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Introducing ICANN’s Chief Data Protection Officer (CDPO)

28 July 2017
By
John Jeffrey

John Jeffrey

General Counsel and Secretary

John Jeffrey is General Counsel and Secretary at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition to overseeing all of ICANN’s legal matters, he supports the Board of Directors through his Secretary role. John has extensive experience in the technology and entertainment industries and has managed business functions relating to legal, strategic, corporate, and business development, advertising, marketing, operations, and public relations.

Before joining ICANN in 2003, John was the Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy and General Counsel at Live365, a streaming media and Internet radio start-up. While at Live365, he helped lead a grassroots effort that resulted in the passing of copyright legislation protecting webcasting royalties for small webcasters and Internet radio. John previously served as Director of Business and Legal Affairs and Senior Counsel of Legal Affairs at Discovery Communications, the parent company of the Discovery Channel, TLC, Travel Channel, and others, and at News Corporation on the business affairs and legal teams at Fox Television. He also managed his own media consulting business, Point Break Media.

John holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Dayton and a law degree from Southwestern University School of Law. He has been a member of the California, US Federal District Court (CD, CA) and US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Bar Associations since 1988. He started his legal career as a litigation attorney in Los Angeles.

In addition to the U.N. six languages, this content is also available in

Data protection and privacy laws and regulations are constantly evolving. One of the ICANN organization’s top priorities continues to be data protection and privacy compliance and maintaining the security of personal data we collect in the course of our operations. As part of the ICANN organization’s overall data protection and privacy governance framework, we are creating a new role: the Chief Data Protection Officer (CDPO).

We have asked Daniel Halloran to be ICANN’s Chief Data Protection Officer. Dan will take on this role, in addition to his current responsibilities as Deputy General Counsel. Dan has been deeply involved in our efforts surrounding data privacy and protection, and he will be an excellent fit for this new role. Dan will continue to report to me in both roles.

The CDPO will focus on ICANN organization-level data, to ensure ICANN’s internal data protection and privacy program is compliant and up to date. While this is a new role within the ICANN organization, it’s by no means a new type of position. Many similar-sized organizations that collect and retain personal data also have a CDPO (or similarly named ‘chief privacy officer’).

The CDPO will also advise the ICANN organization on how to best handle and process personal information we collect, as we continue to fulfill our core commitments and obligations and provide both internal and external services in a compliant manner.

This position allows us to be even more responsive to changes in data privacy regulations, working closely with our internal teams to ensure our personal data processing activities are in line with our overall data protection and privacy framework. In this role, Dan will conduct regular reviews and risk assessments to ensure our organizational actions remain in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and internal policies.

The organization-level role is not intended to cover the use of data by Registrars and Registries under ICANN’s contracts, which is part of the broader discussion relating to the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and the impact of these regulations on ICANN contracts, which is a discussion taking place in broader ICANN community discussions.

Creating this new position is an important step, and supplements other ongoing processes we’re undertaking in regards to data privacy. To get an idea of the other related projects being worked on, please visit https://www.icann.org/dataprotectionprivacy.

Authors

John Jeffrey

John Jeffrey

General Counsel and Secretary
John Jeffrey

John Jeffrey

General Counsel and Secretary

John Jeffrey is General Counsel and Secretary at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition to overseeing all of ICANN’s legal matters, he supports the Board of Directors through his Secretary role. John has extensive experience in the technology and entertainment industries and has managed business functions relating to legal, strategic, corporate, and business development, advertising, marketing, operations, and public relations.

Before joining ICANN in 2003, John was the Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy and General Counsel at Live365, a streaming media and Internet radio start-up. While at Live365, he helped lead a grassroots effort that resulted in the passing of copyright legislation protecting webcasting royalties for small webcasters and Internet radio. John previously served as Director of Business and Legal Affairs and Senior Counsel of Legal Affairs at Discovery Communications, the parent company of the Discovery Channel, TLC, Travel Channel, and others, and at News Corporation on the business affairs and legal teams at Fox Television. He also managed his own media consulting business, Point Break Media.

John holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Dayton and a law degree from Southwestern University School of Law. He has been a member of the California, US Federal District Court (CD, CA) and US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Bar Associations since 1988. He started his legal career as a litigation attorney in Los Angeles.

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