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Alexander Berengaut

Alex Berengaut is a nationally recognized litigator and co-chair of the firm's Government Litigation practice. He has served as lead counsel in a range of commercial disputes and government enforcement proceedings, and currently represents several leading technology companies in litigation and compliance matters relating to data privacy, platform liability, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.

In recent years, Alex’s practice has focused on high-stakes disputes involving novel exercises of government power. For over four years, Alex has served as lead counsel to TikTok in defending against legal challenges to its operations in the United States, including by delivering the winning argument in 2020 that blocked a nationwide ban of the app hours before it was set to take effect. He also represented Xiaomi Corporation in challenging the Department of Defense designation that would have barred the company from U.S. financial markets, delivering the winning argument that led the court to enjoin the designation, restoring $10 billion to Xiaomi’s market capitalization.

At the state level, Alex has successfully challenged unconstitutional state legislation and defended against state consumer protection actions—a string of victories which resulted in Alex being recognized as Litigator of the Week, as well as a Law360 MVP in both the Cybersecurity & Privacy and the Technology categories.  

Alex has served as counsel to Microsoft Corporation in precedent-setting cases involving government surveillance issues, including Microsoft’s landmark challenge to the government’s attempt to compel disclosure of customer emails stored in Ireland using a search warrant; Microsoft’s First Amendment challenge in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to restrictions on disclosures about government surveillance; and Microsoft’s constitutional challenge to the statute that allows courts to impose gag orders on technology companies, resulting in nationwide reform of the government’s practices under the statute.

Alex maintains an active pro bono practice, focusing on trial-level indigent criminal defense and youth immigration matters. From 2017 to 2020, Alex represented the University of California in challenging the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, ultimately resulting in a 5-4 victory in the U.S. Supreme Court.

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On August 7, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed into law a new Shield Law (S.2543) – the Shield Act 2.0 – that restricts providers’ ability to disclose information in certain health care-related investigations, among other provisions.  Like the Washington Shield Law that was enacted in 2023, the Shield Act 2.0 covers gender-affirming treatment in addition to reproductive health care.  The passage of the Shield Act 2.0 follows Massachusetts’s enactment, in 2022, of a Shield Law that provided protections for Massachusetts healthcare providers from sanctions for providing or assisting in the provision of legally protected reproductive healthcare services or gender-affirming healthcare services in the state.Continue Reading Massachusetts Enacts New Shield Law Expanding Protections for Certain Health Data

Last month, the D.C. Circuit in In re: Sealed Case, 2025 WL 2013687 (D.C. Cir. July 18, 2025) invalidated a non-disclosure order (“NDO”) that applied to prospectively issued subpoenas, holding that it failed to meet the statutory requirements in 18 U.S.C. § 2705(b) of the Stored Communications Act.  Continue Reading Federal Court Invalidates Prospective Blanket NDO

In a new post on the Inside Tech Media blog, our colleagues discuss the “Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act,” which President Biden signed into law in the final days of 2022.  The Act recognizes that current encryption protocols used by the federal government might one day be vulnerable to…

Continue Reading President Biden Signs Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act

In March, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga, No. 20-828, holding that the state secrets privilege—and its dismissal remedy—applies to cases that may also be subject to the judicial review procedures set forth in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”).  In so holding, the Court reversed the Ninth Circuit’s 2020 ruling that FISA displaces the state secrets privilege in cases involving electronic surveillance.
Continue Reading Supreme Court Holds FISA Does Not Displace the State Secrets Privilege

Last Thursday, the Eastern District of Virginia in United States v. Chatrie, No. 19-cr-00130, 2022 WL 628905, denied a motion to suppress evidence obtained from Google pursuant to a geofence search warrant.  Geofence warrants are a relatively new investigative tool that target private companies’ databases of location data, compelling these companies to produce the location data of every user that was in a particular area over a particular span of time.  The court invalidated the warrant for lack of particularized probable cause, but declined to suppress the evidence obtained from Google—which linked the defendant to the scene of a 2019 bank robbery—because the officers sought the warrant in good faith.
Continue Reading Federal Court Expresses Skepticism About Validity of Geofence Warrants But Declines Suppression Remedy

On December 15, 2021, the United States and Australia signed an agreement on cross-border law enforcement demands for data from service providers (“Agreement”).  The Agreement is the second bilateral agreement to be entered into under the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, following the U.S.-UK agreement in 2019.
Continue Reading U.S. and Australia Sign CLOUD Act Agreement

On November 1, 2021, the Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari in American Civil Liberties Union v. United States. In its petition, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sought the Supreme Court’s review of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review’s (FISCR) decisions declining to release court records to the ACLU.
Continue Reading The Supreme Court Denies Certiorari in American Civil Liberties Union v. United States

On August 27, 2021, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law the Protecting Household Privacy Act (“PHPA”).  The law governs how, and under what conditions, Illinois law enforcement agencies may acquire and use data from household electronic devices, commonly referred to as “smart devices” or the “internet of things.”  The…
Continue Reading Illinois Enacts Protecting Household Privacy Act

Last week, the Ninth Circuit held in United States v. Wilson, No. 18-50440, 2021 WL 4270847, that a law enforcement officer violated a criminal defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights when he opened images attached to the defendant’s emails without a warrant, even though the images had previously been flagged as child sexual abuse materials (“CSAM”) by Google’s automated CSAM-detection software.  The court based its ruling on the private search exception to the Fourth Amendment, which permits law enforcement to conduct a warrantless search only to the extent the search was previously conducted by a private party.  Because no individual at Google actually opened and viewed the images flagged as CSAM, the court held that law enforcement “exceeded the scope of the antecedent private search,” thereby “exceed[ing] the limits of the private search exception.”  Op. at 20-21.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit’s Interpretation of Private Search Exception to the Fourth Amendment Contributes to “Growing Tension” Among Circuit Courts

On June 24, 2021, Australian parliament passed legislation establishing a framework for its enforcement agencies to access certain electronic data held by companies outside of Australia for law enforcement and national security purposes.  The law paves the way for the establishment of a bilateral agreement with the United States under the U.S. Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act.

Similar to the function of the CLOUD Act, the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (International Production Orders) Bill 2020 enables Australian enforcement authorities to compel companies covered by the statute to provide data, regardless of where the data is stored.  The legislation introduces international production orders, a form of legal process for compelling real-time interception of communications or the production of stored communications and telecommunications data, which can be served directly on communications providers in foreign countries with which Australia has an agreement.
Continue Reading Australia Passes Cross-Border Data Access Law, Creates a Pathway for CLOUD Act Bilateral Agreement