Microsoft To US Gov't: the World's Servers Are Not Yours For the Taking

Microsoft is currently fighting a legal battle with the U.S. government, who wants to search the company's servers in Ireland using a U.S. search warrant. An anonymous reader points out a new court filing from Microsoft that argues the U.S. itself would never stand for such reasoning from other governments. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith writes, If the Government prevails, how can it complain if foreign agents require tech companies to download emails stored in the U.S.? This is a question the Department of Justice hasn’t yet addressed, much less answered. Yet the Golden Rule applies to international relations as well as to other human interaction. In one important sense, the issues at stake are even bigger than this. The Government puts at risk the fundamental privacy rights Americans have valued since the founding of the postal service. This is because it argues that, unlike your letters in the mail, emails you store in the cloud cease to belong exclusively to you. Instead, according to the Government, your emails become the business records of a cloud provider. Because business records have a lower level of legal protection, the Government claims it can use a different and broader legal authority to reach emails stored anywhere in the world.

Comments

US Government to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess we'll just have to pay you for backdoor access like usual.

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay? HAHAHA ... MS has to give the SOURCE CODE to the government. The US Gov't isn't stupid enough to run windows without the source, so that they can make their own patches, etc. Now... Which dept now gets it... NIST or NSA or.... (?) I'm not sure anymore... but if you think part of the gov't doesn't have the source code for MS products, or for that matter...

The Stuxnet attack shows that the US/Isreal (or whatever the combo was) has access to Driver signing certs... And I wouldn't doubt that it has the 'private' keys for major PKI cert signers.

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[Alain Williams]

Exactly - I was wondering if this is all for show ... convince us Europeans that our data on servers in Dublin is safe from prying eyes in the USA. Once we stop worrying then it will be business as usual, but the heat will be off from the USA. Unfortunately: once suspicions have been raised, those who really care will not forget, so welcome to private pictures of cute pussies and of illicit love letters, but the stuff that they really wanted will, often, be located elsewhere.

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Who exactly is this "government"? and can we kill them?

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[morgauxo]

So? Haven't you been following any other Microsof news? They don't run Windows for their servers, that's just something they sell to chumps. They run mostly Linux servers themselves!

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[Applehu Akbar]

Soon after January of 2009, the US budget deficit, after decades of steadily increasing in complexity, became self-aware. It began interpreting all investigations, suits, elections and other checks on US federal governmental power as threats to its just sovereignty of the world. As we speak, a small group of technologically oriented Republicans is desperately trying to find a way of sending an emissary fifty years back in time to warn humans in the time of the Johnson administration that this is how the world will end.

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

US Government to Microsoft: Remember the DOJ antitrust suit in 1998? You were King of the Mountain back then, and you were kicking us around, you know: "I've never known the government to be a good source of software design ideas."

Well now, it's 2014 and we're still the US government, but Microsoft is small, small, small. Nobody cares about Windows and IE anymore.

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[rioki]

I thought most of their servers where OpenBSD, not Linux... But yea...

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that this is Microsoft trying to prevent US Gov. from snooping on MICROSOFT IN IRELAND. They're protecting their own tax-evading interests, nobody else's.

Crocodile tears from a monopolistic tax-evading snooper.

Captcha: circus

Re:US Government to Microsoft

[DUdsen]

Exactly - I was wondering if this is all for show ... convince us Europeans that our data on servers in Dublin is safe from prying eyes in the USA. Once we stop worrying then it will be business as usual, but the heat will be off from the USA. Unfortunately: once suspicions have been raised, those who really care will not forget, so welcome to private pictures of cute pussies and of illicit love letters, but the stuff that they really wanted will, often, be located elsewhere.

What they are playing for here is not to get the NSA out but to get the shadowy backroom dealers of the federal level to put weight on the open court not to openly declare that date hosted at an american owned data-center falls under US and not EU law regardless of contracts and location. The problem is corporate contracts and government tenders, if an competitor can make an good case with "public evidende" that the an US owned datacenter cannot live up to EU data protection regulation they are cut of from that market entirely. And a court case count a lot more then a set of newspaper articles here. If MS looses this one MS azure and office365 revenue will go down significantly, as they have now given the EU governments all the ammunition it needs to ban American owned companies from bidding without facing IMO/ITO lawsuits.

Microsoft To US Gov't: the World's Servers Are Not

[The Grim Reefer]

US Gov't to Microsoft: "All your servers are belong to us"

It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as usual

[Qzukk]

The government has always claimed that they can show up and take anything that I give to anyone else without any kind of warrant or subpoena, unless the person I gave the item to has the balls to go to the mat for me over it.

Email on a cloud provider server? That's taking candy from a baby, they've probably already cashed their check from the NSA.

If foreign governments read my private emails...

[pigiron]

I'll never get a visa from anybody.

Hiding evidence

[flink]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country. Similarly, if the data in question are related to Microsoft's US operations, then MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US, should be required to produce them.

Re:Hiding evidence

[OzPeter]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country. Similarly, if the data in question are related to Microsoft's US operations, then MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US, should be required to produce them.

And what do you think of MS's rebuttal of that position?

"Imagine this scenario. Officers of the local Stadtpolizei investigating a suspected leak to the press descend on Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany," Microsoft said. "They serve a warrant to seize a bundle of private letters that a New York Times reporter is storing in a safe deposit box at a Deutsche Bank USA branch in Manhattan. The bank complies by ordering the New York branch manager to open the reporter's box with a master key, rummage through it, and fax the private letters to the Stadtpolizei."

Allowing things like this is going down a similar road to "well if the CIA wants to torture foreign nationals, then they can't complain about foreign s[y agencies torturing US citizens"

Re:Hiding evidence

[bondsbw]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country.

I could buy this analogy if the email originates in the U.S. or is destined for and accessed by a person within the U.S. But if neither circumstance applies, then like the airmail scenario the U.S. would have no reasonable jurisdiction.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen the IRS lately? They claim emails are deleted and after the IG for the IRS looked for him it took an ENTIRE WEEK for him to find the tapes with the missing emails. This was to a Congressional hearing.

So, as long as you are down with the DNC you don't have to produce emails for any court hearing. Same thing happened with Holder as well, but he just refueses to hand them over and never claimed they were lost.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Trepidity]

Their analogy also fits how I personally think the case should be resolved. The court seems to be unsure about the personal access of Microsoft's American staff though. In your example, a U.S.-based employee has to be ordered to comply with the German subpoena. But it sounds like in this case, Microsoft's U.S. employees can comply with the subpoena fully themselves, without having to order Microsoft Ireland employees to assist. So the court seems to be leaning towards thinking that in that case, as corporate officers subject to U.S. jurisdiction, they can be served subpoenas to retrieve that data, even if the data is elsewhere—because data isn't a legal person.

You could imagine a kind of really walled-off setup where Microsoft US employees literally can't access Microsoft Ireland data without a Microsoft Ireland employee authorizing it. And then the Microsoft Ireland employee would be directed to only authorize it in accordance with Irish law. The trouble is that that's a really cumbersome way to run an international business. So Microsoft US employees, or at least some of them, seem to have direct access to worldwide Microsoft data.

Re:Hiding evidence

[nbauman]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country. Similarly, if the data in question are related to Microsoft's US operations, then MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US, should be required to produce them.

That's what the tobacco companies did in the 1960s.

They did a lot of research to find out if cigarettes really caused lung cancer and all those other things.

If their research came out favorable to cigarettes, they could have waved it around to "rebut" the Surgeon
General and get the regulators off their backs.

Their researchers found that cigarettes were harmful too.

So the tobacco executives told the researchers to kill all their animals, and destroy all their written results, and their lawyers wrote a few memos summarizing the whole thing. Lawyer-client privilege is the strongest secrecy you can have. Then they sent the memos to their law firm in London.

It finally got out. After a lot of lawsuits, the tobacco companies finally agreed to come clean with everything. But they managed to kill 400,000 Americans every year, and none of them went to jail. Eat your heart out, Osama bin Laden.

Re:Hiding evidence

[quantaman]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country. Similarly, if the data in question are related to Microsoft's US operations, then MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US, should be required to produce them.

Your metaphor is off. It isn't about the court compelling you to produce the document, it's about compelling the foreign confederate to produce the document.

In this case I think the US courts should have some mechanism for petitioning the Irish courts to allow them to perform the search. Justice is still served, but each country still maintains its sovereignty.

Re:Hiding evidence

[bloodhawk]

This isn't similar at all. The information was always outside of the country and kept there, as such the US has no jurisdiction. Just like if someone sent you a letter to your address in Ireland they could not claim jurisdiction over that letter, if they wanted to produce a court order for the letter they would need to do so via Irelands courts (which they can of course do). The US is trying to bypass due process, this will backfire on them and backfire badly as other countries will use it as a precedent to sieze US information from companies as after all storing and using it only in the US is not a legal blocker to china, Russia or any other country from demanding an organization from producing that information right?

