Microsoft Wins Appeal Over Warrant For Emails Held Abroad

[HardOCP News]

A federal appeals court overturned a ruling against Microsoft today saying that companies do not have to turn over email stored on servers outside the United States. I'm not sure what stops law enforcement from working with authorities in other countries to get warrants for the data stored abroad but I'm not an expert on this stuff.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed a 2014 lower court order directing Microsoft to comply with a warrant to turn over to the U.S. government the contents of a customer's email account stored on an Irish server. It also voided a finding of contempt against Microsoft. Circuit Judge Susan Carney said warrants issued under the federal Stored Communications Act reach only data stored within the United States, and that U.S. service providers cannot be forced to comply with warrants seeking data stored elsewhere.

 

[Lakados]

International law and jurisdictions are tricky things, why deal with them if you can find a way not too.

 

[Madoc]

The logical way to deal with this is to require companies to keep data on US citizens inside of the US. If the data is outside of the US, then it follows that it is outside of US jurisdiction.

 

[Lakados]

The logical way to deal with this is to require companies to keep data on US citizens inside of the US. If the data is outside of the US, then it follows that it is outside of US jurisdiction.

The only problem with this is when you create the account how they prove you are who you say you are? If I create an Outlook account and tell them I am from Norway and use some basic VPN service to give me a Norwegian IP but really I am American how can they tell with out asking for paperwork? So my account is now created on a server in Norway, I do what every I want on it and it doesn't violate Norwegian law but does a State law but not a Federal one what then?

 

[Wierdo]

Makes sense, there other many other ways to get that data through existing treaties and procedures without putting companies in a difficult position or violating international boundaries, they just wanted to go this route because it was gonna be faster, but that's just lazy and dangerous.

Luckily they couldn't get away with it - or rather, MS has the funds to push back against such authoritarian tendencies.

 

[Wwhat]

The only problem with this is when you create the account how they prove you are who you say you are? If I create an Outlook account and tell them I am from Norway and use some basic VPN service to give me a Norwegian IP but really I am American how can they tell with out asking for paperwork? So my account is now created on a server in Norway, I do what every I want on it and it doesn't violate Norwegian law but does a State law but not a Federal one what then?

Not an issue, since they don't want data on US citizens in the first place, it's foreigners they want to spy on, the locals have their data already intercepted at the routing without warrants.