Theodore Christakis

In this article ‘How Europe’s Intelligence Services Aim to Avoid the EU’s Highest Court—and What It Means for the United States’, Theodore Christakis and Kenneth Propp explore the ongoing struggle within the European Union to delimit the national security exception in its data protection law for the activities of EU Member State intelligence services, and the corresponding impact this Brussels debate could have on the ongoing transatlantic negotiations to restore a secure basis for commercial data transfers from the European [...]

Three Scenarios for the Way Forward (and a Recommendation) Despite the very short available time, I have tried in Part 1 and Part 2 of this article to carefully review the EEGs and Supplementary Measures guidelines. Based on my review, there are two central conclusions that emerge from the EDPB publications on November 11: (1) Third countries might rarely if ever meet the EEG requirements. This means that, beyond the 8 sovereign States/12 entities that have the opportunity of benefiting today from [...]

In the first part of this analysis, published here, I explained why a great number of third countries might not meet the “Essential European Guarantees” (EEG) as set forth by the EDPB. In the second part of this paper I will assess the important difficulties entities will face in using supplementary measures that would enable transfers to countries that lack such guarantees. Tomorrow morning the ELB will publish the final part of this article which includes a discussion of three [...]

The 2019 international agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States[1] on access to electronic evidence has attracted wide attention as a new tool of international assistance in criminal matters.[2]  Historically, countries have conducted such cooperation pursuant to mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs). The UK-US CLOUD Agreement, however, is the first international instrument putting in place a new mechanism providing that law enforcement authorities can request e-evidence directly from a cloud service provider, without going through MLAT procedures. [...]