Re:Hiding evidence

[vux984]

And what do you think of MS's rebuttal of that position?

"Imagine this scenario...."

That's a good scenario, and it raises some interesting questions that SHOULD also be looked at. But its fundamentally a different scenario.
The part where it breaks down though is that they have a warrant to seize the documents of a New York Times reporter.

The New York Times is a wholly American company.
The New York Times reporter is presumed to be an American citizen. If the "New York Times" were a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutche Bank and the New York Times employee was instead a German citizen and an employee of Deutche Bank ... THEN it would be equivalent.

Lets compare apples to apples.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Sarten-X]

If the New York branch manager is required to follow German orders through normal means, I don't actually see any inconsistency in the rebuttal. The Deutsche Bank branch acts as an agent of the Deutsche Bank, and is subject to the laws of the countries in which Deutsche Bank operates - probably many at once, and probably even some in conflict.

It is the responsibility of the corporation to ensure that its legal boundaries are determined by its establishment. Perhaps Deutsche Bank is merely an investor in an entirely-separate "Deutsche Bank USA", and all executive control is held within US boundaries, with the corporate charter expressly declaring that such foreign investors have no control. It would seem to me that the New York manager could then ignore the German orders all day, because he would be under no obligation to follow them.

Re:Hiding evidence

[theshowmecanuck]

Or Microsoft could move that part of its operation entirely to Ireland and lay off all their American employees. Problem solved, no access from the U.S. needed except for people who use that use Azure from there. I'm sure congress will be behind that solution since they seem happy to have every other job offshored.

Re:Hiding evidence

[FrankDrebin]

Q: WTF has citizenship got to do with court jurisdiction? A: Almost nothing.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Kjella]

So Microsoft US employees, or at least some of them, seem to have direct access to worldwide Microsoft data.

And quite probably the other way around, this would create hell on all forms of international access/accounts as the Germans would find a person working for Microsoft Germany who'd be compelled to access documents on US servers in violation of US law. Let's also not forget that even if you're in your own country and relatively safe you are committing a crime abroad, which could be nasty if you ever decide to go on holidays to a country that has an extradition agreement with that country. Also, if you know people from Microsoft US are going to break the law and let them keep access then that should probably count as some kind of criminal conspiracy, like a security guard not sounding the alarm. I think the EU can shut these jokers down quite quick even if the US courts won't.

Re:Hiding evidence

[radarskiy]

"And what do you think of MS's rebuttal of that position?"

I think that an analogy that dissimilar in the essential point is not instructive.

The US Government is not sending any orders to any entity outside of the US.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Trepidity]

That's true, but seems pretty similar to the case where you have e.g. multiple physical copies of a document. What happens if a document is photocopied, and both Microsoft's Seattle office, and Microsoft's Dublin office, have a copy of the document? My understanding of traditional subpoena law is that either country could subpoena the document in this case, even if it were considered privileged or private data under the law of the other country.

Re:Hiding evidence

[ustolemyname]

You have failed to understand the analogy.
Deutsche Bank = Microsoft
Branch = servers in Ireland
New York Times = EU citizens using servers in EU
 

Re:Hiding evidence

[sjames]

Does the argument change that much if they order a person from the German branch to travel to America to rummage through the deposit box?

Re:Hiding evidence

[Trepidity]

What if the person from the German branch doesn't have to travel to America?

Re:Hiding evidence

[vux984]

You have failed to understand the analogy.
Deutsche Bank = Microsoft
Branch = servers in Ireland
New York Times = EU citizens using servers in EU

I got the first 2 items.
But what makes us confident the 3rd item holds true? I admit I orginally was under the mistaken impression that the warrant was for Microsofts own email documents that they'd stored in Ireland; and I see that was mistaken.

But do we actually know that the warrant is for an EU citizen, using servers in EU?

If so, then yes, I'm with you. That is quite different from what I'd originally misunderstood.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Todd Knarr]

Your metaphor is off. It isn't about the court compelling you to produce the document, it's about compelling the foreign confederate to produce the document.

But in this case it's not a confederate that has the data. The servers in Ireland belong to Microsoft, not another company. Let's reduce it to a simpler case: A sues B in state court in state 1 (A lives in state 1, B is based there and the offense involved occurred there so state 1 has jurisdiction over the case). B stores older documents in a warehouse it owns in state 2. A shows that B has documents relevant to the case and that they're in that warehouse. Can the state court judge order B to produce those documents even though the documents aren't in the judge's physical jurisdiction, or must the judge punt the case to Federal court or a court in state 2 and have them handle that? My sense is that the judge can order B to produce the documents and B would be obliged to comply. If B refuses to comply then A would probably have to go through a court in state 2 if they wanted deputies to go in and seize the documents, but wouldn't if they merely wanted B sanctioned for failure to comply with the court's order.

I suspect the situation here would turn on whether or not Microsoft's operations in Ireland are a legally independent entity that could legally refuse to do what Microsoft tells it to do. I suspect Microsoft's Irish operations walk a very fine line, trying to be independent enough not to be subject to US tax laws but without being independent enough to actually be able to act independently of Microsoft.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Fuzion]

The rebuttal described by Microsoft doesn't involve the German government sending any orders to any entity outside of Germany either. This is the relevant quote from the article:

Germany’s Foreign Minister responds: “We did not conduct an extraterritorial search – in fact we didn’t search anything at all. No German officer ever set foot in the United States. The Stadtpolizei merely ordered a German company to produce its own business records, which were in its own possession, custody, and control. The American reporter’s privacy interests were fully protected, because the Stadtpolizei secured a warrant from a neutral magistrate.”

"[N]o way would that response satisfy the U.S. Government” because the documents held by the foreign company for safekeeping are private letters, not business records. And any attempt to take possession of those letters through a warrant – even one served on the company entrusted with those letters – would constitute a seizure by a foreign government of private information located in another country.

Re:Hiding evidence

[BitZtream]

But they managed to kill 400,000 Americans every year

I'm fairly certain that they didn't actually light the cig for me, nor did they put it in my mouth or anything else.

I started smoking of my own free will, and likewise, I stopped.

They've done plenty of scummy things along the way, but pretending they are the sole responsible party just makes you look stupid and unwilling to take responsibility for your own actions. Man up.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

But the analogy fails to take into account the fact that in the rebuttal, a person outside the country is required to physically do something to comply whereas in the case of Microsoft, only American's would need to physically comply assuming they have access to the data stored elsewhere. That is a completely reasonable assumption.

I don't think they are wrong to oppose this, I just think their analogy fails.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

though corporations were people only with more rights and 'citizens' cant be called on to incriminate themselves? Otherwise technically corporations are nothing BUT data on a balance sheet

Re:Hiding evidence

[quantaman]

Your metaphor is off. It isn't about the court compelling you to produce the document, it's about compelling the foreign confederate to produce the document.

But in this case it's not a confederate that has the data. The servers in Ireland belong to Microsoft, not another company. Let's reduce it to a simpler case: A sues B in state court in state 1 (A lives in state 1, B is based there and the offense involved occurred there so state 1 has jurisdiction over the case). B stores older documents in a warehouse it owns in state 2. A shows that B has documents relevant to the case and that they're in that warehouse. Can the state court judge order B to produce those documents even though the documents aren't in the judge's physical jurisdiction, or must the judge punt the case to Federal court or a court in state 2 and have them handle that? My sense is that the judge can order B to produce the documents and B would be obliged to comply. If B refuses to comply then A would probably have to go through a court in state 2 if they wanted deputies to go in and seize the documents, but wouldn't if they merely wanted B sanctioned for failure to comply with the court's order.

I suspect the situation here would turn on whether or not Microsoft's operations in Ireland are a legally independent entity that could legally refuse to do what Microsoft tells it to do. I suspect Microsoft's Irish operations walk a very fine line, trying to be independent enough not to be subject to US tax laws but without being independent enough to actually be able to act independently of Microsoft.

The problem with this model is you're trying to determine if MS is an American company, an Irish company, or something else. A difficult question considering the games that corporations play with their charters.

And the chain of command doesn't necessarily resolve things. If every subdivision has someone with the authority to view the emails do courts from every country get to access them? Does it matter where the CEO or the relevant VP lives? And while MS is incorporated in the US a lot of big corporations aren't.

The US state example doesn't really apply because although states have different laws they're all under the same ultimate legal system.

Re:Hiding evidence

[crioca]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country.

IANAL but that would seem to be a different situation: If the court requests a document you have and then you mail it to your overseas confederate, then I think you'll be on the hook for something like obstruction of justice.

