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Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails To US Government
schwit1 sends this excerpt from a report about Microsoft:
Despite a federal court order directing Microsoft to turn overseas-held email data to federal authorities, the software giant said Friday it will continue to withhold that information as it waits for the case to wind through the appeals process. The judge has now ordered both Microsoft and federal prosecutors to advise her how to proceed by next Friday, September 5.
Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric. The firm isn't just standing up to the US government on moral principles. It's now defying a federal court order. "Microsoft will not be turning over the email and plans to appeal," a Microsoft statement notes. "Everyone agrees this case can and will proceed to the appeals court. This is simply about finding the appropriate procedure for that to happen."
Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric. The firm isn't just standing up to the US government on moral principles. It's now defying a federal court order. "Microsoft will not be turning over the email and plans to appeal," a Microsoft statement notes. "Everyone agrees this case can and will proceed to the appeals court. This is simply about finding the appropriate procedure for that to happen."
Isn't there a NSA backdoor to MS?
Microsoft's actions might seem "customer-centric," but really they're fighting for their lives.
If MS can be forced to give up European data, stored on European servers, that's game over for them.
Lawsuits and investigations will flourish in Europe, because their data protection laws are much stronger/stricter than ours.
This could kill MS's European business.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I don't see them as customer-centric as much as self-serving. There is definitely a trend of non-US companies moving or thinking of moving their data off US servers. Moving them off US company/subsidiary servers in other countries is a huge threat to Nadella's cloud-focused Microsoft.
It is a rational self-interested decision that may be good for consumers.
It is a rational self-interested decision that may be good for consumers.
Of course it's "self interest", and more accuratly "self preservation". Micrsoft is a business that ultimatly has to answer to their stockholders. If it comes to pass that US "law enforcement" can reach out and get personal data from non-US servers, it will completely destroy Microsoft's European business, due the the much stricter data privacy laws in Europe. It would be "game over" for Microsoft in Europe.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Not that I personally have anything to worry about, as I always assume people are reading my emails. And being bored to tears by them.
I'm an individual! Just like everyone else!
...anyone who seriously store sensitive information on a cloud service like free-email, should be spanked with a trout over and over again.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Frankly, I don't care if MS is standing up out of self-interest or for some other cause, the tyrants in D.C. need to be stopped. Period.
You can't apply U.S. laws to the world at large, regardless of your 'legal' standing.
Many U.S. organizations have presence and pay taxes in many different jurisdictions, making them subject to that particular territory's law. Will the U.S. allow some other country to violate U.S. laws because the subsidiary is present, in say, Aman and thus, by extension, the entire organization is subject to Aman's Law?
The answer is no, because jurisdiction is territorial. You can't apply Ireland's law to MS in the U.S. simply because they have a corporate office there, thus the reverse is true too: you can' t apply U.S. law to a subsidiary in Ireland.
Who owns it is irrelevant; corporations are legal entities of their own, regardless of ownership. Ships owned by, say Americans (most cruise ships for example), are registered in Panama, thus bypassing U.S. Labor laws because who owns them is irrelevant.
Trust me, you don't want to go there: it will open lawsuits against U.S. firms, under U.S. laws, against the owners of such ships and other corporations that use underage labor, exceed working hours / conditions, etc. in other countries.
It would basically make International Law obsolete as we know it.
It appears that the U.S. Government is bent in destroying the American economy while 'preserving' American security.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
This is actually amazing, the 'Do No Evil' principle upheld by Microsoft! What an exciting and interesting development this is. Yes, you heard me right, USA courts and government are the agents of evil and Microsoft is now on the side of the individual rights.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm suspecting the zeal MS is showing in challenging the US gov't has more to do with laying the groundword of "nation-states" being neutered. This is about power in the future. If they win against the US gov't this is just one more nail in the coffin of the battle to make governments useless. This goes hand in hand with the Trans Pacific and other trade agreements. These things are designed to strip power from government.
This is just one more step in the march of capitalism that will likely destroy civilization in the long run.
People and businesses and governments everywhere will be watching this one.
If America can force Microsoft to reach out to Ireland for data, then Germany (etc.) can force Microsoft to tunnel into America, right?
And, as mentioned, people, businesses and governments are already skeptical of the cloud, anyway.
People, businesses and governments may force "data nationalism" to become the norm.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Am I the only one agreeing with the government on this? Companies shouldn't be able to hide from their government by transferring something to another country.
