Google seeks framework for cross-border data requests
WASHINGTON, June 22, (RTRS): Alphabet Inc’s Google pressed US lawmakers and the international community on Thursday to update laws on how governments access customer data stored on servers located in other countries, hoping to address a mounting concern for both law enforcement officials and Silicon Valley.
The push comes amid growing legal uncertainty, in the United States and across the globe, about how technology firms must comply with government requests for foreignheld data. That has raised alarm that criminal and terrorism investigations are being hindered by outdated laws that make the current process for sharing information slow and burdensome.
Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president and general counsel, announced the company’s international framework during a speech in Washington, DC, at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that wields influence in the Trump White House and Republican-controlled Congress.
He urged Congress to update a decades-old electronic communications law and follows similar efforts by Microsoft Corp.
Both companies had previously objected in court to US law enforcement efforts to use domestic search warrants for
data held overseas because the practice could erode user privacy.
But the technology industry and privacy advocates have also admitted the current rules for appropriate crossborder data requests are untenable.
The Mountain View, Californiabased company called for allowing countries that commit to baseline privacy, human rights and due process principles to directly request data from US providers without the need to consult the US government as an intermediary. The measure is intended to be reciprocal.
Countries that do not adhere to the standards, such as an oppressive regime, would not be eligible, but the framework could incentivize better respect for digital privacy among those nations, Walker said.
Google did not detail specific baseline principles in its framework.
“This couldn’t be a more urgent set of issues,” Walker said in an interview before his speech, noting that recent acts of terrorism in Europe underKhamenei’s scored the need to move quickly.
Current agreements that allow law enforcement access to data stored overseas, known as mutual legal assistance treaties, involve a formal diplomatic request for data and require the host country to obtain a warrant on behalf of the requesting country. That can often take several months.