How to Build a Global Network that Complies with Local Law
We’ve spent a lot of time over the course of this week talking about Cloudflare engineers building technical solutions to improve privacy, increase control over data, and thereby, help our customers address regulatory challenges. But not all challenges can be solved with engineering. We sometimes have to build policies and procedures that anticipate our customers’ concerns. That has been an approach we’ve used to address government and other legal requests for data throughout the years.
Governments around the world have long had an interest in getting access to online records. Sometimes law enforcement is looking for evidence relevant to criminal investigations. Sometimes intelligence agencies are looking to learn more about what foreign governments or actors are doing. And online service providers of all kinds often serve as an access point for those electronic records.
For service providers like Cloudflare, though, those requests can be fraught. The work that law enforcement and other government authorities do is important. At the same time, the data that law enforcement and other government authorities are seeking does not belong to us. By using our services, our customers have put us in a position of trust over that data. Maintaining that trust is fundamental to Continue reading
