Straight Talk

Legal privacy protections for email and other cloud-stored data are weak—and could get weaker. Fundamentally, this is a legal and policy issue—not a technical matter--yet it has dire business implications.  In a September 2015 U.S. Court of Appeals hearing, Microsoft challenged the U.S.’s request for private data held in Ireland because the U.S. government asserted its right and that of other nations to access data beyond national borders. The growing threat of privacy and confidentiality intrusions not only erodes trust in technology, but as people lose confidence in their right to privacy it will also impact small and medium businesses who provide cloud computing solutions to clients. Further, as other nations begin to build their own cloud solutions because ours cannot be trusted to protect their citizens' privacy, American companies operating at the global scale will suffer catastrophic results. The Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act—or LEADS—will help restore trust in tech by ensuring th