House passes controversial legislation giving the US more access to overseas data
Source: The Verge
By Russell Brandom and Colin Lecher Mar 22, 2018, 1:45pm EDT
Today, the House of Representatives passed controversial legislation that would clarify and expand how data held overseas can be obtained by law enforcement in the United States. The change is part of the massive omnibus spending bill, and it incorporates measures first submitted earlier this year as the CLOUD Act.
The 2,200-plus-page omnibus bill, which deals with $1.3 trillion in spending, is the result of last-minute wrangling ahead of a government shutdown deadline at the end of the week. It will now move ahead to the Senate, where it is expected to be less contentious. President Trump has pledged to sign the bill.
The legislation deals with how governments and courts request data kept outside national borders, where no single country’s court system would have a clear jurisdiction. It’s an increasingly urgent issue as cloud networks spread data across international servers. This came to a head this year in a Supreme Court case considering a US request for data held on a Microsoft server in Ireland.
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A number of nonprofit groups oppose the bill on privacy grounds, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amnesty International, and the Open Technology Institute. The harshest criticism focuses on the new powers granted to the attorney general, who can enter into agreements with foreign countries unilaterally. Those agreements could potentially circumvent the protections of US courts. The act also wouldn’t require users or local governments to be notified when a data request is made, making meaningful oversight significantly harder.
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Read more: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/22/17131004/cloud-act-congress-omnibus-passed-mlat
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