A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending that Congress adopt comprehensive federal data privacy legislation. ...more
A federal appeals court is giving Google and the Justice Department more time to work out their differences in a standoff over whether the tech giant must hand over customer emails stored outside of the United States....more
Yesterday, we reported that the Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to remand its dispute with Microsoft Corp. concerning access to customer emails stored abroad to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second...more
4/4/2018
/ Cloud Storage ,
Criminal Investigations ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Ireland ,
Legislative Agendas ,
Mootness ,
Proposed Legislation ,
Right to Privacy ,
Search Warrant ,
Stored Communications Act ,
Subpoenas ,
US v Microsoft
We’ve written several times about the landmark dispute between the U.S. government and Microsoft Corp. over access to a customer’s emails stored in Ireland. Now, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on the...more
4/3/2018
/ Criminal Investigations ,
Electronic Data Transmissions ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Email ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ,
Invasion of Privacy ,
Ireland ,
Legislative Agendas ,
Microsoft ,
Mootness ,
Privacy Concerns ,
Proposed Legislation ,
SCOTUS ,
Search Warrant ,
Stored Communications Act
The fight over the privacy of electronic communications and the government’s ability to reach emails stored abroad in criminal investigations has finally moved to the U.S. Supreme Court. ...more
1/10/2018
/ Criminal Investigations ,
Electronic Data Transmissions ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Email ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Google ,
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ,
Invasion of Privacy ,
Microsoft ,
Pending Litigation ,
Privacy Concerns ,
SCOTUS ,
Search Warrant ,
Stored Communications Act
A federal judge in California has agreed to hold Google in contempt for not following his order to turn over data stored overseas. The order is largely symbolic, however, since a contempt order is required for Google to...more
11/7/2017
/ Criminal Investigations ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Electronic Data Transmissions ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Email ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Google ,
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ,
Ireland ,
Popular ,
Privacy Concerns ,
Search Warrant ,
Stored Communications Act
The Supreme Court is poised to finally answer the question that’s been plaguing federal courts across the country: must U.S. tech companies comply with warrants issued under the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) that demand...more
The ongoing dispute between the government and Google concerning the company’s refusal to hand over customer data stored on foreign servers has taken an odd twist. Now, the Justice Department is demanding that Google be...more
10/5/2017
/ Appeals ,
Contempt ,
Criminal Investigations ,
Data Storage Providers ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Electronic Data Transmissions ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Email ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Google ,
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ,
Invasion of Privacy ,
Ireland ,
Privacy Concerns ,
Sanctions ,
Search Warrant ,
Stored Communications Act
Another federal judge has rejected the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s interpretation of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), and has ordered Google to hand over customer email traffic—wherever located—to U.S....more
Lawyers for the tech community are gearing up for argument next month in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeking to overturn another magistrate’s order that requires digital information stored outside of the U.S. to...more
7/25/2017
/ Criminal Investigations ,
Electronic Data Transmissions ,
Electronically Stored Information ,
Email ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Google ,
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ,
Invasion of Privacy ,
Microsoft ,
Search Warrant ,
Stored Communications Act
We previously posted about a case before the New York Court of Appeals that concerned whether Facebook has the legal standing to challenge search warrants seeking its users’ data. In April, the court sided with the Manhattan...more
On February 23, 2017, the Second Circuit (Chief Judge Katzmann, Judge Winter, and District Judge Sidney Stein, by designation) issued a per curiam decision in United States v. Natal, et al., that led to a partial reversal and...more
Facebook is the latest social media giant to push back on law enforcement efforts to seek user information. On Tuesday, the New York Court of Appeals heard oral argument in a case focusing on whether Facebook has the...more
2/9/2017
/ Chilling Effect ,
Disability Benefits ,
Evidence ,
Facebook ,
Fraud ,
Indictments ,
Internet ,
Motions to Quash ,
Reasonable Expectation of Privacy ,
Search Warrant ,
Standing ,
Stored Communications Act
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) and the American Civil Liberties Union (“ACLU”) have weighed in on Facebook’s high-profile dispute with a social media aggregation company over whether it had unlawfully accessed...more
Facebook recently won a landmark victory in the Ninth Circuit against a company that accessed Facebook’s computers to help users manage their social network accounts. Now the company, Power Ventures, Inc., says that the...more
Has North Korea struck again? Do its recent attacks signal a shift from those motivated by political retribution to those motivated by financial gain? What does this mean for financial institutions?...more
After several fits and starts, Congress finally passed the Cyber Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) as part of the omnibus budget bill. President Obama signed the bill into law on December 18, 2015.
CISA allows—but...more
In a significant development, the FTC announced today that LifeLock, the identity theft protection company, has agreed to settle the FTC contempt charges against it for $100 million. This is the largest monetary award the...more
In a recent speech, FTC Bureau of Competition Director Deborah Feinstein discussed the FTC’s approach to analyzing claims by merging parties that a merger will benefit consumers by creating efficiencies.
Feinstein began...more
Chairwoman Edith Ramirez has announced the FTC’s new policy concerning its enforcement authority under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, in particular Section 5’s prohibition of “unfair methods of competition.”...more
We have been following developments in People of the State of New York v. Actavis, the New York Attorney General’s “product hopping” suit against Actavis and its subsidiary, Forest Laboratories LLC (together, “Actavis”). Now,...more
We have previously posted about the New York Attorney General’s “product hopping” suit against Actavis and its subsidiary, Forest Laboratories LLC (together, “Actavis”), including our analysis of the District Court’s opinion...more
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division has filed a civil suit to block the acquisition of General Electric’s appliance business by Electrolux. According to the complaint, the U.S. market for cooking appliances—...more
Together with the State of Michigan, the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division has filed a civil suit against four Michigan hospital systems for allegedly agreeing to limit marketing in each other’s...more
We have previously posted about United States v. Apple, Inc., a blockbuster trial that ended with Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York concluding that Apple had conspired with five publishing companies to...more