Four Common Sense Fixes to the CLOUD Act that its Sponsors Should Support
Article/Op-Ed in Just Security
Daniel Falcão on Unsplash
March 13, 2018
Robyn Greene wrote for Just Security on changes that should be made to the CLOUD Act to minimize the risk of foreign governments committing human rights abuses:
"Congress is quietly but intensively debating the CLOUD Act, a bill which would have a serious impact on privacy rights, and it may be attached to an omnibus spending bill this month. This bill would create an exception to the Stored Communications Act (SCA) to enable foreign countries to bypass the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process. Currently, when foreign governments seek stored communications content held in the United States by U.S. providers for their criminal investigations, they must follow the MLAT process and work with the Department of Justice to obtain warrants from U.S. judges. Instead, the CLOUD Act would allow the executive branch to enter bilateral agreements with qualifying foreign governments, and then those governments could send data requests directly to U.S. companies for stored and real-time data."