But if you mail your confederate a document, then later the court requests you to produce it, you can tell them "That's the property of Confederate, who are a different entity. You'll need to request it from them."

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the servers belong to Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd, not Microsoft US, or whatever it's called over there.
Sure, companies are people, but a company can be a different person in every country.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country. Similarly, if the data in question are related to Microsoft's US operations, then MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US, should be required to produce them.

Well, that puts Microsoft in a bit of a tight spot. Most governments have laws that says that their data can't be handed over to another nation or third party.
So on one hand they have to do what the US court says, on the other hand, if they do, no other government can use their services.
If this goes through US-based cloud services will be in for a pretty rough time.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

No but they did actively hide (critical?) information that was very contrary to popular belief and might have changed many peoples minds about smoking. They also launched marketing campaigns that are probably borderline brainwashing tactics for decades convincing people to smoke. So.. yeah.... you are right.. it is pretty much all your fault. moron.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

If the tobacco companies made clear from day 1 that cigarettes are harmful, and still people chose to smoke, then you would have a point. But by withholding this vital information, they directly affected the decision making of all the potential smokers who would otherwise not smoke if given the research results. You cannot blame someone for making the wrong choice if he does not have the information to make the right choice to begin with. The blame has to go to the company for hiding it.

Re:Hiding evidence

[morgauxo]

Who said the data had anything to do with US operations?

Re:Hiding evidence

[morgauxo]

I'm just surprised that hasn't happened yet. They are probably building the office now.

Re:Hiding evidence

[nbauman]

But they managed to kill 400,000 Americans every year

I'm fairly certain that they didn't actually light the cig for me, nor did they put it in my mouth or anything else.

I started smoking of my own free will, and likewise, I stopped.

They've done plenty of scummy things along the way, but pretending they are the sole responsible party just makes you look stupid and unwilling to take responsibility for your own actions. Man up.

Not only did they manipulate you with the most expensive, sophisticated marketing programs the world has seen outside of government, and not only did they get you hooked to the most addicting drug known, they even convinced you that it was your free will, your fault and your personal responsibility.

Re:Hiding evidence

[nbauman]

One of the ways the tobacco industry censored the truth was through advertising in magazines and newspapers. If you go to the library and look through consumer magazines from the 1970s, you can find magazines where 75% of the ads are for cigarettes.

People have studied the content of the magazines, and for the most part, publications with cigarette advertising never published anything about the harms of smoking. Generally speaking, when a publication runs a story that's unfavorable to a product, they let the advertisers know beforehand, so they don't have their ads appearing in an issue that knocks them.

For example, if they had an article on the dangers of air travel, they wouldn't run airline ads.

Same thing with cigarettes. They'd have to lose a whole issue's cigarette ads. I've looked up articles on smoking and health, and I've almost never found them in magazines that run cigarette ads. They were always in magazines like Readers Digest and Consumer Reports.

Re:Hiding evidence

[ToasterMonkey]

If you are a US citizen, I don't think you could get out of producing a document the court ordered you to supply by airmailing it to a confederate in another country. Similarly, if the data in question are related to Microsoft's US operations, then MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US, should be required to produce them.

And what do you think of MS's rebuttal of that position?

"Imagine this scenario. Officers of the local Stadtpolizei investigating a suspected leak to the press descend on Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany," Microsoft said. "They serve a warrant to seize a bundle of private letters that a New York Times reporter is storing in a safe deposit box at a Deutsche Bank USA branch in Manhattan. The bank complies by ordering the New York branch manager to open the reporter's box with a master key, rummage through it, and fax the private letters to the Stadtpolizei."

Allowing things like this is going down a similar road to "well if the CIA wants to torture foreign nationals, then they can't complain about foreign s[y agencies torturing US citizens"

Comparing an email account to a safe deposit box seems more than a little disingenuous because any free email service provider will make it clear as day that "your" information is theirs to do what they please with.

Anything in this privacy statement that the law does not require is just a PROMISE, and they can change their terms on a whim. They SAY "your content" but what puts them in the position to dictate the terms? Read "We may" and "We will not" as "We can"

http://www.microsoft.com/priva...
"We may share or disclose personal information with other Microsoft controlled subsidiaries and affiliates, and with vendors or agents working on our behalf. For example, companies we've hired to provide customer service support or assist in protecting and securing our systems and services may need access to personal information in order to provide those functions. In such cases, these companies must abide by our data privacy requirements and are not allowed to use the information for any other purpose. We may also disclose personal information as part of a corporate transaction such as a merger or sale of assets.
Finally, we may access, disclose and preserve your personal information, including your private content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to:
comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process from competent authorities, including from law enforcement or other government agencies;
protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone;
operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or
protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services – however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement."

Yes I KNOW Microsoft (and Apple, Google, Yahoo, etc.) are TRYING to make the claim this is not their information to give away when it's inconvenient to do so, but they sure are hanging onto their right to do it aren't they all?

Re:Hiding evidence

[Nemyst]

So if the data were stored in manually-loaded magnetic tapes, the legal standing would change? Because that's exactly what you're saying.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Nemyst]

They've done plenty of scummy things along the way, but pretending they are the sole responsible party just makes you look stupid and unwilling to take responsibility for your own actions. Man up.

The problem with that assessment is that hindsight is 20/20. This is exactly like the radioactive cosmetics of the early 20th century. People gave radium and other such substances quasi-magical properties, but few, even scientists, suspected the damage. There was no way for you as a consumer to know that the product you were using could be dangerous. In the case of radium, there were enough quick deaths that the link was made publicly and usage fell, but for tobacco the side-effects took much longer and were actively masked by the companies. In both cases, someone saw a way to make a quick buck, and the consequences be damned. In the latter, though, they kept going after getting ample proof that they were killing people.

Don't blame the victim.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

From discussions I have had with others both from MS and other cloud providers this is actually the approach that is being taken. The plan is to be in a situation where the US employees can't actually access the data regardless of what court orders are presented to them. Sadly offshoring all the work is actually the only viable solution as other countries seem to have some respect for international relations whereas the US government has zero.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

when dealing with physical documents photocopies are generally not considered valid as it is too easy to doctor a document and then use a photocopy to hide the fact it was changed. most courts will demand originals.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Solandri]

The New York Times is a wholly American company.
The New York Times reporter is presumed to be an American citizen. If the "New York Times" were a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutche Bank and the New York Times employee was instead a German citizen and an employee of Deutche Bank ... THEN it would be equivalent.

That's an even more dangerous line of thinking. It would result in every major corporation in the U.S. immediately moving their HQ to a more warrant-friendly country and reincorporating there. Your citizenship has nothing to do with any activities you conduct abroad. When you do things in other countries, their laws take precedence, not the laws of your country of citizenship.

The core issue is that in the past, when you did things, you did them in the country you were currently in. So if I traveled to Macau and gambled, I was not subject to U.S. or my home state's gambling laws. Heck, if I traveled there and killed someone, the U.S. can't file murder charges against me. Physical location was an easy way to determine legal jurisdiction.

But in our modern networked world, it is now possible to do things outside the country you are in. I can now gamble in Macau over the Internet from the comfort of my living room. Physical location is no longer adequate to determine jurisdiction. It hasn't happened yet, but eventually some hacker is going to mess up some hospital's ICU computers in another country and kill someone. This issue needs to be resolved somehow by the International community in a manner which is consistent and reciprocal without being destructive.

Microsoft is correctly pointing out that the Justice Dept. unilaterally declaring that it is privy to any documents held abroad simply because the company holding those documents happens to be HQed in the U.S. is self-destructive because of its broad overreach. If the Justice Dept. gets their way, basically no non-U.S. entity would ever want to house records with a U.S. company even if those records are kept in their country, because of the U.S. government's overreaching powers to obtain those records. Those companies would be forced to reincorporate outside the U.S. if they wished to continue keep international customers.

A much more constructive approach would be like extradition treaties - countries develop treaties where they agree to respect each others' search warrants under certain circumstances.

Re:Hiding evidence

[sl149q]

That is the point.

If the US court wants this data it needs to subpoena the document in an IRISH court and have the Irish division of Microsoft (which operates under Irish law) deliver it.

The current situation is that the US court wants to compel a company (owned by a US company) that is based and operated in Ireland to do something that may break Irish law.

Re:Hiding evidence

[gsslay]

Let's look at it this way.

Say, for instance, it has been suggested a popular soft drink gave you cancer. The company who make the drink have investigated this, found it to be true, but are spending millions covering up, denying and rubbishing the suggestions. We're talking a massive scale lie and fraud here. They are being so successful at doing this that you are convinced, and are happily continuing to consume the drink. You've got a can of it by your computer right now.

A few years from now you're going to discover you've been lied to, and it's almost certainly going to kill you.

