Prof. Peter Swire’s Lawfare Blog article “Foreign Intelligence and Other Issues in the Initial Opinion in Schrems II,” reviews the Dec. 19 initial opinion from Advocate General Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe. In his article, Swire provides background on the Schrems litigation and a brief summary of the “holdings” of the Advocate General’s opinion. While the Advocate General’s opinion is not a binding decision of law; it is generally considered an important prediction of the full Court of Justice of the European [...]

Updated: January 21, 2020 On January 10, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officially notified the Congress of its certification of the agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom on Access to Electronic Data for the Purpose of Countering Serious Crime.  While the DOJ had previously sent the U.S./UK CLOUD Act Executive Agreement to Congress on December 4, 2019, and intended to notify the relevant committees at that time, “because of a clerical error, [the DOJ] did not [...]

2020 should be an important year for E-Evidence in the European Union (EU). Taking into consideration the significant legal challenges from the globalization of criminal evidence and considering that traditional instruments for cross-border cooperation such as Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLAT) are too slow and cumbersome, the European Commission proposed, on 17 April 2018, “E-Evidence”, a legislative package that basically constitutes the European equivalent of the Cloud Act and aims, in a similar way, to streamline cooperation with service providers and [...]