Slate: Congress Put the CLOUD Act in Its Spending Bill. What Does That Mean For Data Privacy?

Slate: Congress Put the CLOUD Act in Its Spending Bill. What Does That Mean For Data Privacy? by Aaron Mak:

The omnibus spending bill released on Wednesday night includes a provision that may allow Microsoft and the Department of Justice to avoid a messy legal battle before the Supreme Court.

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act grants law enforcement the right to request data held in other countries and offers the DOJ and the tech industry much clearer guidelines for dealing with foreign laws. The Supreme Court is currently considering these issues in U.S. v. Microsoft, which concerns a search warrant that authorities served to Microsoft in a drug trafficking case. The warrant called for Microsoft to give the government emails held at its data center in Dublin, Ireland, where a person connected to the case signed up for an Outlook account. Microsoft argued that retrieving the emails would violate Ireland’s privacy laws and pushed the DOJ to directly negotiate with Ireland’s authorities using a treaty that the U.S. has with the country.