Orrin Hatch: “I would also like to take a couple of minutes to discuss a bill that I will be introducing with Senators Coons, Graham…”

“I would also like to take a couple of minutes to discuss a bill that I will be introducing with Senators Coons, Graham, and Whitehouse called the Clarify Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, or the CLOUD Act. It is a tremendously important bill that will help to solve the problems that have arisen in recent years with cross-border law enforcement requests. The rise of email and cloud computing has put our data privacy laws on a collision course with the privacy laws of other countries. Information in emails or in the cloud can be stored on servers virtually anywhere in the world. This means that when law enforcement seeks access to such information, the information may be located in another country. This state of affairs causes problems both for law enforcement and for email and cloud computing providers. It causes problems for law enforcement because warrants traditionally stop at the water's edge and because laws in other countries may prohibit disclosure to foreign law enforcement, and it causes problems for email and cloud computing providers because they find themselves caught between orders by U.S. law enforcement to disclose data in other countries and laws in those other countries that may forbid such disclosure. The question of whether warrants issued to U.S.-based providers may require providers to disclose data stored in other countries is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court in the United States v. Microsoft case.…”