USA PATRIOT Act

Although Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) may have received the most attention for his attendance at South by Southwest (“SXSW”) Interactive, many other members of Congress were represented this year.  Continuing our coverage of the conference, this past weekend we attended a panel on “The Future of Privacy,” featuring congressional representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), and Blake Farenthold (R-TX).  All three representatives support legislation to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”), and the panelists focused their remarks on the importance of extending warrant protections to electronic communications regardless of how long such communications are stored.

The panel began on a somewhat whimsical note with the panelists presenting photographs of themselves from the 1980s.  To drive home the point, Congressman Issa explained a great deal has changed since 1986 when ECPA was first enacted.  The panelists generally focused on the need to protect all electronic mail and other electronic communications no differently than paper records are protected.  Congressman Issa also noted that ECPA reform has an economic impact in light of the increased use of cloud services.
Continue Reading Covington at #SXSW 2015: Members of Congress Discuss Future of Privacy

By David Fagan and Alex Berengaut

Enterprises must consider a range of benefits and costs as they evaluate migrating their IT functions and data to cloud-based computing services, including the impact of the cloud services on the security and privacy of their data.  In this regard, one of the principal privacy-based concerns raised in connection