[4] Congress, primarily led by Senator Orrin Hatch, had attempted to create legislation prior to the CLOUD Act to amend the SCA with the concerns of Microsoft and other technology companies with respect to foreign privacy rights.

It also provides an alternative and expedited route to MLATs through "executive agreements"; the executive branch is given the ability to enter into bi-lateral agreements with foreign countries to provide requested data related to its citizens in a streamlined manner, as long as the Attorney General, with concurrence of the Secretary of State, agree that the foreign country has sufficient protections in place to restrict access to data related to United States citizens.

[11] The CLOUD Act received support from Department of Justice and of major technology companies like Microsoft, AWS, Apple, and Google.

[16] On April 17, 2018, the Supreme Court, based on concurring briefs submitted by the Department of Justice, vacated the Microsoft Corp. v. United States and remanded it back to lower court to do the same, as the Department of Justice was able to secure a new warrant under the CLOUD Act and was no longer pursuing the initial warrant, rendering the case moot.

[17][18][19] The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) viewed the CLOUD Act as a law in possible conflict with the GDPR.