Blog: Chronicle of Data Protection | 20 June 2013

IAPP Piece Compares U.S. and EU Government Surveillance Practices

Skeptics who are critical of the U.S. intelligence-gathering regime often claim that privacy, “as a human right,” enjoys much more protection in Europe.  However, recent work done by Hogan Lovells on EU national security access to data shows that the American framework, requiring judicial authorization and oversight under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) imposes at least as much, if not more, due process and oversight on foreign intelligence surveillance than other countries afford in similar circumstances. In a detailed analysis of the misconceptions related to U.S. government intelligence-gathering for the IAPP Privacy Perspectives blog, Chis Wolf outlines "A Sober Look at National Security Access to Data in the Cloud," a recently published Hogan Lovells white paper comparing U.S. intelligence-gathering under FISA to the practices of five European countries.