FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Wednesday, February 21, 2018

CONTACT:  Sara Rabern (605) 773-3215 

PIERRE, S.D. - Attorney General Marty Jackley announced today he has joined with 36 State Attorney’s General in support of a bipartisan proposal to update and amend several provisions of the Stored Communications Act (SCA).

“State and local law enforcement agencies routinely use court approved warrants for information stored overseas to investigate crimes occurring in our states including drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, and murder. Some service providers are refusing to honor lawful warrants when their data is stored on a foreign server,” said Jackley. “The refusal to honor lawful warrants is hampering numerous law enforcement investigations and unnecessarily putting our citizens at risk.”

Under the SCA, a law enforcement agency must obtain a warrant to search an individual’s email or other online account if a reviewing court finds probable cause that the account contains evidence of a crime. Once issued, an SCA warrant is served on a service provider who must then collect the requested data and provide to law enforcement. 

The Act both confirms law enforcement’s ability to obtain probable-caused based warrants for electronic communications stored abroad and creates a clear avenue for service providers to challenge an SCA warrant that targets a foreign person and which would require a provider to violate foreign law.

Below is a link to the letter:

http://atg.sd.gov/docs/CLOUD%20Act%20Letter%20February%2021,%202018.pdf

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