CPJ expresses concerns over the US CLOUD Act

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published: 20 March 2018

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the CLOUD Act's implications for journalist safety and data privacy. They argue the legislation could facilitate government surveillance and weaken the protections for journalists.

Summary

NEW YORK - The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed its concern over the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act and its potential to expose journalists to targeting by foreign governments.

The CLOUD Act would make it easier for some foreign governments to obtain data from U.S. technology companies and allow U.S. law enforcement to access data stored around the world, according to civil liberty organizations. A group of senators is trying to attach the legislation to an upcoming spending bill that needs to be passed before midnight on March 23 to avoid a government shutdown, according to a report on the news website Gizmodo.

"The CLOUD Act could make it easier for foreign governments to gather data from U.S. tech companies. This could include communications from journalists," said Alexandra Ellerbeck, CPJ’s North America Program Coordinator. "Governments around the world, including many U.S. allies, have directly targeted and surveilled journalists. Despite language that alludes to human rights, the bill itself removes existing oversight for data requests and provides very few protections to ensure that governments would not gain access to communications from reporters."

The legislation calls for the executive branch to certify the human rights records of foreign governments wishing to collect data from U.S. tech companies. However, civil liberty groups said that the standards are vague and provide no mechanism for responding to rapid deterioration in human rights in the countries that have already been approved to collect data, according to an op-ed on the legal news website Lawfare. The watchdog group, Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that the CLOUD Act could also open some loopholes that would allow foreign governments to collect incidental data from U.S. citizens and then share the data with the U.S. government. - A CPJ statement

KEY POINTS:

• CLOUD Act may expose journalists to foreign government targeting.
• Senators are pushing to attach the act to a spending bill deadline.
• The act allows easier data access for foreign governments from U.S. tech companies.
• Civil liberty groups criticize the act's vague human rights standards.
• Potential loopholes may allow for incidental data collection on U.S. citizens.