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41 U.S.F. L. Rev. 535 (2006-2007)
Companies Caught in the Middle

handle is hein.journals/usflr41 and id is 543 raw text is: Keynote Address Companies Caught in the Middle By ALBERT GImsAI, JR.* THANK YOU ALL. It is a pleasure to be here. The speakers on the earlier panel, who were all terrific and entertaining, are a tough act to follow. I hope I can be as entertaining and informative. Let me start by saying that I am not speaking for any specific client today. This is a really interesting program title: Service Providers Caught in the Middle. I do not tend to think about it that way-being in the middle-I think it is just way too polite a term, way too ge- neric, under-descriptive, and under-informed. Instead, I think Ser- vice Providers As Pifiatas would be a better title because service providers get beat up by all sides all the time. While this topic is about service providers in the middle, I'm going to ad lib a little to play off of the question Kevin Bankston, of the Electronic Frontier Founda- tion (EFF), posed on the prior panel: Where are the service provid- ers? As you will see through the following remarks, they are more on the front lines of these privacy battles than he or others realize and, in some cases, more so than the privacy groups themselves. Remember, service providers are not in the business of electronic surveillance-they do not have a dog in most of the hunts over which they get beat up. And yet, they end up with the privacy community, users, and law enforcement pointing the finger at them as the solu- tion to all of the privacy and security problems. Thus, on the earlier panel, Kevin asked, Where are the providers? Users ask, Where are the providers? Someone else will say, They should be the last great shield, while law enforcement says, They are our most potent sword. Well, in the law, which is really where we have to start and * A. Gidari is a partner at Perkins Coie LLP where he leads the firm's privacy and security practice. He represents communications service providers in the implementation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, 47 U.S.C. §§ 1001-21 (2000), and in responding to government demands for electronic surveillance. He most recently defended Google, Inc. against the Department ofjustice's (DOJ) demands for billions of user search terms.

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