Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Tuesday, March 27, 2018

United States pounces on the cloud

Trump has included the Cloud Act, a regulation that enables the Department of Justice to access digital data stored in any country, in the 2018 budget.

In the midst of the scandal that sparked the manipulation of the privacy of Facebook users, the Trump government went a step further in upsetting Internet rules. First he was against net neutrality. Now, he imposed a new regulation that updates the interventionist tradition of the United States in global politics and extends it to the plane of networks and the digital world.

The Cloud Act, which was included in the budget package approved last week, enables the US Department of Justice to establish mechanisms to access content stored on servers in any country. It is an unprecedented law that does away with the borders of regulation over data on the Internet: it allows the United States to reach agreements with other countries to access information related to users and stored by technology companies beyond its territory.

The regulation derived from a conflict with Microsoft, after that in 2013, the software giant refused to comply with a search warrant and deliver the contents of an e-mail account used by a presumed drug trafficker. Microsoft argued that it could not provide the information because it was stored in a data center located in Dublin. The case reached the Supreme Court of the United States, which will rule in June. Although several ministers of the Supreme court anticipated that they will take into account the new legislation, by which the US authorities will have the ability to force companies in their country to give them data stored in other nations.

This is not Trump's first advance on Internet privacy. The new law ignited the alarms of the European Commission (EC). The entity has already proposed the United States to be considered within the framework of the Cloud Act as a direct interlocutor. That is, the US Department of Justice would be able to directly sign agreements with the EC instead of negotiating with each member state.

The order is not accidental and is made within the framework of the early entry into force of the new General Regulation of Data Protection of the European Union (EU). The regulations will apply as of May 25 in the 28 countries of the EU and grant users greater rights over the processing of their personal data. The regulation establishes new requirements for the consent of the use of data and sets new obligations and controls for companies.

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