In the midst of the cloud computing revolution, perhaps the greatest barriers are the concerns, often driven by myths and misunderstandings, about Government access to data in “the cloud.” Fortunately, a recent paper by Hogan Lovells’ Privacy and Information Management practice, debunks the frequently-expressed assumption that the United States is alone in permitting governmental access to data for law enforcement or national security reasons. It examines the laws of 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.
Developed by experienced counsel in various different jurisdictions, the paper examines governmental authority to access data in the Cloud in the following countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.
In summary, the paper concludes that it is incorrect to assume that the U.S. Government’s access to data in the Cloud is greater than that of other advanced economies, and 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.
David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.