As companies work to comply with laws like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), they often conduct internal investigations that rely, in part, on collecting documents and e-mail from employees. It’s all perfectly legal in the United States, but it can quickly lead to potential conflicts when in-house lawyers also have to navigate E.U. regulations on data protectionlaws that guard employee privacy even for information stored on company computers and servers [see "Privacy Exceptionalism?"].
Now imagine a scenario in which that information is even harder to obtain. That would be the case if the European Union adopts its new data protection proposal. “Currently, one of the ways that in-house counsel manage this potential conflict of laws is obtaining genuinely voluntary employee consent,” says Jim Halpert, a partner in DLA Piper’s communications, e-commerce, and privacy practice in Washington, D.C. “The proposed [E.U.] regulation would declare employee consenteven if freely givento be per se invalid.”
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