U.S. companies thinking about falling back on “disproportionate” effort for access requests under the new U.S. privacy laws because they require compiling too many documents should think again.

The Berlin Administrative court recently said that if complying with a request would require a review of more than 5,000 pages of documents from over 100 proceedings over the last 20 years to check in each case whether the rights of third parties would be infringed by handing them
over [to redact], that it would not be disproportionate and you must comply.

Will the US regulators interpret it this way? Not necessarily.

But seeing as this is the relevant interpretation in Europe, companies should definitely consider this as an option.

Read the decision here.