Former FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief LeBlanc Tapped as Privacy Shield Arbitrator

Travis LeBlanc, former Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau chief under Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler, has been tapped to help oversee compliance with the European Union-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. That is the agreement between the EU and the US over protecting the privacy of cross-border information flows. He will be one of 20 arbitrators—16 have been chosen with four more to come—who will decide claims of violations of the framework obligations. They are a court of last resort if parties fail to resolve issues with the relevant data protection authorities. They are being chosen from a list supplied by both the EU and Commerce.

LeBlanc is a partner in the DC and Palo Alto (CA) offices of law firm Boies Schiller Flexner. The privacy shield replaces the safe harbor agreement that a European Union court invalidated in October 2015 over concerns about the US being able to hold up its end of the agreement given the government surveillance revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks. The framework requires companies to provide notice of what personal information is being collected and stored, the purposes it is used for, and an "opt out" mechanism.