Still think you'll have nothing to complain about? Did they force you to buy that can? Are they putting it to your lips? Nope, it's all your decision. The fact that you are being tricked doesn't matter. Man up, sucker.

Re:Hiding evidence

[tburkhol]

Their analogy also fits how I personally think the case should be resolved. The court seems to be unsure about the personal access of Microsoft's American staff though. In your example, a U.S.-based employee has to be ordered to comply with the German subpoena. But it sounds like in this case, Microsoft's U.S. employees can comply with the subpoena fully themselves, without having to order Microsoft Ireland employees to assist. So the court seems to be leaning towards thinking that in that case, as corporate officers subject to U.S. jurisdiction, they can be served subpoenas to retrieve that data, even if the data is elsewhereâ"because data isn't a legal person.

I see. So, in your mind, a company with an office in (say) North Korea, could be compelled to provide a copy of their entire cloud network in order to comply with the government's search for spies and terrorists? Or that Lockheed Martin, which does business in NK, could be compelled to turn over designs for the F-22 Raptor, based on a NK court order (regardless of any validity a US court might assign to that order)?

Re:Hiding evidence

[Sique]

But in our modern networked world, it is now possible to do things outside the country you are in. I can now gamble in Macau over the Internet from the comfort of my living room. Physical location is no longer adequate to determine jurisdiction. It hasn't happened yet, but eventually some hacker is going to mess up some hospital's ICU computers in another country and kill someone. This issue needs to be resolved somehow by the International community in a manner which is consistent and reciprocal without being destructive.

The way to handle that is easy: Send a request for administrative assistance to Ireland, and then an irish judge will decide if Microsoft Ireland has to comply.

Re:Hiding evidence

[tburkhol]

The US Government is not sending any orders to any entity outside of the US.

No, it is requiring a person in the US send orders to an entity outside the US. I hardly see where the fact that the foreign response is automated makes any difference. They're essentially trying to compel a corporate office to order its subsidiary to provide some information, relying on the power of the parent company over the subsidiary as a proxy for any direct legal power over the subsidiary.

Re:Hiding evidence

[tburkhol]

Finally, we may access, disclose and preserve your personal information, including your private content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process from competent authorities, including from law enforcement or other government agencies;

This is exactly the point under contention. MS is claiming that their good faith belief in this case does not compel their Irish operations to comply with a US court order. Clearly, their US operations would comply with the US order; likewise, the Irish company would comply with an Irish order.

The argument MS makes is that, if a US court can compel actions by foreign subsidiaries, then their future "good faith belief" must admit valid legal processes in other countries to compel actions by US subsidiaries. This, completely independent of whether US practice would consider the foreign process (or even the foreign government) valid.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Trepidity]

They're not trying to compel Microsoft Ireland to do anything though: they're trying to compel Microsoft U.S. to retrieve the data and turn it over to the court. Since Microsoft U.S. has access to the data, they are able to do that. If Microsoft Ireland were firewalled off so U.S. employees could not access Ireland data, it wouldn't be an issue.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Trepidity]

If a North Korean Lockheed employee has access to the F-22 Raptor designs, I have no doubt that a North Korean court could compel him/her to turn them over. My guess is that Lockheed's NK-based employees do not have access to the F-22 Raptor designs precisely for that reason.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit! *this* juvenile sophistry is a +5 insightful ? ? ?

let's change the factoids a little to put your inhumanity in sharper relief:
XYZ Corp has effluent from its manufacturing process that it A. claims is not harmful in any way, shape or form, B. does not disclose all kinds of eee-vil toxins beyond the ones admitted to... XYZ has its scientists run tests, finds out the shit they spew IS toxic, WILL kill/damage people/etc, and it IS getting in the aquifer... they continue to stonewall, hide test results, deny their toxicity, deny they amounts and types of toxins being released, etc, etc, etc...

so-o-o-o, YOU -dear authoritarian fuckwad- are going to maintain it was the PEOPLE's own fault for continuing to drink/use water that was contaminated but XYZ Corp maintained was perfectly safe during this time ? ? ?

urine idjit

Re:Hiding evidence

[BitZtream]

Lets put common sense on it. Anyone with half a clue, especially a smoker realizes when they get up in the morning after smoking for any period of time that its not good for you. You have to be an idiot to not understand what it does to you, and you are a complete moron if you believe what some company selling you a product says. You can potentially ignore that it causes cancer out of ignorance, but cancer is really not the biggest problem with smoking from a health perspective.

Yes, they made it intentionally more addictive, but it didn't kill me when I stopped, did it? They did nothing (and haven't been legally allowed to for 30 years at least) to entice me into smoking my first one.

I maintain that there is personal responsibility involved in the decision to smoke. I'm sorry you can't cope with reality, but there it is. Are you so fucking retarded that you think there are companies that don't lie and spin things daily to get you to buy their products? If so, that just makes you an idiot, not me.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't work, the subpoena could be served to a corporate officer instead who can order the employee to produce it. Unless they invert the ownership relationship where MS Ireland owns and calls the shots for MS US, Microsoft is stuck on this one. As they should, multinationals shouldn't be allowed to dodge court orders by playing shell games. Control is the only thing that matters, MS US can bring it back, they should be forced to do so.

Re:Hiding evidence

[Whorhay]

I'm not actually certain that the US recognizes any other nations laws as superceding theirs. If a US citizen commits some crime in another country they can still be held accountable for it here in a US court of law. The easiest example that I can think of is some guy who got married and went on a honeymoon in australia where he is accused of murdering his wife by disconnecting her oxygen supply while scuba diving. He was prosecuted both in Australia and here in the states. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

The gambling example isn't really relevant because normally gambling laws don't make gambling illegal. Those laws typically outlaw business models that center on gambling. You gambling is incredibly small fries, and would be difficult to prosecute for because the evidence would be somewhere held by people over whom the courts have no leverage.

Microsoft is different here because even though the evidence is located elsewhere Microsoft still has plenty of assets here in the US that the courts can use as leverage.

In the case of that newlywed murder one of the interesting details of the case was that Australia wouldn't send him back to face trial here unless he would not be faced with the death penalty. The US was asking for him back, and I suppose there was plenty of things the state department could have done to leverage that decision. But it came down to the primary driver being the Alabama State AG and since he didn't have much leverage he had to consent to not push for the death penalty.

All of this isn't usually of any concern to vanilla citizen or even a vanilla criminal. But when you are an international corporation it's a very different ball game. What do you think has become of US internationals that had significant assets in Russia when all those sanctions started going into affect? Every large international company has armies of lawyers to help them make decisions and figure out if any given country is worth doing local business. What's funny is that even the US military has had to learn this lesson. When Saudi Arabia closed all the US bases there the DoD lost a lot of expensive infrastructure that had been built up over the years. So lesson learned, the DoD started building extremely cheap temporary facilities in partner countries where there wasn't a very long term expecation of residence.

Re: Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's privacy statement represents their will, and their opinion.

Are you suggesting a good legal defense is "we told our customers we wouldn't do it"?

Re:Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not wise to threaten the US government.

Re:Hiding evidence

[david_thornley]

That's exactly what I'm thinking. A US court can subpoena stuff from US citizens, or people in the US. It can't compel an Irish citizen in Ireland to do a thing. Therefore, if a US resident can provide something, a US court can subpoena it. If it requires somebody in Ireland to do something like load a tape, then the US court cannot require it. It may be able to force Microsoft US to request the data from Microsoft Ireland, but if Microsoft Ireland says "No, we legally can't do that", then it seems to me that the data cannot be obtained with just a US subpoena.

Re:Hiding evidence

[david_thornley]

Let's put common sense in this. Nobody has internal senses so accurate that they can tell what something is really doing to their body. Lots of people realized that smoking was not good for them, but they couldn't make an informed decision as to how bad it was, and how important to stop. When they made an uninformed decision because the information wasn't available, that's one thing. When they couldn't make an informed decision because the information was suppressed by the cigarette companies, that's another.

Re:Hiding evidence

[gstoddart]

Except this is data on Irish servers, about people who aren't Americans, and covered under applicable Irish laws.

American law has no jurisdiction there, and America can't just act like their laws apply anywhere in the world.

And, what you have to remember about "MS, being a corporation incorporated in the US" is that the Microsoft which operates in Ireland is a separate corporation incorporated under Irish law.

The fact that there is another corporation operating in the US called Microsoft doesn't mean the US magically has. Because the Microsoft that operates in Ireland and acts as a way of hiding revenues? That is a separate legal entity operating under the laws of another country.

Incorporation is only in the country you do it it.

It is complete bullshit to claim that since MS is a US corporation, that its wholly owned subsidiaries are subject to US law.

Otherwise Microsoft would pay all of that tax money they hide in Ireland to the US.

This isn't about hiding evidence, this is about the fact that the US legal jurisdiction simply doesn't apply, and that America doesn't enjoy some special ability to have its laws apply outside of its own borders.

