Ten-Country Comparison of Government Access to Cloud Data

The law firm Hogan Lovells recently released a white paper providing an analysis across ten jurisdictions of government access to data stored in the cloud.

The paper was written by Christopher Wolf, co-director of Hogan Lovells' Privacy and Information Management practice, and Paris Office partner Winston Maxwell. It was released in late May at a program presented by the Openforum Academy in Brussels.

The paper compares the situation in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.

As Hogan Lovell states in its Chronicle of Data Protection blog:

"The White Paper reveals that every jurisdiction examined vests authority in the government to require a Cloud service provider to disclose customer data. It explains why the access provisions of the USA Patriot Act are narrower than commonly thought."

"The White Paper also reveals that, unlike in the United States where the law specifically protects cloud data from access by the government without legal process, data stored in the Cloud may be disclosed to governmental authorities voluntarily in some jurisdictions, without legal process and protections."

"The White Paper concludes that businesses are misleading themselves and their customers if they believe that restricting Cloud service providers to one jurisdiction better insulates data from governmental access. It is incorrect to assume that the United States government’s access to data in the Cloud is greater than that of other advanced economies."

[Source: Canadian Privacy Law Blog]