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Obama Administration Says the World's Servers Are Ours
An anonymous reader points out this story about the U.S. Justice Department's claim that companies served with valid warrants for data must produce that data even if the data is not stored in the U.S. Global governments, the tech sector, and scholars are closely following a legal flap in which the US Justice Department claims that Microsoft must hand over e-mail stored in Dublin, Ireland. In essence, President Barack Obama's administration claims that any company with operations in the United States must comply with valid warrants for data, even if the content is stored overseas. It's a position Microsoft and companies like Apple say is wrong, arguing that the enforcement of US law stops at the border. A magistrate judge has already sided with the government's position, ruling in April that "the basic principle that an entity lawfully obligated to produce information must do so regardless of the location of that information." Microsoft appealed to a federal judge, and the case is set to be heard on July 31.
Someone pointed out that governments don't really matter anymore.
Doesn't matter how true it is. They are gonna bitch scream and stamp their feet till mommy buys them what they want.
Will this influence the tax gimmick where the HQ is overseas so the profits don't have to have taxes paid on them?
Why is it the money can evade the government but the data can't?
Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance, which is what these companies are practicing, is not. There's no criminal wrongdoing taking place.
Even though the politicians bluster on and on about the problem, they always forget to mention that they are the ones with the power to fix it, if they chose to.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
if a country's legal system has a valid case for something, and issues a court order ordering you to turn something over, you can't just avoid a court order by saying "it's in my summer home in another country!"
That's fine. I'm perfectly okay with saying Microsoft has to produce all of their financial information, legal analysis, etc., when required, no matter where it is stored, as a provision of being legally incorporated in the United States.
Where this gets pernicious is that the data they are being required to present is *not* their data. They are a third party holding the data on someone else's behalf. Note the courts specifically say that this would not be okay if it was a physical document, their reasoning for being allowed to subpoena an electronic document is essentially that it's trivial for them to get away with it.
From the article:
The e-mail the US authorities are seeking from Microsoft concerns a drug-trafficking investigation. Microsoft often stores e-mail on servers closest to the account holder.
So presumably this data belongs to someone in Ireland. It's data which was created in Ireland. It may be data which has never left Ireland. But because they made the mistake of dealing with a US company, the data of an Irish citizen sitting in a room in Ireland where Irish law prevails is now being exported to America without Irish courts having any say in the matter.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
This is why the data should never have been in Microsoft's possession to begin with, and why it matters what companies you do business with, and what countries they operate in/what laws they are subject to in the various jurisdictions they're incorporated in.