Re:Hiding evidence

[excelsior_gr]

Correct. The fact that the document was once in a letter does not make it private. As soon as the government does not snoop in the mails/emails while in transit, everything is fair game once it has reached its destination.

Re:Hiding evidence

[radarskiy]

They are trying compel Microsoft US to provide evidence that it has already stipulated that it has access to. The fact that a multinational running multiple subdivisions in order to play fast and loose with national laws may end up being hoist by its own petard is not the problem of either the US government or the Irish government.

Re: Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

In international law there is a principle that a state's administrative power is limited to the state's territory. It is illegal to carry out administrative actions in foreign territory. This includes moving around electrons on foreign territory which is neccessary to access data physically stored on foreign territory.

Nice tax loopholes and H1Bs you got there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Be a shame if something were to happen to them...

Re:Nice tax loopholes and H1Bs you got there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Be a shame if something were to happen to them...

They have to leave those alone, otherwise who will fund the campaign trails?

Everybody know and understands this argument

[Tokolosh]

It is obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

However, the US government - all three branches - does not do right or wrong, it only does what it can, and it can do a lot. It is an entirely amoral entity.

Re:Everybody know and understands this argument

[puzzled_decoy]

But remember, only parts of it are amoral. The people in charge of regulatory agencies and welfare are unicorns and rainbows with everyone's best interest at heart, so we should trust them completely.

Re:Everybody know and understands this argument

[suutar]

Hardly. But they can still be better than those they're regulating.

The US government? Hypocritical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Time and time again the US government has shown that it is not worried about being hypocritical in matters of foreign politics. The Golden Rule obviously doesn't apply to them, so I'm questioning why it's being even brought up in a legal defense. Yeah, doing that is not right, but when has that ever stopped any government, much less the US one?

Microsoft is an Irish company

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Microsoft, Apple, and Google all assign their profits to their headquarters incorporated in Ireland. So this is the US subpoenaing a foreign company for assets they store on foreign soil.

The international court could therefore subpeona the personal (non government server) e-mails of George Bush to see if he talked about his love of torture.

Re:Microsoft is an Irish company

[Sarten-X]

Well... sort of.

They move their profits to their Irish subsidiary, but the US government may still have some legal authority to enforce their will, especially if it can be argued that the Irish branch is wholly controlled by US-based entities. Those American entities may be compelled to, in turn, force the cooperation of the Irish corporation.

Re:Microsoft is an Irish company

[Anonymous Coward]

Those American entities may be compelled to, in turn, force the cooperation of the Irish corporation.

"Force", in my mind, implies more than just the appropriate PHB from Microsoft USA calling up the appropriate PHB from Microsoft Ireland and asking for the information. And in my opinion, if it does require anything more than that, it is an illegal request.

To bring it down to a personal level, if a US citizen is the sole holder of some piece of property in Ireland, then assuming the situation warrants it, I would have no problems with them being legally compelled to hand over things stored on that property. But if the property in question is co-owned by an Irish citizen, the US government can fuck off.

Re:Microsoft is an Irish company

[Anonymous Coward]

So the Irish courts freeze all the assets of their Irish counterpart and the American entities to release their emails in the USA?

If all their money and IP is in Ireland, who do you think has more power?

Re:Microsoft is an Irish company

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument ignores that fact that citizens and businesses don't have the same legal rights. A citizen has more right to say "fuck off" than a business does, at least in most countries I've been in, it's just that businesses have deeper pockets with which to pay their lawyers so often have a better chance of actually doing so.

So, what MS is saying is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...a server in every small business and a PC on every desktop was actually a good idea after all, because this Cloud thing means you own nothing, much less have control over it.

Agreed.

Re:So, what MS is saying is...

[tburkhol]

...a server in every small business and a PC on every desktop was actually a good idea after all, because this Cloud thing means you own nothing, much less have control over it.

The interesting thing will be, once they successfully turn your operating system and applications into a service, whether their service, running on your hardware can be compelled to transmit data from your hardware to the FBI. Or to the FSB, since MS has offices in Russia.

US TLD, US jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you hide the data on a physical server in another country, they can still claim jurisdiction over it because of this.

Yep, they're not the US Government's

[neminem]

Reminds me of a great exchange I had with my crazy grandmother, that I still remember despite being like 7 years old at the time: I was whining because I was bored of sitting in her hotel room and wanted to go play in the pool. She said something like, "don't you know the world doesn't revolve around you? It revolves around *me*!" (She said it jokingly, but if you knew her, you would know that she didn't really mean it as a joke.)

On the same note, Microsoft clearly doesn't believe the world's servers are the US government's for the taking, because they know full well, they're *Microsoft's* for the taking. Remember that incident with no-ip a few months ago, where Microsoft declared no-ip was letting spammers use its domain, snatched like a million domains belonging to no-ip users, and proceeded to completely botch everything up? That was awesome.

Re:Yep, they're not the US Government's

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the constitution. The 4th amendment applies to 1) united states citizens regardless of where they are in the world, and 2) anyone who comes to the united states. If you are in neither of the two categories then you need to use good encryption to protect your communications.

Re:Yep, they're not the US Government's

[david_thornley]

Read the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment does not mention geography, and uses the words "people" and "person" instead of "citizen".

So let's have end-to-end encryption

[presidenteloco]

and be done with these silly arguments.

Re:So let's have end-to-end encryption

[Greyfox]

Woah just slow down there buddy! We can't have end-to-end encryption because... um... look at the monkey! Look at the funny monkey!

Re:So let's have end-to-end encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would people do that when they are having so much fun bashing the government?

The Golden Rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Were I MicroSoft I would not be so quick to evoke the golden rule. I think there are more than a few times I would ask Microsoft use the golden rule in my relationship with them.

Re:The Golden Rule

[thesupraman]

So, you are saying that China and Japan rule?

Re:The Golden Rule

[HiThere]

So Microsoft are ALSO hypocrites. That's no surprise. But whose records are to be produced? If they are those of an EU citizen, then I don't see the US govt. has reasonable grounds. If they are those of an international corporation, then... What if they are those of a foreign government?

I tend to think that MS is correct here...I'm just not sure (possibly because the idea that MS could ever be correct sticks in my throat).

Re:The Golden Rule

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much yes.

The US Is Like Fantasia

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Atreyu: But I can't! I can't get beyond the boundaries of Fantasia!
[G'mork laughs and Atreyu gets a little angry]
Atreyu: What's so funny about that?
G'mork: Fantasia has no boundaries.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

> Seems like the new boss is no different than the old boss

The old boss had nothing to say about the situation, so you're wrong again.

hypocrisy

[phantomfive]

If the Government prevails, how can it complain if foreign agents require tech companies to download emails stored in the U.S.? This is a question the Department of Justice hasn’t yet addressed, much less answered. Yet the Golden Rule applies to international relations as well as to other human interaction.

And yet the government can complain. The government has no problem not being a hypocrite (if you have any doubt on this, go ahead and look at the multitude of trade agreements we have).

Also, lawyers and Microsoft combining to call the government a hypocrite? This is like a cesspool of double standards, each trying to be the worst.

Re:hypocrisy

[dkf]

Also, lawyers and Microsoft combining to call the government a hypocrite? This is like a cesspool of double standards, each trying to be the worst.

The really big problem Microsoft has (and numerous other large US companies that run cloud services with datacenters in the EU, such as Amazon and IBM) is that if they give in with this, there will be lots of EU customers who will leave as soon as possible, and nothing that they'll be able to say or do will stop it short of relocating the company HQ and ownership structure entirely outside the US so the US government and courts really won't have jurisdiction (but will instead have to work through international treaties). This will be caused by the perception in the EU of overreach by the US, and the EU's generally fairly aggressive data protection laws.

At the very least, giving in on this will cost MS a huge amount of money to put right, and there'd be a real danger of an EU competitor being able to grow large enough to lock them out while they're sorting it all out (other US corporations would be in the same position).

Extradition

[mutherhacker]

Ireland must extradite those servers to be prosecuted in the U.S.!! We must put international mechanisms in place to make that possible.
Also a server should be able to hide in a foreign embassy to avoid extradition, and seek asylum.

Re:Extradition

[taustin]

There actually is a treaty that would allow prosecutors to go to a Irish court and get a search warrant. Why they haven't done so, nobody knows (though I suspect the standards of probable cause are stricter in Ireland).

Re:Extradition

[Fire_Wraith]

Correct. The Irish Government's position is that the Mutual Assistance Treaty covers this, and is the appropriate method for the US to use to get access to the data.

Re:Extradition

[DUdsen]

There actually is a treaty that would allow prosecutors to go to a Irish court and get a search warrant. Why they haven't done so, nobody knows (though I suspect the standards of probable cause are stricter in Ireland).

