Governments around the world have started to modernize the processes by which law enforcement accesses digital evidence across borders. In the United States, passage of the CLOUD Act created the foundation for a new generation of international agreements that allows governments to engage with each other to create lasting rules to protect privacy and facilitate legitimate law enforcement access to evidence. In Europe last week, the European Commission presented its proposed e-Evidence legislation to the European Parliament. Many other governments [...]

Passage of the Cloud Act in the U.S. coupled with the newly adopted E-evidence Regulation in the EU offer real hope for a not-too-distant future where the rules for cross-border data demands by governments are more rational, proportionate, predictable, and transparent. Unfortunately, the path forward towards this vision has been complicated by myths painting these developments as a massive expansion of governmental authorities. The reality is that neither the Cloud Act nor the E-evidence Regulation represent a grant of sweeping [...]

In his recent Observatoire FIC article Lost in the Cloud? Law Enforcement Cross-border Access to Data After the “Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data” (CLOUD) Act and E-Evidence, Professor Théodore Christakis of the University Grenoble Alpes provides a European view of the Cloud Act and a possible executive agreement between the U.S. and EU.  The article explains how the Microsoft Ireland case, the Cloud Act, and the proposed EU E-Evidence Regulation connect, and outlines potential obstacles including conflict between the [...]

In their Lawfare article A Possible EU-US Agreement on Law Enforcement Access to Data?, Daskal and Swire explain the current negotiations between the EU and the U.S. concerning the Cloud Act and the proposed EU “E-Evidence” Regulation. The article discusses key U.S. and EU legal issues that would need to be addressed in any EU/U.S. agreement, notably including how competence is shared for relevant issues between the EU and its Member States. [...]