Foreign Governments, Tech Companies, and Your Data

OTI's Ross Schulman and CDT's Greg Nojei

m wrote for Just Security about cross-border data sharing and privacy protections.In a thoughtful August 1 piece in Just Security and Lawfare, law professors Andrew Woods and Jennifer Daskal urged Congress to embrace a legislative proposal by the US Justice Department to authorize US communications service providers to disclose their users’ Internet content to foreign governments under foreign laws less protective of civil liberties and human rights than those in the US Daskal and Woods make some good points, and we have both worked with them for some time on this issue.  However, while we believe that bilateral agreements between the US and other governments may be part of the solution to the difficult problem of cross-border law enforcement demands, the DOJ legislation does not provide adequate privacy protections.  We therefore must oppose this bill.