Extradition treaties usually require two things and a few softer clauses.

The main one is not the standard of probable cause but the dual criminality statute of the treaty i.e. an Irish court cannot issue a search warrant to investigate activity that is not illegal in Ireland etc, and if this is a DA on a fishing expedition for a whistle blower it's likely he cannot find any Irish law that applies.

The softer rule that often play a part as well is that you cannot be extradited to face punishment the extraditing country does not allow.

Go microsoft!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait did i say that out loud?

Not legal

[sjbe]

I could buy this analogy if the email originates in the U.S. or is destined for and accessed by a person within the U.S. But if neither circumstance applies, then like the airmail scenario the U.S. would have no reasonable jurisdiction.

Yes they would if the document was under subpoena. If you mail the document before it is subject to a request for it then you might (emphasis might) be ok, but once the document becomes relevant to a court proceeding you are obligated to produce it AND to ensure that it remains producible. If you mail away or destroy a document then the court generally has the right to treat that action as incriminating. And well they should otherwise everyone could simply destroy any document or mail them away to avoid self-incrimination.

Re:Not legal

[Anonymous Coward]

In this example, the files were stored in Ireland before the case began.

This is equivalent to Airmailing an important document before it became relevant.

The Golden Rule

[Anonymous Coward]

He who has the gold, rules. And yes, this absolutely applies in international relations.

USA USA!

[iXam]

But the USA is free to torture and demand whatever they want from whomever they like. I thought that was established.

Hiding evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

That argument isn't valid. If you did that, then you'd be right: you probably shouldn't expect to get away with it. The actual equivalent situation is that you sent the message via airmail a year ago because that was it's destination, and *now* the government wants to read it.

Bill Gates is NOT a constitutional scholar

[Vinegar Joe]

Obama is. So who do you trust?

Re:Bill Gates is NOT a constitutional scholar

[Anonymous Coward]

Which one do I have dangling over the edge of a cliff with a waiting pack of wolves below?

Re:Bill Gates is NOT a constitutional scholar

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[kwbauer]

That is patently false. Warrants have always been used to access storage units and safe deposit boxes. Have there been exceptions? Certainly as there are always exceptions but those exceptions also generally get thrown out.

The real problem is that too many people have been way too happy to promote the thinking that if it didn't exist the late 1700's, then it wasn't covered in the Bill of Rights. The first example of this is guns and liberals are still making this claim on a daily basis.

Personal effects should no be limited to where they are stored or what they are stored on.

Ibid

[pigoon]

The real crime is that legalese hasn't been reduced into a programming language so we can outsource these lawyers.
Pretty sure we could reduce all lawyers into a Tit-For-Tat game theory program.

While not (the universe is dead)
Whatever you say; I disagree
End

Ibid.

Re:LOL

[kwbauer]

He did. We are all hoping for a change to occur.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why everything must be encrypted. So when they get their grubby hands on the data, it's useless to them.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[timeOday]

But the ad-driven Internet has effectively relegated personal documents to business records. When google is already reading and adding commercials to every email, it's much harder to argue these are intended to be private, person-to-person communications. Google's multi-billion dollar business actually is snooping, and its users consent to that.

Proton Mail

[erp_consultant]

Just wondering if anyone has used this?

https://protonmail.ch/

It promises end to end encryption - and they don't have the encryption key. So if Uncle Sam comes knocking they have nothing for him :-)

Re:Proton Mail

[Triklyn]

... you just gotta live with the fact that someone somewhere is going to be in control of your data. you have to trust them to do what they're saying.

Microsoft says the US wants a pony.

[radarskiy]

Since the US government is not ordering a search outside of the US, why should we listen to any other claim that Microsoft US makes after that point?

Re:Microsoft says the US wants a pony.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, Ireland was not part of the US.

Re:Microsoft says the US wants a pony.

[Anonymous Coward]

So when did Ireland become a state of the US? would have thought something that big would have at least made the news.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[msauve]

" too many people have been way too happy to promote the thinking that if it didn't exist the late 1700's, then it wasn't covered in the Bill of Rights. "

<sarcasm>Yes, that's true. Freedom of the Press obviously only applies to Gutenburg-type manual presses, not high speed lithography and photocopiers. And certainly not electronic media, which the founding fathers could have never envisioned.</sarcasm>

What?!?!

[BenSchuarmer]

Why do they hate our freedom?

Reduced protections were decided on in the 1990s

[Anonymous Coward]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported on and fought this battle in the 1990s with email. We essentially lost and the precedent set didn't make a whole lot of sense by the time it was set. Essentially the courts have ruled that while email is in transit that there are legal protections. However after a certain amount of time (I forget what it is exactly, but lets say 90 days for the sake of it) that legal protection expired because it is considered to be no longer in transit.

Now this was begun before webmail became popular and it assumed that you downloaded your email from a central server onto your computer. It never considered the fact we have imap and webmail.

In any event the result of this ruling is that your webmail and imap email is essentially accessible to the government and has little in the way of legal protection.

This is a problem I think we can solve today and I'm personally responsible for efforts to solve this via what I'll coin as “in-clouding” (probably not the best description of it, but its the best I got right now). Essentially what this means is users maintain there own micro-servers. Email is received directly, but sent through a smarthost (ie as many mail servers block SMTP from dynamic addresses, etc). This should in theory solve the loophole that the government uses to easily gain access to your email due to the reduced legal protections. As your always the one in control (not a third party) the government can't just seize your emails after 90 days without a warrant. Using a third party SMTP server (smart-host) is not a problem as the emails won't generally be stored on a third party server for any length of time.

If your interested in this check out libreCMC.org and ThinkPenguin.com. Nothing is available as of this moment, but the idea is to eventually release a totally free RYF (Respect Your Freedom, a certification issued by the Free Software Foundation) certified device for $50-100 USD that is easy to hookup and de-clouds us without the loss of convenience of webmail. Webmail is still possible, but the difference is now your connecting to your own personal email server.

This also has one other additional benefit. Governments who want to seize one individuals email (think Snowden & Lavabit shutdown) can't get a warrant to seize or force a central ISP / mail service provider to surrender keys to the entire castle which will allow them to search not only the individual persons email account, but every customers email/account.

The solution is simple

[BitZtream]

stop outsourcing your dirty laundry if you don't want anyone to see your tread marks in your tighty whities.

You gave up your privacy when you put your data on someone else servers. I'm not saying it should be legal for the government to claim it in any shape or form, domestic or foreign, but when you put your data on someone else servers you already gave up your security.

Re: The solution is simple

[jdawgnoonan]

Do Irish citizens living in Ireland agree to abide by all applicable US Laws when the create an Outlook.com account? No they don't. You do realize that US law doesn't apply in Ireland, right? Your point is irrelevant. Also, why is email so different than the U.S. Mail?

Real answer

[Anonymous Coward]

... can it complain if foreign agents require tech companies to download emails stored in the U.S.?

Yes, it can. Despite the WTO making some anti-American rulings, the USA has appointed itself administrator of global commerce (in particular finance, oil, air travel, pharmaceuticals and cash) with very few countries willing to upset the US government.

Why is OPEC selling oil below its demand-driven price? Because NATO wants to damage Russia.

The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[Taco Cowboy]

All of us have to face this fact, whether we like it or not --- The government of the United States of America is currently THE ONLY 800LB GORILLA IN THE ROOM

They get to do stuffs to others, anything at all, including meddling in internal matters of foreign nations, overthrowing foreign governments, even to the extent of assassination of foreign leaders. Yep, you name it, Uncle Sam has attempted it

If ever any foreign government dares to carry out the same thing it would be bombed back to the kingdom come by Uncle Sam

In comparison, getting access to servers located at foreign soil is small fly

Re:The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[morgauxo]

Yah, we need a second 800lb Gorilla. That way they can point nukes at each other and keep soldiers with their fingers hovering above the buttons. Kids can go back to learning "duck and cover" in school and McCarthy's grandson can go on a witchunt just like god intended.

Re:The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

They get to do stuffs to others, anything at all, including meddling in internal matters of foreign nations, overthrowing foreign governments, even to the extent of assassination of foreign leaders. Yep, you name it, Uncle Sam has attempted it

By that token, Putin's Russia is another 800lb gorilla. The difference being that Putin has generally been more strategic, more subtle, and generally more successful in his meddling. So far, at least.

Re:The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

The clown can stay, but the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has to go.

Re:The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder where China stands in this. They have the source code for Windows, own the physical hardware masks, are extremely offensive in their espionage and hacking tactics.

The game is played by three 800 pound gorillas and a very cunning midget who keeps the gorillas fighting each other for entertainment money.

Re:The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we need a second 800lb gorilla to prevent anything like that from happening. Mutually assured destruction has a way of making people play nice.

