Shortly after the release of the communiqué from the most
recent ministerial meetings of the 'Five Countries'
security alliance — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK
and the US — at the end of July, we warned that the issue of
the use of, and access to, encrypted services and technologies
'remains front of mind for the alliance and further
legislative or regulatory action in the Five Countries may
follow'.
This week, It became clear that three of the Five Countries
planned to follow through. On 4 October 2019, representatives of
the Australian, UK and US governments planned to release:
- an announcement of a new data-sharing
agreement between law enforcement in the US and the UK under the US
CLOUD Act, which would allow law enforcement agencies in each
country to send requests for data directly to technology companies
located in the other country, rather than via local law enforcement
agencies (in an attempt to speed up such information sharing), with
a similar
