Server Location in Americas Does Not Affect Government Access to Data Marlisse Silver Sweeney - Law Technology News
go to original July 20, 2014

Christopher Wolf and Bret Cohen of Hogan Lovells have examined how governmental access to data is affected by cloud servers in a post on Chronicle of Data Protection blog. “Cloud adoption and growth in Latin America is expect to increase dramatically over the next few years,” they said.  “This growth has been accompanied by concerns about where and how that information is stored, particularly when hosted in a foreign country.”

After canvassing experienced counsel in seven Latin American countries and the United States, and comparing governmental authority to access data in the cloud, the authors concluded that physical location of servers doesn’t significantly affect government access.

The researchers also found that every country examined - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru and the U.S. - grants authority to the government to require cloud providers to disclose customer data and intercept data from other servers.  In addition, treaties allow governments the ability to access data stored in one jurisdiction that is needed for a lawful purpose in another, they said.  “In a majority of the Latin American jurisdictions surveyed, there is the real potential of proprietary Cloud customer data being disclosed to governmental authorities voluntarily, without legal process and protections,” noted the authors.

The full report can be found here.

Attorney Marlisse Silver Sweeney is a freelance writer based in Vancouver. Twitter: @MarlisseSS.

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