ACC Annual Meeting 2013: EU Data Privacy and the Godmother of E-Discovery

John Blumenschein

I’m on a plane flying back from this year’s ACC (Association of Corporate Counsel) Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, which, as usual, delivered four days’ worth of excellent sessions and food for thought. The hottest topic by far was data privacy, especially in light of the NSA revelations this week.

Globalization and Data Privacy

Almost all of the panel sessions that I attended [e.g., on social media, government investigations, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)] touched on the topic of privacy in one way or another. The primary driving force behind this topic’s heat factor, however, is the increasingly global nature of business today.

Data Privacy, Cross-Border E-Discovery, and the Hybrid Solution

Chris Kruse

You could call the United States the epicenter of litigation. It’s an unfortunate, but inescapable, reality that our markets and business cultures drive a preponderance of international business litigation, so much so that we’re the world leader by a mile. The challenge for European and Asian corporations lies in the fact that many have U.S. headquarters or do business with companies here, which is when e-discovery becomes complex due to their national, local, or other pertinent data-privacy laws.

There are dramatic variations in data-privacy laws and requirements across countries, domains, and jurisdictions. For example, in Germany the requirements for collecting employee e-mail and electronic documents within one company may be completely different than those for the company next door, as those requirements are determined by each corporation’s works council.