, and
- New criminal offences.
Data breaches: Under the new Privacy Act, it is mandatory for organisations to notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) if a privacy breach has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm. Organisations that fail to report a notifiable privacy breach to the OPC could be fined up to $10,000.
To help organisations work out if a privacy break is notifiable, the OPC has launched an online tool, NotifyUs. Organisations are encouraged to access NotifyUs and use the self-assessment tool before the new Privacy Act comes into effect on 1 December 2020.
For more information about the new legislation and NotifyUs, go to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s website at www.privacy.org.nz