On Tuesday, February 27th, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in United States v. Microsoft Corp. on whether a warrant issued under the Stored Communications Act (SCA) can compel the production of data stored outside the United States. Where Microsoft argues that the emails stored outside the United States also lie outside the reach […]
Digital Crimes
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton Announces Data Breach of SEC Systems Which May Have Led to Insider Trading
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton issued a public statement on Cybersecurity (the “Clayton Statement”) last week, disclosing a 2016 attack on the SEC’s database of corporate filings. The intrusion exploited a vulnerability in the test filing component of the EDGAR system, a document repository for disclosures from public companies and issuers, through which the intruder was […]
New York High Court Denies Facebook’s Challenge of Bulk Stored Communications Act Warrants
The Court of Appeals for the State of New York recently rejected Facebook’s appeal of its challenge to bulk search warrants issued pursuant to the Stored Communications Act (SCA) and separately challenged the warrants’ nondisclosure component. The Court affirmed the lower court’s ruling that Facebook could not appeal the rejection of its motion to quash the […]
President Obama Issues Directive on Government Cyber Incident Response
Last week, President Obama issued a new Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) establishing principles to govern the federal government’s response to cyber incidents, “whether involving government or private sector entities.” Titled “PPD-41,” the document also designates the lead federal agencies for so-called significant cyber incidents and creates an “architecture for coordinating the broader Federal Government response” […]
Department of Justice Indicts Seven Iranians for State-Sponsored Hacking
The Department of Justice has announced the indictment of seven Iranian hackers alleged to work for the Iranian government on charges stemming from a coordinated string of distributed denial of service (“DDoS”) attacks primarily against U.S. financial institutions from 2011 to 2013. One of the hackers is also charged with hacking into the supervisory control […]