CEP Magazine, December 2019
The US forged two agreements in the span of a week regarding the sharing of electronic data for law enforcement purposes with the governments of Australia[1] and the UK.[2] The agreements help each government gain access to data, including tracking and analyzing for terrorism, child sexual abuse, and cybercrime. Regarding the agreements, Attorney General William Barr said:
“This agreement will enhance the ability of the United States and the United Kingdom to fight serious crime—including terrorism, transnational organized crime, and child exploitation—by allowing more efficient and effective access to data needed for quick-moving investigations…. This agreement, if finalized and approved, will allow service providers in Australia and the United States to respond to lawful orders from the other country without fear of running afoul of restrictions on disclosure, and thus provide more access for both countries to providers holding electronic evidence that is crucial in today’s investigations and prosecutions.”
The CLOUD Act[3] allows for US and foreign governments to cooperate by giving each other’s law enforcement agencies access to an individual’s personal data. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the CLOUD Act[4] :
“[C]reates an explicit provision for U.S. law enforcement (from a local police department to federal agents in Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to access ‘the contents of a wire or electronic communication and any record or other information’ about a person regardless of where they live or where that information is located on the globe. In other words, U.S. police could compel a service provider—like Google, Facebook, or Snapchat—to hand over a user’s content and metadata, even if it is stored in a foreign country, without following that foreign country’s privacy laws.”
[View source.]