Graham Greenleaf

Gambia's National Assembly passed the Personal Data Protection and Privacy Bill, 2025 on 29 September, 2025. This makes Gambia the 173rd country to enact a data privacy law. It requires Presidential assent. For the other 172 see papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=...

My article on Malaysia's complex new guidelines on cross-border data transfers is at papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=... . Still a poor law after 2024 reforms, but definitely improving.

The deeper story behind America's pending loss of free speech The real reason Disney restored Kimmel's late-night show

The real reason Disney restored Kimmel's late-night show? We, the people, have extraordinary power. Let me explain. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-deeper-story-behind-americas

AustLII www.austlii.edu.au (1995 - ) and the other LIIs in the Free Access to Law Movement still stick to the ideals of the 90s, survive and sometimes thrive.

Cartoon by David Pope titled "Tall Poppy Syndrome". ABC reporter John Lyons stands holding a microphone amongst reporters bowing flat sycophantically before Donald Trump. Trump points at him and says "Tell the Australian Prime Minister to weed thus one out."

David Pope captures it beautifully.

Civil society urges EU to reassess Israel’s adequacy status - European Digital Rights (EDRi) The letter urges the European Commission to reassess Israel’s data protection adequacy status under the GDPR.

Data flows and digital repression: Civil society urges EU to reassess Israel’s adequacy status

edri.org/our-work/dat...

Sending troops into US cities against their will.

Strong-arming corporations and extracting gifts in exchange for tariff exemptions.

Calling on state governments to gerrymander in his favor.

Trump is the "big government" nightmare conservatives have always warned us about.

Cambodia's Post & Telecoms Ministry has released a draft law on personal data protection in July 2025. Still no DPA, and relies on dozens of prakas (regs) being made. See my article on the 2023 Bill: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... May be better than nothing, but maybe not if there is no enforcement

Dave's map is accurate for the 166 'comprehensive' laws. Add laws restricted to either the private sector (Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Bahrain, China, UAE, Vietnam, Qatar), or only the public sector (Yemen), & you get 172 countries with data privacy laws. See my papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=...

Same goes for GCC jurisidtions, such as the UAE (including that of DIFC, ADGM), KSA, Qatar, Oman etc

This map is just ignorant concerning the many African and Latin American countries with data privacy laws, and under-estimates the influence of the GDPR elsewhere. 172 countries have such laws. Dave Banisar's map - see Post following - is much more accurate on the extent of countries with laws.

Apology: correct URL is papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My article 'Global data privacy 2025: International agreements stall' at download.ssrn.com/2025/8/10/53... surveys 2023-24's hi-spots: EU adequacy slo-mo; 108+ non-ratification; Malabo Convention stuck at 16/55 AU; ECOWAS withdrawals; CBPRs as dead parrot; CPTPP with added Brexit; RCEP uber FTAs.

AustLII (www.austlii.edu.au) will host the 22nd Law Via Internet Conference (Nov 13-14, Sydney) lvi2025.org. 24 presenters are listed on a new Conference Program page lvi2025.org/program/. Further submissions of abstracts are open until 31 August lvi2025.org/callforpapers/. Registration is open.

BSA now supports comprehensive privacy laws, and is horrified by states adopting new (outrageous) laws that actually gives consumers some rights. So not really a good or even comprehensive law, or probably a law at all really. I’m feeling a certain sense of deja vu all over again.

Important hearing discussing need for comprehensive privacy protections in US just starting.

The LvI 2025 Conference to be hosted by AustLII has extended the date for abstract submissions to 31/08/25 lvi2025.org/callforpapers/ and halved the registration fee secure.austlii.edu.au/cgi-egate/re... . Both will make the conference bigger and better. Please join us in Sydney in November, 12-14.

172 countries have now enacted data privacy laws by, 12 new in 2023/24 (+ Brunei in 2025). At the current growth rate of 5.2 p/a, they could be universal in 8 years, but some (N.Korea?) will resist. GDPR influence still dominates. My paper analysing the changes is at papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=...

AustLII is hosting the 2025 Law via Internet Conference (LVI 2025 lvi2025.org), 'Empowering a just society through legal information, policy, technology, & practice', in Sydney in November. The Call for Papers closes on 21 July & registration is now open. It will be beach weather - bring your togs!

'Free Access to Law and Digital Court Decisions in Australia: Reflections and Future Directions', mainly about AustLII's contributions, is by Andrew Mowbray, Philip Chung and me, at papers.ssrn.com/abstract_id=...

This is so fundamental: they are designed to tell you what they surmise you would expect to hear next. Not what is true. The two often coincide, but that is not a good place to start.

5 more ratifications of 108+ required for it to come into force. Maybe this year.

It's 50+ years since the first national data protection law in Sweden
@grahamgreenleaf.bsky.social traces the impact over this period and identifies the current significance of data privacy laws in an increasingly digital world

Full programme: www.events.privacylaws.com#/agenda?day=...
#plb2025

The present situation is far from the first time that law schools have experienced pressure to shape legal education around particular tools. Legal research tools have long been big business, and external commercial dynamics have impacted education for some time. Expensive legal databases such as LEXIS were made available to law schools in the 1980s at discounted academic rates on condition that those schools provided specific instruction in them to ensure a pipeline of future customers. In the face of this pressure to let industry tools determine the structure of education, legal academia chose to craft its own fate, pushing back against attempts to shape and enclose access to legal information and to provide free and universal access instead. Academics founded legal informatics institutes and similar initiatives throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, such as LII (Cornell Law School), AustLII (UTS and UNSW), HKLII (HKU), and in the UK and Ireland, BAILII (UC Cork and IALS, University of London). UCL Laws operated an extensive free online database of translated foreign statutes and judgments, including what was then the most extensive English-language database of German case law.

Law schools have long had to respond to technological change, influenced from its highly funded sector. In the past, academic responses to big technology businesses have had values of openness and education at the core — consider AustLII and BAILII.(@grahamgreenleaf.bsky.social)

Of course, the UK could at the same time introduce compulsory voting and preferential voting and become a better democracy ...

Britain has one of most difficult voter registration processes, report finds UK system makes it a ‘real outlier’ among liberal democracies, according to study examining 62 countries

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... How about Labour fix this, get rid of ID and allow 16-17 year olds the vote.

Perhaps it would have helped if over the last 30 years Germany had developed a comprehensive system of free access to legal information, so that it was more likely that non-proprietary alternatives to a German legal LLM could emerge.

Data privacy laws in Central Asia: between ex-SSR and ‘Belt & Road’ Central Asia, with its strategic location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, is a region of great historical importance and considerable economic signif

Tamar Kaldani and I have published "Data privacy laws in Central Asia: between ex-SSR and ‘Belt & Road’ " in International Data Privacy Law (OUP). It is available for free access under Macquarie University's open access scheme: academic.oup.com/idpl/advance...

An amazing article: destroying all these 'silos' is the end of public sector privacy in the US. What is happening to the cases challenging the right to do this, relying on the Privacy Act of 1974?

Ice director wants to run deportations like ‘Amazon Prime for human beings’ Todd Lyons said he wanted US immigration agency to be ‘like a business’ in its deportation process

I think it's very important to note that when you want to run human misery like a business--a business based on rounding up people to ship them to a country they aren't from to work in forced labor camps--you're a slaver.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...