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Shona O'Donovan

Advising clients on a broad range of data protection, e-privacy and online content issues under EU, Irish, and UK law, Shóna O’Donovan works with her clients on technology regulatory and policy issues.
With multi-jurisdictional and in-house experience, Shóna advises global companies on complying with data protection laws in the EU. In particular, she represents organizations in regulatory investigations and inquiries, advises on children’s privacy issues and provides strategic advice on incident response. Shóna also advises clients on policy developments in online content and online safety.

In her current role, Shóna has gained experience on secondment to the data protection team of a global technology company. In a previous role, she spent seven months on secondment to the European data protection team of a global social media company.

Shóna’s recent pro bono work includes providing data protection advice to the International Aids Vaccine Initiative and a UK charity helping people with dementia, and working with an organization specializing in providing advice to states involved in conflict on documenting human rights abuses.

On 26 October 2023, the UK’s Online Safety Bill received Royal Assent, becoming the Online Safety Act (“OSA”).  The OSA imposes various obligations on tech companies to prevent the uploading of, and rapidly remove, illegal user content—such as terrorist content, revenge pornography, and child sexual exploitation material—from their services, and also to take steps to

On May 10, 2022, Prince Charles announced in the Queen’s Speech that the UK Government’s proposed Online Safety Bill (the “OSB”) will proceed through Parliament. The OSB is currently at committee stage in the House of Commons. Since it was first announced in December 2020, the OSB has been the subject of intense debate and scrutiny on the balance it seeks to strike between online safety and protecting children on the one hand, and freedom of expression and privacy on the other.

To what services does the OSB apply?

The OSB applies to “user-to-user” (“U2U”) services—essentially, services through which users can share content online, such as social media and online messaging services—and “search” services. The OSB specifically excludes  email services, SMS, “internal business services,” and services where the communications functionality is limited (e.g., to posting comments relating to content produced by the provider of the service). The OSB also excludes “one-to-one live aural communications”—suggesting that one-to-one over-the-top (“OTT”) calls are excluded, but that one-to-many OTT calls, or video calls, may fall within scope.Continue Reading Online Safety Bill to Proceed Through Parliament