The full text of the U.S.-U.K. Cloud Act Agreement was unveiled in November, and it’s just as bad as we thought it would be. We joined with 19 other privacy, civil liberties, and human rights organizations, and sent a letter to Congress going through the long list of problems with the first Cloud Act deal.

Some of the key problems with the U.S.-U.K. Agreement include:

• The agreement includes a weak standard for review, that doesn’t meet the 4th Amendment’s warrant requirement


• There’s no prior judicial authorization required


• The deal includes no safeguards for free expression


• The people put under surveillance don’t need to be notified, on any level


• The “minimization” procedures meant to protect U.S. persons are unfair, unequal, and won’t do the job


• It will grant real-time access to communications, allowing foreign police to wiretap Americans’ conversations, ignoring the high requirements for a wiretap under U.S. law


• These extraordinary search powers given to foreign police can be used even for relatively low-level crimes

Congress shouldn’t let an executive agreement, negotiated behind closed doors, give away rights that have been enshrined in U.S. law for nearly 250 years.

Joe Mullin is a policy analyst on EFF’s intellectual property team, where he works on patent reform, copyright issues, and free speech online. Before joining EFF, Joe worked as a reporter covering legal affairs for the technology website Ars Technica, and American Lawyer’s magazine group. Earlier in his journalism career, Joe wrote for The Associated Press and The Seattle Times. He has a bachelors degree in history and a masters in journalism, both from the University of California at Berkeley. Outside of his work at EFF, Joe enjoys trail running and cycling.