Extraterritorial Enforcement Jurisdiction in Cyberspace: Normative Shifts

The most eye-catching effect of digitalization on the law of enforcement jurisdiction is the fading into irrelevance of territoriality. Insofar as the “physical” location of digital data—on a server—may be entirely fortuitous and may in fact not be known by the territorial state, it appears unreasonable for that state to invoke its territorial sovereignty as a shield against another state’s claims over such data. To prevent a jurisdictional free-for-all, however, it is key that the exercise of extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction in cyberspace becomes subject to a stringent test weighting all relevant connections and interests in concrete cases. Introducing such a weighting test means that extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction is no longer governed by binary rules (allowed and not allowed), but becomes a matter of degree, requiring a granular, contextual assessment. It remains the case that such a flexible attitude towards extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction is not universally shared, and that relevant state practice and expert opinion in favor of the “un-territoriality of data” has a particular Western slant.