The expression “grasping at straws” has seafaring origins – a drowning man grasps at straws in the absence of anything more solid to cling to. It comes to mind whenever the subject of EU data privacy comes up in the context of US litigation where US lawyers, already drowning in electronic documents, an unrelenting timetable, and the fear of sanctions, will grab hopefully at anything which may save them from the additional difficulties posed by EU privacy rules. They read, for example, of what appears to be a “litigation exemption” and hope that it gets them clear of the whole data privacy problem.
This attitude follows from the feeling that the whole privacy regime is an anti-US device, something invented by Europeans (mainly the French and the Germans) to impede the due process of US law. This perception inevitably generates a backlash, and the language of many US courts implies not merely a defence but counter-attack. I have only just discovered, for example, that a 1987 case called Minpeco S.A. v. Conticommodity Servs., Inc., 116 F.R.D. 517 at 528 (S.D.N.Y. 1987 referred expressly to a “sham law such as a blocking statute”. More recently, the cases of In re Global Power Equipment Group Inc., and Accessdata v Alste appear, to European eyes at least, to imply contempt for the whole privacy business. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Chris Dale 
