Lecturer James Dempsey was just sworn in as one of eight judges on the federal Data Protection Review Court. Dempsey, a former executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, teaches Cybersecurity Law Fundamentals in the LL.M. program and authored a book with the same name.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who swore in the judges, established the court last year within the Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties at the Department of Justice. The court is part of a broader executive order that established a two-tiered process to ensure independent and impartial review of certain complaints submitted by people outside the U.S. who claim their personal information was collected in violation of American laws during U.S. signals intelligence activities.
The new policy is considered a critical part of the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and the United Kingdom-U.S. Data Bridge Extension, both of which reflect a share commitment to respecting individual privacy amid national security efforts.
The court will review findings made by the Civil Liberties Protection Officer of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to qualifying complaints. The decisions of each three-judge panel are final and binding.
Judges serve four-year terms and are independent of the attorney general and Department of Justice.