Transfer all financial transactions, HR transactions, monopoly collusions, and well everything through a cloud service based in some push-over country and suddenly you're excused from every local law because the data isn't stored here? That shouldn't be allowed to happen. It'd be like a weekend tourist site where for $99.99 you can fuck, torture, and kill a person then go back home to your family. Not all the tourists might make it back, but hey, mistakes happen. Sure a few places like that exist in the word, but they aren't legal and shouldn't be.
The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are not "world law." Their law ends at the boundaries of the US.
It doesn't matter if the email account in question is owned by an American. It doesn't matter if the servers are indirectly owned by an American company.
They are in a foreign jurisdiction and the US government needs to go through the judicial and legal processes of that jurisdiction if they want access to the data.
Quite frankly, fuck the "war on terror", the "war on drugs", and every other tired old excuse the US government and it's subservient courts use to try to justify shoving the US legal system down the world's throat.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Notwithstanding some really rare cases (e.g. interlocutory), which this does not appear to be, an order is unenforceable while under appeal.
Doing what an order asks is grounds for dismissal of an appeal, notwithstanding cases where acts are made explicitly with the agreement of the parties and sometimes affirmation of the court to be without prejudice to the right of appeal. However in cases of disclosure of information, the disclosure is generally a form of prejudice (since it cannot be undone) that undermines appellate entitlement.
So it is wrong to say they are are defying an order. They are doing what everyone does on appeal.
If they were to defy an order they could be held in contempt of court. That would be an interesting story.
This isn't altruistic of Microsoft but I'm happy they are putting up a fight just the same.
The US legal system starts and ENDS at the US borders.
Microsoft is headquartered and incorporated in the US and thus subject to US law. QED.
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> Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric.
Nonsense. It is protecting their millions, even billions of dollars of international business, especially for their hosted email services, to make a public display of fighting this court order. It also helps protect their US business: publicly refusing a US order helps provide a history of customer privacy awareness when they try to resist a Chinese or Russian or EU court order for US held data.
And this is not an NSA "Patriot Act" order, which don't require judges and can be far, far broader than a typical search warrant or subpoena.
Maybe the US should suspend all Microsoft contracts it has while Microsoft refuses to comply with the court order.
I wonder if they will now turn it over to ISIS and AQ if they demand it?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They cannot deliver access to said arbitrary computer, because it is not their property, nor do they have control of it.
The data in question, however, is property of and controlled by Microsoft. The theory that they can fail to produce it (as required by law) because they have it 'stored somewhere else' is absurd on the face of it, because MS has control of that data, and can access it *despite* the fact that it is 'stored somewhere else'.
If you are brought up on charges in Kentucky, do you think you'd get away with refusing to produce documents to the State of Kentucky just because you decided to store them in Ohio? No, because said documents are under your control.
Frankly, I don't care if MS is standing up out of self-interest or for some other cause, the tyrants in D.C. need to be stopped. Period.
You can't apply U.S. laws to the world at large...
And that's where your argument went off the rails. They're not applying U.S. law to the world at large. They're applying U.S. law to a U.S. company.
This is a company being required, by law, to turn over documents owned and controlled by said company. This is neither a new law, nor an unusual occurrence.
It's a warrant from a US court to a US based company to produce information that said US company has access to and controls from the within the US. Let's not play shell games about where bits are stored today vs the next.
The warrant is NOT:
1) an order to seize physical hard drives located overseas.
2) an order for the FBI to kick down the door of an overseas data center.
3) an instrument to compel Ireland to take enforcement action.
Look, if I have a U-Haul (US company owned) storage facility in Canada, then US law enforcement needs to contact Canadian officials and work under Canadian law to seize its contents. However, US courts should be able to compel U-Haul to provide business records related to the rental without having to worry whether U-Haul houses its business records via a cloud provider in Mexico. And yes, a German court should be able to compel SAP to provides records stored in Virginia.
Could you imagine it otherwise? I can.
"Oh sorry, our internal corporate record documenting are stored in , , and . Please contact those governments about compelling those records for your civil case outside their country (good luck) while we enjoy complete access to those records from our office in Manhattan. Sincerely, another ".
You see how that would be a problem?
Finally, this is a warrant issued by a federal court, not some blanket "seize all the things!" order from a secret spy court. If the former is really an issue for you, then please feel free to host your data in a Malaysian owned and located data center. Your data should go unnoticed as they can't even track things in their own airspace.
It's a warrant from a US court to a US based company to produce information that said US company has access to and controls from the within the US. Let's not play shell games about where bits are stored today vs the next.
The warrant is NOT:
1) an order to seize physical hard drives located overseas.
2) an order for the FBI to kick down the door of an overseas data center.
3) an instrument to compel Ireland to take enforcement action.
Look, if I have a U-Haul (US company owned) storage facility in Canada, then US law enforcement needs to contact Canadian officials and work under Canadian law to seize its contents. However, US courts should be able to compel U-Haul to provide business records related to the rental without having to worry whether U-Haul houses its business records via a cloud provider in Mexico. And yes, a German court should be able to compel SAP to provides records stored in Virginia.
Could you imagine it otherwise? I can.
"Oh sorry, our internal corporate record documenting [discussion of anti-competitive strategies | gross negligence | fraud] are stored in [outside US], [outside US], and [outside US]. Please contact those governments about compelling those records for your civil case outside their country (good luck) while we enjoy complete access to those records from our office in Manhattan. Sincerely, another [Microsoft | Exxon | Enron]".
You see how that would be a problem?
Finally, this is a warrant issued by a federal court, not some blanket "seize all the things!" order from a secret spy court. If the former is really an issue for you, then please feel free to host your data in a Malaysian owned and located data center. Your data should go unnoticed as they can't even track things in their own airspace.
> Russian FSB has actually wrung Windows code reviews out of Microsoft so if they didn't find any back door in that code I'd say there are none to find...
So it's entirely possible to do a code review of an entire operating system and be sure that there are no vulnerabilities?
Of course, you can't be sure that something as simple as an ssl library is safe, but an entire OS is no problem. Despite the fact that there's no way to know if the code you're reviewing matches the installed binaries.
> there is always the option of doing a personal code review of what is it now, 200 million plus? lines of Linux source code and then compiling your own Slackware
Yep, that'd be even easier than the Windows code review, especially since thousands of other people have already done some initial review for you. You can then compile it yourself and know that the source code matches the binary, unlike Windows.
(The trojaned compiler attack is fairly trivial to defeat, so don't bother going there .)
Revoke their damn charter. Then watch how fast they cough it up.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The US is in a weak position, because in order to create a uniform standard of international law to address this sort of thing, the US will have to work as an equal with other countries who are already suspicious of US motives. The US knows this, which is why they are trying to bulldoze their way through this. The issue here is international law, and the laws of other countries involved. The HUGE problem is this: If MS is forced to turn over the data that is in another country (and possibly causing MS to violate the laws of that country) , then another country, using exactly the same ruling, could force a US company to obey its laws. Here's and example: Russia finds a worm , virus, whatever in some software that it's government is using, and that their data was stolen. Russian law allows confiscation of all computer hardware and the people involved held in jail until trial in Russia. The Russian government decides that the infection was present in software that was on the computer at the time of purchase, and as a result that company must have Russia's data, so now Russia can send its enforcers over here and confiscate..... Ooops. What MS is doing is trying to prevent a very shortsighted US ruling of opening a Pandora's box that can be used against the US.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Microsoft US does not control the data. A separate company (Microsoft Ireland) does. Now it may be a fully owned subsidiary but it is still a separate legal entity. The question here is not what people think it is. Does the judge have the right to demand that Microsoft US instruct Microsoft Ireland to break Irish law. The answer to is no because the data is not in the possession or control of Microsoft US. If Microsoft US were to make the request of Microsoft Ireland the correct (and required) response from Microsoft Ireland would be "Sorry, we cannot do that even though you own us.". So since Microsoft US does not control the data the request from the judge would be invalid. Microsoft US cannot comply with the directive since they do not have direct access in their own right.
The data in question is held by Microsoft Ireland and fully owned subsidiary but separate legal entity. The judge cannot require Microsoft Ireland to produce the data as it is not a party to the case and as a foreign company must hold to the law of the territory where it is registered. So Microsoft US neither hods nor controls the data so the request to produce it is moot.
They are not seizing the data directly , jsut like they would not go crack the safe themself in europe, they are compelling the company under perjury to provide the data themselves in an US court, just like they could compel an american on US soil to provide the content of a safe in europe. This is slightly different because US judge have sway over an US company over US soil. No european juridiction is involved.
