Tag Archives: International

Internal Investigations, the KBR Decision and International Investigations

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Child of Upjohn

Child of Upjohn

In a recent post, we touched on the importance of the D.C. Circuit’s decision in KBR concerning privilege and internal investigations:

Post-recession, we are living through an era of regulators’ grimaces and prosecutors’ giddiness. Editorialists and bloggers want business scalps, especially scalps of individuals (as opposed to simple monetary fines for corporations), and most especially scalps of those in banking and finance.  In the wake of the GM report and other stories about lawyers, the role of business lawyers is as suspect in the public mind as it has been for decades.  It’s as though everybody smells a rat.

On the other hand, faced with ever-increasing and increasingly complex regulation, companies’ need to conduct self-reviews and internal investigations is unavoidable. Indeed, in many industries, the governing set of rules require companies to self-investigate and, under certain conditions, reveal those investigatory results to the Government.  This is especially the case if the company wishes to be seen as a good citizen and a cooperator. (We have discussed the ups and downs of cooperation here and here).

In this environment, it was refreshing to see the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in In re Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc.

Skeptical of the role of lawyers.

Skeptical of the role of lawyers.

(Read the complete post at It’s Okay To Smell A Rat: Internal Investigations, Attorney-Client Privilege and the KBR Decision).

More recently, from our friends at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog, here and here are two good essays by Professor Lucian Dervan of Southern Illinois University on KBR, privilege and the implications for international internal investigations.

The Border, Searches and the Digital Devices of Executives and Employees

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Here’s a story (via @nytimes) about how the border is a back door for device searches.

There is, of course, a “border exception” to the Fourth Amendment, a constitutional doctrine that came of age when national physical borders were also, usually, information-borders as well.  Although the discussion in the article takes place in the national-security context, it’s worth American companies giving more careful thought to how they address the way their executives and employees work and travel.  Employees usually love using their own devices and storing company data in ways that are readily accessible to and productive for them.

At the border, though, all that corporate data is free game.

As the article notes:

TECS is a computer system used to screen travelers at the border, and includes records from law enforcement, immigration and antiterrorism databases. A report from the Department of Homeland Security about border searches of electronic devices says a traveler may be searched “because he is the subject of, or person-of-interest-in, an ongoing law enforcement investigation and was flagged by a law enforcement ‘lookout’ ” in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement computer system.

For now, the law remains murky about any limits on intrusive border inspections, including how long travelers can be detained, whether they are required to provide passwords for their devices . . . and whether they must answer any question an agent asks. Responses may be recorded in a traveler’s TECS file and shared with other government agencies.

Detention is an inconvenience.  To answer (or not answer) an agent’s question is another matter entirely, one that implicates both the company’s legal exposure and the individual’s Fifth Amendment rights.

If you find yourself in a lawsuit or prosecution based on a seizure at the border, it’s worth asking for this document from ICE: