18 January 2018

IViR staff supported two Amicus Briefs in a case (United States v. Microsoft) before the US Supreme Court concerning US law enforcement access to personal data stored in Ireland.

The first Amicus Brief has been coordinated by Prof. dr. Nico van Eijk and was filed on behalf of a group of European academics, all experts in the field of privacy and data protection. The experts are concerned about the consequences for European citizens if the Supreme Court were to follow the position of US government in the case. It would allow the US government to directly claim access to data stored in other countries. According to the experts, this would create various conflicts between U.S. and foreign law. IViR’s Prof. Egbert Dommering and Dr. Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius are among the signatories of this “Friends of the Court” letter.
You can find the press release for this Amicus brief here.

IViR’s Dr. Kristina Irion is one of the 37 signatories of yet another Amicus Brief filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) based in Washington D.C. EPIC urged the Supreme Court to respect international privacy standards and not to extend U.S. domestic law to foreign jurisdictions. EPIC wrote, the “Supreme Court should not authorize searches in foreign jurisdictions that violate international human rights norms.

See also:

• Text of oral arguments before the Supreme Court, 27 February 2018
• Audio of oral arguments before the Supreme Court, 27 February 2018