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visit randi.org
It appears to be an idiotic mistake by the US regime, for not seeking a court order in the appropriate jurisdiction. Of course, it seems that it went in front of a legally or geographically illiterate judge. I can't seriously believe that any competent judge would really believe that American laws apply to the rest of the world. If Microsoft comply with a rogue court order like this, they will be in breach of European Data Protection legislation, which actually does apply where the data is stored. It is quite clear that Microsoft is taking the safe approach here. I'm sure the judge responsible for this will be investigated, and the incompetents who filed the original action in the wrong jurisdiction will be replaced with more competent individuals.
If this goes through, I would say it is going to damage US suppliers. Because people will assume that any data held any where, irrelevant of local laws is up for grabs from US government. They will start using non US suppliers if they value their privacy and local laws being adhered to.
Does MS offer encrypted transfer of files, or encrypted communication when the user uses the "update" tool in Windows?
I don't think so. Correct me if I am wrong.
" ... Are all of you Republicans illiterate?"
All of us here are HIGHLY EDUCATED Democrook Liberals
Doesn't Parallel Construction cover this already?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
True
But they (meaning NSA + Microsoft + US Department of Justice) still need to orchestrate a very public show and tell, something that the whole world can see, something that tells the whole world that Microsoft has BIG AND STRONG BACKBONE, so much so that they dare to stand against the US Department of Justice, the NSA, and so on ...
From TFA---
"Let there be no doubt that Microsoft's actions in this controversial case are customer-centric. The firm isn't just standing up to the US government on moral principles. It's now defying a federal court order "
Ain't you so glad now that Microsoft has finally becomes a company with "MORAL PRINCIPLES"???
TFA is nothing but a propaganda piece, and /. has become a willing partner in the act of spreading Pro-Microsoft propagandum
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"giant evil corporation wont give email to giant evil government"
I doubt anybody gives a shit besides a few Microsoft fanboys and a few government sycophants
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I wonder where Microsoft learned that they can ignore what the law says about handing over emails.
Is a suitable response from the judge for anyone refusing to obey the court...
Jail time, fines, .... and it continues until the judge decides otherwise.
There have been a number of cases where that was the result.
...Who is John Galt?
Along with many other US companies and businesses as the US becomes an ever-more hostile and expensive place to base your business in.
Maybe MS will join the "inversion"-stampede of businesses fleeing the US for friendlier locales.
Once again the US government loads up the trusty foot-gun with its' hubris.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
An Ad hominem. Your admission of defeat is accepted. And I wasn't even competing.
It's funny how many of the responses try to justify the US jack-booting all over the laws of foreign nations.
Zeig Heil, Mein Fuhrer!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The government could almost certainly get this data by going through the proper procedures in Ireland.
Maybe not. If the Irish government caves in to American pressure
How does this have anything to do with the Irish government, it doesn't control the Irish courts. Anyways, more likely than not the US government is trying to establish a precedence; and when doing so they're probably smart enough to use a case where they have "probable cause" for a search warrant.
Nobody have debated those merits, so if presented in an Irish court they might grant a search warrant...
Enough said.
The situation for American tech companies is so dire, Clinton herself had to go on the record in her capacity as Sec of State and assert "American technology companies are not an extension of the United States Govt.". That's bad. That's her reacting to pressure from those companies who have been decimated overseas by the Snowden revelations, and who blame the govt. for "forcing" (cough cough) them to make their systems available to govt. spies. And yes, that is exactly what they've done and do do, whatever you may think of that fact.
So the govt and M$ got together and agreed to publicly put on this little show of M$ "defiance. This is as real as any scripted reality TV show. I am sure they sat around and joked about how the American public will buy it, given the same's predilection for bullshit scripted "reality" shows.
This is completely obvious, I hope, to everyone.
It has been for several years now.
Microsoft learned from the Vista fiasco and employed Burson Marsteller and Waggener Edstrom as Social Media Managers here and at other tech sites. They've been very active at slandering Microsoft competitors and promoting Microsoft products. That what pretty much killed the community here, and was the beginning of Slashdot's slide into irrelevance.