Re:The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you missed reality class then because the primary example we currently have for MAD is the Cold War.

Re:The only 800lb gorilla in the room

[beastofburdon]

I assume the midget you speak of also has his finger hovering above a launch button and wears a yamaka.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

All your base are belong to us!

Subpoening records

[Anonymous Coward]

So the next time the government is subpoenaing the records of a small business in the Google cloud, the resulting line of trucks contain the business records of Google and those of their clients. On paper.

LOL this is nothing more than a back channel story

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the feds already have the evidence they need. It was provided by the NSA. It can't be used in a US court. So, build the back channel story. Sue microsquishy for the emails ... win in court with the acquistion of the emails and presto! Bob's your uncle. Now we can proceed to prosecute!

Cheers ... and always remember to be polite as the feds see all and know all, they just have a hard time using it until the back story is in place

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Anonymous Coward]

I am interested in knowing under which legal theory can the US govt. issue a warrant (subpoena) and access my lockbox in Ireland (or anywhere else in the world for that matter) without going through the local courts first.

That's right...

[elliott666]

That's right, they belong to Russian hackers you insensitive clods!

Ireland is a tax haven for corporations

[plasticsquirrel]

Ireland is used by the big tech companies as a tax haven so they do not have to actually contribute back to the US economy that has enriched them. Apple also bases itself in Ireland so they can avoid paying taxes in the US, so they basically pay nothing in taxes to any government. That's right, they contribute back nothing to schools, parks, libraries, etc. They are the "takers" in modern society. In China, the government is starting to go after Microsoft because they basically pay no taxes anywhere.

It's amazing to me how American society will look with suspicion at anything the federal government does, but give corporations a pass for taking and giving nothing back at all. Google does the exact same stuff, and yet people still take them seriously as "doing no evil." Next time you pass through an impoverished neighborhood, think of Google's huge datacenters, and how it pays nothing back to society despite its absurd profits. It's no wonder that more American people are falling into poverty with when they let huge corporations take advantage of their system. The Microsofts of the world are the true robber barons, squatting on American soil and enjoying use of its infrastructure while dodging the bill.

Re:Ireland is a tax haven for corporations

[JBMcB]

Your argument would hold more water if it wasn't the US government's idea for Ireland to become a tax haven in the first place:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Re:Ireland is a tax haven for corporations

[plasticsquirrel]

Your argument would hold more water if it wasn't the US government's idea for Ireland to become a tax haven in the first place:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

Nonsense. Just because a US consultant in Ireland mentioned Puerto Rico's economic successes in passing, does not equal an endorsement of US tax evasion by the American government. And even if the US government agrees with the "Double Irish" (actually this loophole is being closed in a few years), it doesn't mean that the American people would endorse having their money funneled into private corporations that don't even pay taxes. There are plenty of other small countries getting rich through economic injustices and obfuscation as well (e.g. Switzerland).

Re:Ireland is a tax haven for corporations

[JBMcB]

"Just because a US consultant in Ireland mentioned Puerto Rico's economic successes in passing, does not equal an endorsement of US tax evasion by the American government."

If the state department didn't think it was a good idea it probably shouldn't have been in the report recommending economic stimulus for Ireland, no?

"It's amazing to me how American society will look with suspicion at anything the federal government does, but give corporations a pass for taking and giving nothing back at all."

This is the issue. Federal government puts out a report saying tax havens seem to work as economic stimulus. Country enacts tax haven rules. Federal government flips out at companies taking advantage of tax haven status of said country.

The government just looks incompetent. Listening to Planet Money, which is by no means a crazy "wingnut" media outlet, will reinforce this view pretty regularly. Look up the debacle involving cotton subsidies in Texas, where the federal government violated a treaty it created, and ended up having to subsidize cotton farmers in Brazil as well. 'Cause that's a good use of tax dollars, right?

Re:Ireland is a tax haven for corporations

[radish]

Apple could certainly pay more tax than they do (and I would totally support legal changes to require that), but to call $5.3 billion "nothing" is a bit of a stretch.

Re:If foreign governments read my private emails..

[TheGratefulNet]

well, there's always mastercharge and bank americard.

(wait - what year is this, again?)

I am impressed.

[jdawgnoonan]

Microsoft is fighting the good fight. Yes it is in their own best interest, but the US Government is currently their biggest threat to remaining a globally viable company. Microsoft currently seems to have more interest in the public good than our government does.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[morgauxo]

I don't think one counter-example really disproves his point.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Zxern]

So you would argue that its ok to read my cable bill because timewarner puts ads for geico in the envelope?

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how Google waxes self-righteous about privacy rights when they are raping everyone for commercial gain.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Anonymous Coward]

Google can't fine me a bajillion dollars and throw my ass in jail till I die.

I masturbate in the bathroom. I pull my blinds down, but they don't cover every little crack, someone who goes up 15 feet, could possibly squint through a crack and see me fapping. Does that make it hard to argue that I wasn't trying to have privacy? How fucking stupid.

They say they also aren't "reading the emails" per se, just lifting keywords from it. Who makes the same argument? Who? Oh wait, that's right, NSA. They aren't spying on you.... they're just looking for keywords in phone conversations, etc, for probable cause.

Look, I have a right to be secure in my persons, houses, papers, and effects in possesions from the government conducting unreasonable searches and seizures. Just because I don't have a perfect lock system, doesn't mean they get to open my door and file through everything because my obvious intent didn't perfectly align with my actions.

The government uses intent a lot for crimes. Well, the person's intent for email is to have their inbox private. That should be good enough. The government's role in all of this is to pass laws making my inbox a lot more secure, having standards for encryptions, etc.

I'm sorry I live in a country where most citizens see nothing wrong with the government mandating shitty backdoors into everything.

subtitle

[Anonymous Coward]

should have been "all of your servers are belong to us!" -- "back off" is lame.

MS fighting the good fight

[quax]

How the times have changed.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Anonymous Coward]

And certainly not electronic media, which the founding fathers could have never envisioned

And somewhere, there's a court case that forced the government to accept that. Just like how the supreme court eventually had to rule that the government cannot just listen to your telegraph, telephone, internet, cell phone (wait, that one's still coming once someone figures out a way to get standing on stingray usage).

You do know there was a time Dr.s advertized cigs

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know there was a time Dr.s advertized cigs and even prescribed them, in particular for women with nervous conditions or those who wanted to lose weight.

Ever hear of "Virginia Slims"? What exactly do you think that name was designed to evoke?

Corporations in general are quite evil, the cig pushers especially so.

Advertising and Marketing are brainwashing, and effective.

Yes they do take primary responsibility.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[dryeo]

Well the second amendment is kind of an anachronism. The only other bill of rights that included arms that I'm aware of is the Bill of Rights (1689) which allowed the right to bear arms for self defence. When it comes to arms, much has changed in the 200+ plus years since the 2nd amendment was written. Most countries have police that are responsible to the people, arms have totally changed, in the 18th century arms included swords and such as well as firearms and firearms were barely superiour to a sword and a long bow in trained hands was still way superiour. Really now a right to bear arms is kind of like a right to use a vehicle. I'll also note that in my country I can buy arms in the form of a long gun whereas in the States I wouldn't be allowed due to some stupidity almost 40 years previous and it is the right wing as much as anyone who likes the segregation that having a class of citizens called felons brings.
Meanwhile most newer bill of rights (often under different names) have equivalent rights to most of the rest of the American bill of rights (excepting the 3rd, 9th and 10th) as they are truly fundamental. Even then they often have weasel words so we don't have Supreme Court decisions going against the clearly written rights. Things like being able to limit speech in the interest of national security or to slow down child porn. As a bonus my countries bill of rights includes electronic communications along with papers and such.
Most Americans forget that the Constitution was a compromise that was only supposed to be in effect until a better one was written, not the final word.

Local data is private.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the bank teller says they will cut up the old credit card for me, I reply that I can do it myself. If they get insistent, I tell them I haven't got it with me. If you rely on someone else for your security (holding the keys to your house), then you should occasionally expect to get robbed. Putting your data on someone else's servers incurs the problem of security between you and their servers (wide open internet), and you should then worry about 1) theft of your data by people running the servers, 2) theft of your data by people breaking into the servers 3) loss of data by profit maximizing corporations that would sacrifice my data for profits, 4) national governments wanting to seize the data on a cloud service in a fishing expedition. A local NAS is cheaper, and noone need know that I even have a NAS box.

Re:Local data is private.

[gweihir]

Excellent summary of the problem with all things "cloud"! (Private clouds that _you_ own and operate being the sole exception.)

Re: It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as u

[theCzechGuy]

That is bad analogy. The postal service would have to do that. In that case, all bets would be off, because if its OK for postal service to open the mail, then it is certainly OK for the government to do so. Whether its OK for them to do that if its actually Irish mail is a different question...

