Tag: Internet privacy

Posted on By Adonis Hoffman, Esq.

The Price of Privacy on the Potomac

In case you haven’t noticed, privacy – meaning the protection of your personal data and information – is all the rage today.  In fact, privacy has become very big business not only in America, but also in Europe, where the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) mandated sweeping privacy protections for consumers and strict restrictions on how companies can use personal information and data. 

Doing business in this new era of privacy comes at a price, mostly for compliance.  Compounding this is the lack of clear rules in the U.S. where there remains no comprehensive federal privacy law.  It is no wonder that many companies have come to the privacy table kicking and screaming, forced to abide by a growing patchwork of inconsistent state laws with no federal preemption in place.

Continue reading “The Price of Privacy on the Potomac”
Posted on By Patrick Maines

The LEADS Act and Cloud Computing

Bipartisan legislation, introduced last month in the House and Senate, promises to reform and update the antiquated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and in the process push back against the practice by agencies of government to gain access to personal data stored on U.S. corporation servers abroad.

The legislation, called the LEADS Act, is co-sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), and in the House by Reps. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.).

Short for “Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad,” the LEADS Act’s principal improvements on ECPA are in recognizing that U.S. law enforcement may not use warrants to compel the disclosure of customer content stored outside the United States unless the account holder is a U.S. person, and by strengthening the process – called MLATs (mutual legal assistance treaties) – through which governments of one country allow the government of another to obtain evidence in criminal proceedings.

One of the better examples of the need for updating ECPA centers on a government warrant served on Microsoft for the contents of the email of an Irish citizen stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin.  >> Read More