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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.
Just claim the data was lost due to a "hard drive crash." I mean, it worked for the IRS, right?
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.
If this holds, US companies will have trouble competing abroad. Information belonging to a US firm's foreign customer company could be seized without possible recourse, unless the customer hires a US counsel.
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?
Microsoft is based in the United States, so there may be some valid argument here that as an American company, Microsoft data regardless of where "in the cloud" it is stored is subject to American legal rulings.
The *real* question is what about companies that do business here but are based in other countries?
There must be precedents or applicable laws for physical analogies. If a company operating in the US happens to store physical records somewhere outside the US, and those records are pertinent to the case, would those not be covered by a US subpoena? If the company has access to them and the ability to procure them, what does the physical location of the records or their headquarters matter?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Does this mean that the US Gov is fine with those same companies turning over all their data to China if a Chinese official decides he wants it? Wonder what other companies this fun can extend to.
If this does hold up, and Microsoft releases the data stored in another country (which is ludicrous), then how long will it take for every other country in the world to buy equipment from a non-American or solely domestic company? This may backfire...like most of our administration's policies...
The internet doesn't live in the real world.
You mean there are no servers and cables? Everything is just... there?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's interesting that right at this moment, the Obama Adminstration is pushing an international treaty that will make it so that corporations do not have to comply with a country's laws. It's called "TISA" and it's so bad that it was supposed to be secret for five years after it's ratified and put into action. We only know about it because Wikileaks released a leaked portion of it.
Secret laws being adjudicated in secret courts. All at the behest of corporations who then want (like Microsoft) to not have to comply. It's a pretty ugly type of fascism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This gets more warped. It would likely be illlegal to produce certain data on EU citizens like this according to EU privacy directive. Company would be forced to choose to either follow US law or EU law, as these would be at odds with one another.
I can see policy like this bringing current globalization trend to a screeching halt as companies would split to have daughter companies incorporated and operating only in certain countries to shield them against this kind of abuse.
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.
Microsoft is trying the "you can't hold me responsible for yesterday's shooting because the gun is in my other pants" defense.
The law has _always_ held that if you are before the court, everything relevant to the case is before the court.
If this were not the case then the Tobacco and Asbestos companies could have just said "all those meeting minutes and research records are stored in our warehouse in mexico so ha ha, you all lose." Any company or person, on any issue, could just mail the evidence out of state or out of country and get off scott free.
That just never happened.
Just because the evidence is "on a computer" instead of "printed on paper" doesn't make the "other pants" defense viable.
The court is not reaching across a border. Microsoft is _here_. Microsoft does business _here_. The complaint is _here_, and the court is _here_. The proper legal response to "the other pants" gambit is to tell the guy in his shorts to send someone to go get whatever it is from those pants and bring it back.
Criminals don't just "move" their assets to other countries, they "hide" them because if it can be found it's on the table.
Every court. Every country. Every topic. From the beginning of time.
This is no different.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
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.