India’s Proposed Data Protection Law and an India-US Executive Agreement Under the CLOUD Act

The US CLOUD Act offers a path for foreign governments to access data stored with US service providers. While the United Kingdom and Australia have concluded agreements with the US and can therefore access data from the US service providers, this is not yet the case for India.
This paper traces the US-UK negotiations, how the US assessed UK's laws, and the bottlenecks and compromises made to reach an agreement. It also questions the ability of the existing Indian legal system to fulfil the CLOUD Act requirements and asks whether having a data protection law will make it easier for India to enter into a CLOUD Act agreement.