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Ryan represents online communications and storage providers on their core legal issues: user data privacy, content moderation, platform integrity, and privacy litigation. He works with the largest online technology companies as well as startups to help them protect themselves, their users, and their data; promote free speech and expression; and stop child and victim exploitation.
Responding to Surveillance Requests and Legal Process
Ryan aids online communications and storage providers responding to government surveillance and legal process demands for their users’ information. In domestic and international settings, he deals with requests for online user data that arise under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), Wiretap Act, Pen Register/Trap and Trace Statute, Stored Communications Act (SCA), and state equivalents. Ryan started on this work during an Internet Law Fellowship in his first year at Perkins Coie and continues to build on more than 13 years of experience.
Ryan supports his service provider clients across the entire range of a legal process response program. He analyzes the validity of legal process, represents providers in interactions with government officials and private counsel, develops scalable procedures, trains in-house attorneys and operations teams, prepares witnesses, and litigates user data issues in courts around the world. The issues are some of the most cutting-edge privacy issues: the Fourth Amendment implications of government surveillance, the boundaries of anonymous speech under the First Amendment, and cross-border discovery and data compulsion in criminal matters, for example.
Navigating Norms for Users’ Online Content
Over his career, Ryan has defended providers against dozens of claims about unlawful content moderation, primarily under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), drawing on knowledge of a constantly changing landscape of legislation and case law. His domestic litigation practice has expanded into counseling clients about their content moderation practices and procedures; tracking and consulting on proposed domestic legislation and advising on changes in case law; and supporting companies on compliance with recently enacted and imminent international content moderation regulations in Australia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, India, and other countries and regions.
Defending Privacy Litigation and Regulatory Inquiries
Ryan also defends these companes in privacy class actions and litigation, including under the Wiretap Act, SCA, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), consumer protection laws, and federal and state privacy and data security statutes. As part of this portfolio, Ryan handles government investigations of companies’ privacy and data security practices, including from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), state attorneys general and congressional committees. These representations includes internally investigating claims, preparing confidential and public responses, and preparing witnesses for in-person testimony to regulators and Congress.
Stopping the Spread of Child and Victim Exploitation
Ryan helps service providers stop the abuse of children online. He counsels providers regarding compliance with mandatory child safety reporting statutes, including registering with and reporting to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Ryan analyzes how providers can use technology to eliminate that content, respond to follow-up legal process in connection with prosecutions, and comply with emerging international regulations.
This work dovetails with Ryan’s pro bono practice, where he has committed hundreds of hours to representing survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence in resisting efforts to invade their privacy in the course of criminal proceedings, and training other attorneys to do the same.
