{"id":68518,"date":"2025-10-09T02:31:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/68518\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T02:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:31:06","slug":"big-tech-lawyer-played-key-role-in-picking-irelands-new-privacy-regulator-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/68518\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Tech lawyer played key role in picking Ireland\u2019s new privacy regulator \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner enforces Europe’s mighty General Data Protection Regulation<\/a> (GDPR) on many of the world’s largest technology companies, including Meta, X, Google, TikTok and others that have their European headquarters in Ireland.<\/p>\n

For years, the Irish authority has faced criticism for being too soft on tech giants<\/a>, with critics pointing to Ireland’s heavy reliance on Big Tech for its domestic economy. After the GDPR took effect in 2018, it took years before the DPC started imposing sizable fines on tech giants.<\/p>\n

Commissioners at the Irish DPC are appointed by the Irish government on the advice of the Public Appointments Service, the authority that provides recruitment services\u00a0for public jobs. The authority is known as publicjobs.<\/p>\n

In a confidential letter dated May 14 and seen by POLITICO, publicjobs said\u00a0it had assembled a selection panel of five people to pick the newest privacy chief. According to the letter, that panel included consultant Shirley Kavanagh as chair, Department of Justice Deputy Secretary Doncha O\u2019Sullivan, the head of Ireland\u2019s ComReg communications watchdog Garrett Blaney, publicjobs recruitment specialist Louise McEntee, and Leo Moore, a partner at law firm William Fry.<\/p>\n

Moore heads the firm’s technology group. He has advised domestic and multinational companies, including \u201cseveral ‘Big Tech’ and social media companies,\u201d the law firm\u2019s own website states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The law firm advised Microsoft in a landmark court case<\/a> where U.S. authorities wanted to access data on Irish servers, it said in a 2016 press release<\/a>. Irish media also reported that the firm had advised the Irish government<\/a> in a case in which the government pushed back on collecting almost \u20ac14 billion in back taxes from Apple<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish Data Protection Commissioner enforces Europe’s mighty General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on many of the world’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16199,3096,46329,46330,17631,27639,46331,61,60,43,7905,5702,58],"class_list":["post-68518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-big-data","tag-data","tag-data-breaches","tag-data-flows","tag-data-privacy","tag-data-protection","tag-digital-tech-regulation","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-platforms","tag-privacy","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}