Hogan Lovells today published the next installment in a series of White Papers examining government access to data held by service providers. Today’s publication, An Analysis of Service Provider Transparency Reports on Government Requests for Data, examines the most recent transparency reports published by Google, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter, and LinkedIn concerning law enforcement requests for data in multiple countries, concluding that when the numbers are adjusted for population sizes and the number of Internet users in each respective country, they reveal that the U.S. government requests information from these providers at a rate comparable to — and sometimes lower than — that of several other countries, including many European Union member states.
Tag Archives: White Paper
Hogan Lovells White Paper on Governmental Access to Data in the Cloud Debunks Faulty Assumption That US Access is Unique
Hogan Lovells has published a White Paper with the results of a study about governmental access to data in the cloud around the world. The White Paper debunks the frequently-expressed assumption that the United States is alone in permitting governmental access to data for law enforcement or national security reasons. The White Paper concludes that businesses are misleading themselves and their customers if they believe that restricting Cloud service providers to one jurisdiction better insulates data from governmental access. It is incorrect to assume that the United States government’s access to data in the Cloud is greater than that of other advanced economies. The White Paper examines the laws of the ten countries, including the United States, with respect to governmental authorities’ ability to access data stored in or transmitted through the Cloud, and documents the similarities and differences among the various legal regimes. The paper was written by Christopher Wolf, co-director of Hogan Lovells’ Privacy and Information Management practice, and Paris Office partner Winston Maxwell. It was released today at a program presented by the Openforum Academy in Brussels at which both Wolf and Maxwell spoke. This blog post links to a copy of the White Paper and summarizes its findings.
White House Announces New Privacy Framework Including Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights
The White House released its long-awaited Privacy “White Paper” that outlines the Obama Administration’s proposal for a new American privacy framework, which consists of four key elements: (1) a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights; (2) a multi-stakeholder process to determine how these rights will apply in specific business contexts; (3) an effective enforcement model; and (4) greater interoperability between the privacy frameworks of the United States and its international partners.