R&G Tech Studio Presents: Data, Privacy & Cybersecurity Co-Leader Ed McNicholas (Podcast)

• Published date: 16 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Privacy, Technology, Data Protection, Security
• Law Firm: Ropes & Gray
• Author: Mr Edward G. Black and Edward Mcnicholas

In this episode of the R&G Tech Studio, data, privacy & cybersecurity co-lead Ed McNicholas sits down with technology, media & telecommunications co-lead Ed Black to discuss how his time as a litigator on the investigations team in the Clinton White House led him to a career in data privacy, and shares his insights on how the value of data continues to increase as technologies evolve.

Transcript:

Ed Black: This is Ed Black'I'm a partner at Ropes & Gray. I want to welcome everybody to the latest edition of our R&G Tech Studio podcast. In this edition, I have the distinct pleasure of talking to my friend and my partner, Ed McNicholas, the global lead of our data privacy & data security practice at Ropes & Gray. Ed, it is such a pleasure to have you. I do have some questions for you that are about your practice and about the work that I know you do, helping clients with their data and data issues, but before we get there, 10 seconds about who you are.

Ed McNicholas: I live in Alexandria with my wife, three kids and four dogs, and I spend as much time there as I can. My wife would tell you that my main office is the United lounge. It's very much a global practice. My primary office is out of Washington, D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue, but it is very much a practice that gets me on the road, meeting new people and solving problems across the globe.

Ed Black: Wow'four dogs. We're going to come back to the four dogs'put a pin in that, we're coming back to that. I know that you're focused on data, but let me ask an open-ended question. When you think about what it means to have a practice focused on data, and you go back 10-15 years, then candidly the so-called data practice was mainly about protecting credit card numbers. You scroll forward 10-15 years to the present, it seems like data's everywhere, doing everything. But am I wrong about that? How do you see the relevance of the data practice in Ropes & Gray and to our business clients?

Ed McNicholas: I trained as a litigator'worked actually in the Clinton White House on the investigations team back in the days of Ken Starr and Monica Lewinsky. And largely because of that, I had an active security clearance when AT&T was accused of sharing data with the NSA. I got into that case, representing AT&T in the NSA wiretapping cases, into the technology piece of this through the national security side of it, through governmental surveillance and some of the international issues that arose from that with the Europeans having concerns about the U.S. intelligence community and having a series of issues with international data transfers. So, I came to it mainly from that...