On October 16, 2017, the Supreme Court granted the Department of Justice’s petition for a writ of certiorari in its dispute with Microsoft over access to private emails stored at Microsoft’s Dublin, Ireland data center. At issue is whether the warrant provisions of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) apply extraterritorially, such that they compel Microsoft, an electronic service provider, to produce private electronic communications stored on servers in Ireland for the United States government.

On October 12, 2017, the Office of the Swiss Attorney General (OAG) opened a criminal proceeding against the former Secretary General of FIFA and against the Chief Executive Office of the BEIN Media Group LLC concerning the award of World Cup media rights.

On October 13, 2017, speaking at the Global Cyber Security Summit in London, England, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein pleaded for technology companies to implement responsible encryption and cooperate with law enforcement.

Two recent OFAC penalty settlements – the first involving Cartier “Richemont” and the second against White Birch USA – demonstrate the need for compliance for retailers.

John Yates is a self-employed commercial fisherman plying the Gulf of Mexico from his home port on Florida’s southwest coast.  His primary catch of red grouper is subject to fish size limitations and monitored by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers deputized by the National Marine Fisheries Services to enforce federal and state fishing laws.

The Criminal Law and Counter-Terrorism Divisions of the Council of Europe, in co-operation with the City Hall and the University of Malaga, organized an International Conference on Terrorism and Organized Crime. It was held in Malaga, Spain, on September 21 – 22, 2017.

On October 17, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that federal grand juries in the Southern District of Mississippi and the District of North Dakota returned indictments, unsealed on October 16, 2017, against two Chinese nationals and their Northern American based traffickers and distributors for separate conspiracies to distribute large quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues and other opiate substances in the United States.  The DOJ has made the defendants the first manufacturers and distributors of fentanyl and other opiate substances to be designated as Consolidated Priority Organization Targets (CPOTs).  CPOT designations are those who have “command and control” elements of the most prolific international drug trafficking and money laundering organizations.

On September 27, 2017, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, California returned an indictment, charging that the former head of Santa Monica-based Service Mesh, Inc. paid bribes to former IT executives at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in order to approve millions of dollars in contracts that inflated ServiceMesh revenues and fraudulently caused Computer Sciences Corporation (CDC) to pay a nearly $100 million incentive bonus as part of CSC’s acquisition of the cloud software company.

At its 34^th sitting held on October 12, 2017, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted Resolution 2190 (2017) on prosecuting and punishing crimes committed by Daesh. The debate and resolution were based on a Report prepared by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.