ECPA Counseling & Litigation
Increasingly, technology companies face leading-edge issues concerning the intersection of user privacy and online communications, governmental surveillance and criminal investigations, and free speech and expression.
Many companies, including communications providers, mobile app providers, financial technology companies, and augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) providers, face regular demands from law enforcement, civil litigants, and others in the United States and abroad, seeking information about their customers—such as their online activity, private communications, location information, financial transactions, or other sensitive details. These demands often raise novel conflicts related to free speech, privacy, and public safety, in scenarios that are fraught with legal and reputational risk. Perkins Coie’s Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) practice helps global technology leaders and emerging companies respond to, and where appropriate, object to and litigate, requests for their users’ data.
Each year we handle thousands of matters concerning requests for user data and other legal process from around the world. These matters run the gamut from assisting clients as they establish policies and procedures for responding to legal process; negotiating with hundreds of law enforcement officers and litigants over the validity or scope of legal process; and briefing and appearing in courts throughout the country every week on issues arising under the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), Wiretap Act, Pen Register/Trap and Trace Statute, and All Writs Act; the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the FISA Amendments Act; and CalECPA and other state-specific laws.
In addition, our team regularly guides clients facing cross-border user data requests from governments, litigants, and inter-governmental agencies throughout the world, on matters raising complex issues involving conflicts of law, international comity, and international human rights. Our team has established relationships with attorneys and experts in over a hundred countries to assist our clients in responding to, objecting to, or litigating those requests. Our attorneys also actively represent clients who are participating in U.S. and international policy development regarding government and other requests for user information.
Our team’s level of experience advising on these issues is of critical importance to our clients. Our compliance work also extends to responding to legal process issued or obtained by the U.S. intelligence community for counterterrorism and counterespionage investigations, as well as other privacy matters, including data security breaches and defending clients in investigations brought by federal and state agencies.
