The Cyberspace Law Committee of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Section of Business Law has launched a new CyberSecurity Privacy Task Force to deal with the legal challenges raised by increasing concern about security and privacy in a business context.
The task force is part of the Electronic Privacy Subcommittee of the Cyberspace Law Committee.
Business lawyers are seeing a dramatic increase in the number and type of issues companies are facing related to unauthorized access to – and government requests to review – corporate electronic records and communications.
The new frontier forged by the intersection of data protection, electronic communications and cybercrimes, including cyberterrorism, is raising novel business problems, particularly in light of new laws and standards related to the privacy of customer information.
The task force will work to identify and interpret ramifications of new laws, such as the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act of 2001, and to develop best practices.
Other existing laws that some may be dealing with for the first time, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are now finding their way into a variety of business contexts, and will be analyzed by the task force.
Specific initial projects being considered include:
Bringing the resources and wide-ranging expertise of the ABA’s membership to bear to assist legislative and governmental efforts on issues related to the collection, maintenance and disclosure of electronic data about individuals;
Developing White Papers with other interested ABA committees and sections on emerging legal issues related to privacy and security;
Analyzing the USA Patriot Act and its progeny from the perspective of the business lawyer representing e-commerce clients in areas where privacy and security considerations intersect;
Developing educational tools for practitioners and business in e-commerce;
Publishing timely advisories on legislative and regulatory developments on cybersecurity and privacy issues; and
Sponsoring focused programs and roundtables to bring resources of government, law enforcement and business together to provide timely information and interchange about cybersecurity and privacy issues and trends.