The European Union has given the green light to negotiations with the U.S. for an agreement to speed up the exchange of electronic evidence in criminal cases.

If the negotiations are successful, European authorities would be able to access evidence needed for criminal cases more quickly than they can now. And service providers would not have to worry about violating EU data protection rules when providing evidence regarding EU citizens.

With such an agreement, U.S.-based service providers would be obliged to cooperate with EU authorities and provide them with emails and documents stored in the cloud, for example. Currently, U.S. providers respond to requests for information on a voluntary basis.