October 14, 2019

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has signed an agreement that will enable British law enforcement agencies to directly demand electronic data relating to terrorists, child sexual abusers and other serious criminals from US tech firms.

The Government says that the UK-US Bilateral Data Access Agreement will dramatically speed up investigations and prosecutions by enabling law enforcement, with appropriate authorisation, to go directly to the tech companies to access data, rather than through governments, which can take years.

The current process, which see requests for communications data from law enforcement agencies submitted and approved by central governments via Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA), can often take anywhere from six months to two years. Once in place, the Government says that the Agreement will see the process reduced to a matter of weeks or even days.

The US will have reciprocal access, under a US court order, to data from UK communication service providers. The UK has obtained assurances in line with the Government’s continued opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances.

Any request for data must be made under an authorisation in accordance with the legislation of the country making the request and will be subject to independent oversight or review by a court, judge, magistrate or other independent authority.

The Agreement does not change anything about the way companies can use encryption and does not stop companies from encrypting data.

It gives effect to the Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019, which received Royal Assent in February 2019 and was facilitated by the CLOUD Act in America, passed last year. To read the Government’s press release in full, click here.