Some subjects are completely undiscussable now. Just try mentioning BSODs and you'll have a dozen responders accusing you of living in the '90s...
lol this retarded paranoid website gets more ridiculous every day. you're all so desperate to paint microsoft as some evil bad guy that now there are unprovable backdoors in their software that nobody but the NSA and US government knows about and can use also they are all colluding to produce a story to counter this by stating that microsoft is flouting the law and not giving the NSA data that they already (according to slashdot retards) already have.
for fuck sake you have gone full retard and now there is no going back you stupid fuck.
Um...you see the thing is in recent years this website has become the home of people who have no idea what a BSOD is and blame the operating system for it. The reality is BSODs are almost always caused by hardware failure or 3rd party kernel-mode drivers (most often graphics drivers).
Yes the uneducated blame it on the wrong party and yes rather than admit they didn't know what they were talking about they call it a conspiracy which now leads to the stupidity that slashdot is embroiled in a propaganda ring perpetrated by Microsoft and the US government to cover up backdoors in Microsoft software that nobody can seem to find.
It's hilarious how far this has gotten just because stupid people can't admit they didn't know everything.
Right on cue...
We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.
The problem here is that M$ has a right to appeal from pesky due process protections. If they produce the data as ordered they de facto lose this right as it cannot be undone in any meaningful way.
Microsoft should comply. The rest of would have to. We are suppose to be ONE country , not a billion people deciding what each if us will or will not do not matter what the law says.
If they comply they are instantly in violation of European privacy laws and could have serious troubles doing business in Europe as a result. The US court order is pretty dubious, legally, but violation of European laws is pretty cut-and-dried. This is the correct (though uncomfortable) choice for Microsoft.
This same line -- shifting the discussion to the long legal process -- was identical in the prelude to savaging Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson and overturning years of defeat in their trial for anticompetitive practices.
Microsoft won't accede to the power of the law. That's all. It has nothing to do with Microsoft's policy toward customers, though they'll say anything.
Ain't you so glad now that Microsoft has finally becomes a company with "MORAL PRINCIPLES"???
Technically true, though - if you define "protecting next-quarter profits" and "not wanting every country they do business in demanding the same favors" as moral principles.
From Microsoft's chair, they have no choice but to fight this - how many non-US countries and corporations are going to subscribe to Office365 and other MS-cloud services if it's publicly known that MS will give your information to a foreign government?
Oh I'm so sorry that facts and reality got in the way of your conspiracy theory. The thing you people fear even more than your fantastical enemies is reality.
If Microsoft goes down, and it will if the order is successful, they are doomed. The best they could do is shut the door and come back as another entity. No one will trust them as a confidential source, many companies will collapse with Microsoft's credibility destroyed. That's not entirely true, it would be a great place to spread rumors. The scene would look like Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy. Maybe that's what the feds want.
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden for 2016.
Poor reporting. This was a procedural move. Microsoft is not defying anything.
They already used the same strategy on individuals. They demanded other counties banks hand over information on any americans, and if they refused, would not be hit with huge tariffs to do business in the US. Countries and Banks caved. Much of the information being access either won't be americans either. The US did this to try and find individual tax evaders.
This is pretty much the same thing as that but with Corporations. The telling tale will be if they will back it up, as the US government is run by corporations who may not like this tact. Individuals are easier.
I agree with your logic. But NO SANE organisation is going to use a system that requires them to store confidential data in any location other than on their own servers.
Which doesn't preclude there being many insane, or foolish, or bamboozled, organisations out there.
I recall that Google did a line of "Google-in-a-box" servers a while ago that would plug into your (intra-)network and would go off to index it (configurable), but keep the index physically in your data centre. I wouldn't be surprised if Micro$loth had done something similar with Orifice365 - a local server which your (intra-)net users log into, but might get patches etc from a MS server on a configurable schedule.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
You're aware that all the services of Office365 started out as box products, and are still available that way, right? Microsoft doesn't provide the server, but they readily provide the software. It's just expensive and a PITA to maintain, which is why people outsource to Microsoft where several hundred people work full-time to keep those services running as reliably as possible.
There's no reasonable way you could provide all the services of Office365 on a single local server for any company of reasonably large size, and even if you had a few servers you'd completely lose the local and geo redundancy features. The ability to have an entire datacenter go offline and only suffer a brief blip in services is something that very few companies have the money or the knowledge to implement themselves.
These days I use whatever email thing the client provides, my in-house software, and PDF most documents that other people need. After that, it's my choice of tools.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"