• Internal Investigations,  International

    Internal Investigations, the KBR Decision and International Investigations

    July 28, 2014

    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…

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  • Compliance,  Fifth Amendment,  International

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

    September 10, 2013

    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.…

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