On June 22, 2020, the White House announced an extension and expansion of Proclamation 10014, which was originally announced on April 22, 2020 and restricted the issuance of and entry on immigrant visas. The new visa ban expands the restrictions to certain non-immigrant categories.
Continue Reading How the New Presidential Proclamation Regarding Non-Immigrant Visas Affects Your Company
The United States government has a powerful new tool to gain access to data stored overseas – the CLOUD Act, which was enacted this spring. If you are a company based overseas, particularly if you use a cloud service provider with a significant U.S. presence, it just got a lot easier for the U.S. government to get your data, and the data you hold for your customers.[1]
Background to the CLOUD Act
Since 1986, U.S. law enforcement’s access to electronic data held by private third parties has been regulated by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA,18 U.S.C. § 2510 et seq). That law was enacted, in part, to extend government restrictions on wire taps from telephone calls to include transmissions of electronic data by computer and stored electronic communications. These issues are addressed in Title II of ECPA, known as the Stored Communications Act (SCA). While ECPA and the SCA have been amended several times since 1986, their primary provisions have remained the same, meaning that much of American law relating to government access to electronic data held by third parties was in fact drafted several years before email was commonly used and the World Wide Web was even created.
Continue Reading Foreign Companies: Does the U.S. Government Now Have Access to Your Overseas Data?
On Oct. 27, in a vote split along party lines, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) approved a new regulatory regime staking its claim to privacy regulation of both fixed and mobile Internet service providers (“ISPs”) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. The FCC’s rules follow its decision in the Open Internet Order, released last year and analyzed here, to classify broadband Internet access service as a common-carrier telecommunications service. The FCC’s new rules are intended to give consumers control over the ways in which ISPs use and share their customers’ private information. While the FCC has yet to release its Report and Order, the FCC’s Fact Sheet and statements by the commissioners indicate that the new privacy rules in many respects track the proposed rules the FCC put forward earlier this year, which seek to make the FCC the “toughest” privacy regulator in the Internet ecosystem by imposing on ISPs significantly more onerous and restrictive requirements for use and collection of consumer data than the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) imposes on its non-ISP competitors.