Data are becoming the core asset of our economies and they take up a central role in our societies. Communications increasingly occur via a broad variety of platforms and new applications running over the internet. The data centres and infrastructure supporting these platforms and services are usually spread across the globe, and are operated by multinational players with entities in various jurisdictions. Against the backdrop of this set up, governments are keen on getting access to these systems and to the data retained in them, or in getting information on the communications conducted through these systems. The interests of governments in doing so are manifold: surveillance and counterterrorism, ensuring cybersecurity, general law enforcement, obtaining of evidence and combating crime. These attempts to obtain access or receive information and the responses of the industry to these attempts raise various complex legal issues. Multiple stakeholders are involved, with various interest and reflecting a broad variety of rights. Often the access process spreads across various jurisdictions, hence involving a broad variety of national laws, and spheres governed by international public law. Recent cases, such as the US v. Microsoft case, the ECJ data retention cases, the pending case before the EU General Court about the validity of the Privacy Shield, and new regulatory developments such as the US Cloud Act and the new EU rules on E-evidence underscore the importance of this topic. Within the Legal Practice Division of the IBA, a Task Force, consisting of members from various Committees of the IP, Communications and Technology Section has been set up to analyse these issues. The objective is to draw up a set of working principles that aim to set a framework to reconcile the different rights and interests involved. With the help of our panel, we intend to have a truly open and global scale debate about these issues. The panel is composed of highly esteemed speakers and experts. They are well versed in this topic and represent various facets of the issue, i.e. the judiciary and law enforcement, human rights and privacy advocacy and the technology industry and regulation shaping. The panellist will share their views and concerns, and report on the most recent development in various prominent national and international fora. The format of this session will be a moderated discussion, with a strong focus on interaction with the panel and interaction between the participants. To that end, participants will be invited to join an online Q&A tool during the session so they can voice their opinions during the discussion.