Re: It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as u

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that people thing it's not wrong. It's just that they realized they can't do anything about it. The unthinkable has happened: people have grown up. One of the things that tell adults apart from children is the realization that some battles can't be fought and some goals can't be reached. Ever. We have matured, like the Europeans have. They don't fool themselves, you see. There's a reason the EU is not a democracy. Their history shows that wealthy and powerful elites rule, and that this is the natural way of the world. Better to recognize this and move on, institutionalize it, than to waste time and wringing hands believing otherwise.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has always claimed that they can show up and take anything that I give to anyone else without any kind of warrant or subpoena, unless the person I gave the item to has the balls to go to the mat for me over it.

In the US there's an exciting process called Civil Forfeiture that doesn't require warrant or subpoena.

I think the EU laws for a similar process are more restricted, but wikipedia quotes legalese.

USA USA!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not free to do so, they just do so. As it happens, the US has the biggest stick. Luckily for the rest of the world that won't matter worth a damn if they wave it too much, even the US will die from a million bee stings.

You see it wrong

[aepervius]

"I'm fairly certain that they didn't actually light the cig for me, nor did they put it in my mouth or anything else."

But they did. They paid and sponsored programs to show smoking happy people, you couple in love, or "heroes" all lighting cigarettes. Never sponsored a program showing you a 50-70 guy dying horribly of cancer. They influenced the culture to to make people smoke more and more, all the while knowing they were sending death sentences down the line. WITHOUT that cultural influence,a dvertising, and glorification in the media of the cigarettes until recentely, I can wager that you would not have lighted a cigarette. In fact now that smoking stopped being cool, cigarette smoking in high school has dropped like a stone in the last 40-50 years. 50% of youth smoked by the end of high school post war (50ies), nowadays it is less than 20%.

Your smoking was not your decision alone, but also a product of a culture of praising smoking in media.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[tburkhol]

Warrants have always been used to access storage units and safe deposit boxes.

That's because you rent those spaces. They're "yours" in the same way as the apartment you live in is "yours." Do you want to guess whether the police need a warrant to search the pockets of trousers you left at the dry cleaner? Neither google nor microsoft assign you a particular range of sectors on an HD, nor a particular slice of RAM, so safety deposit box or other forms of rent are a terrible analogy for cloud-based services. It might be an acceptable analogy for a co-located server, but not for a cloud service. The postal system is a much better analogy, and the government is still not allowed to intercept your mail without a warrant.

Oh, so now we're following the golden rule?

[JasonGoatcher]

If we're going to be using the golden rule to decide things, how about applying it to the rules in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or what about some of those insane copyright violation rulings?

Lots of important precedents are going to be set if people start using the Golden Rule, but I'm pretty damn sure it's not going to happen.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[drinkypoo]

Email on a cloud provider server? That's taking candy from a baby, they've probably already cashed their check from the NSA.

ha ha ha check from the NSA. The only check the NSA gives you is whether you're complying with their illegal demands not to inform the populace as to what they're doing, so they can see if you should be carted off to the gulag

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Vitriol Angst]

So you agree with Johnny Ives then?

FBI Letter Opening

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Government puts at risk the fundamental privacy rights Americans have valued since the founding of the postal service. " The FBI opened thousands of postal letters up until 1966, both international and domestic. They gained their legal powers during WWII, the red scare, and Cold War. Mail was opened if you were on a "watch list", or on a random basis. Rights to privacy have never truly existed in the US, people just didn't realize it until the modern day.

Not governments, Microsofts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, Government. Back off, They are all there for Microsofts taking. I guess thats why M$ was stealing all the user information from their mail client.

Re: It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as u

[Totenglocke]

The unthinkable has happened: people have grown up.

Since when is giving up and letting yourself be treated like shit been considered "being a grown up"?

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Totenglocke]

By the time the Bill of Rights was written, the Founding Fathers had seen the invention of the first machine gun and had personally issues a 22-round "semi-automatic" rifle to Lewis & Clark for their famous expedition. To claim that "they didn't intend for modern weapons" to be covered by the Second Amendment is absurd. They knew exactly where guns were going (which, in all reality, guns haven't changed much in the past century) and they wanted to ensure that the people had the means to fight back against the government.

Also, "Most countries have police that are responsible to the people" is laughable, seeing how the police are only responsible to politicians and routinely violate the rights of "the people" at both the request of their political masters and to satisfy their own desire to feel powerful.

Supporting Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Microsoft ...

How does microsoft plan to stop them...

[Methadras]

At the point of a gun? Remember the golden rule. He who has the guns makes the rules.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[david_thornley]

The Bill of Rights (ten of the amendments, at least) were ratified by the end of 1791. The Lewis and Clark expedition was because of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Guns that could fire more than once, once loaded, were pretty old, but the first automatically loading guns were mid-19th Century, and I don't think anything less can be called a "machine gun".

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Totenglocke]

Sorry, the Girandoni rifle was MADE (1779) and was standard issue for the Austrian army before the Bill of Rights was ratified (thus the Founders knew about it) and it was later issued to Lewis and Clark because of its capabilities. The Puckle Gun was the first machine gun and it was invented in 1718. Again, they knew exactly where firearms technology was going when the wrote the Second Amendment.

Operative word: "Taking"

[BenSchuarmer]

The government isn't really "taking" them if the owners are still able to use them.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Anonymous Coward]

I masturbate in the bathroom. I pull my blinds down, but they don't cover every little crack, someone who goes up 15 feet, could possibly squint through a crack and see me fapping. Does that make it hard to argue that I wasn't trying to have privacy? How fucking stupid.

our thermal cameras have you surrounded!

release your penis and come out with your hands where we can see them!

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[david_thornley]

Girandoni air rifle: self-loading (with the gun tipped up), one shot at a time. Roughly equivalent to the bolt-action rifles that equipped most armies in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Not to be confused with a machine gun. Puckle gun: closer to an externally powered automatic rifle, having 11-round clips that could be put in and fired fast. Neither had the features of anything anybody would describe now as a machine gun, which would at least mean being able to fire numerous bullets with one depression (and holding) of the trigger, and automatic loading.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[Totenglocke]

So because something wasn't IDENTICAL and was an earlier version, you're claiming that they're completely different and that those who used them couldn't see where things were going? That's a stupid as saying that since 20 years ago we only used "primitive" hard drives with moving parts and low capacity, scientists and tech enthusiasts didn't know that hard drive storage capacity and read / write speeds would continue to increase.

Re: It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as u

[kwbauer]

No, that is exactly the point I was trying to make. Just because communication is delivered differently today does not mean that we should lose our rights. Email should always have been viewed the same as post mail. I think it wasn't because a large segment of society wanted to do away with guns that were newer than the muzzleloaders available circa 1800 so the mantra that if it didn't exist in 1800 then it is covered by the Constitution was born. We either expect the spirit/intent of the founding fathers to be followed or we reinterpret the words daily to fit whatever fad we find interesting; we can't do it both ways. Now guess which side of the political spectrum hates the phrase "original intent"?

Re: It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as u

[kwbauer]

That is basically the definition every dictator wants to use.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[kwbauer]

Okay, let's pretend for a moment that your overall theme of "we no longer need individual, private citizens to own guns to ensure a free society" and explore how we can achieve that in the US without ignoring our rights as codified in the US Constitution. First, we propose an amendment that removes the 2nd amendment from the document. This would be the same way that the 21st amendment did away with the 18th. Then, we realize that the 10th amendment mentions that many there are far too many rights to enumerate in a document and that if the constitution does not grant the federal government explicit permission to restrict a right, then the federal government does not have the ability, legally speaking, to restrict that right. Armed with this knowledge, we don't just include wording in our proposed amendment to repeal the 2nd amendment but we also add language granting the federal government the permission to restrict the right to keep and bear arms (own, carry and use).

This way, we are operating within the framework laid out by the constitution for altering the constitution and causing it to be a "living document". Simply restricting rights as we go because we think society has changed enough to warrant doing so is what causes the government to think it can read emails but not snail mail or read what you store in google docs but not what you store in your rented storage unit.

It really is that simple, yet here we are, arguing that no we can ignore the constitution here but not over there when we need do neither because the constitution tells us how to actually alter it in an orderly fashion. But thanks for being a prime example of what I was talking about and possibly helping msuave figure this out as well.

Re:It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as us

[kwbauer]

Oh yes, let's continue finding ways to make your personal effects not yours instead of finding ways that just because they are on a computer and the founding fathers couldn't envision it then it is completely different and fair game. The original intent of the founding fathers was that when people stored their documents and such in places where people normally store documents and such that the police need a warrant to gain access. Why is this such a difficult thing to understand? Why is everybody so willing to find ways to lose rights instead of fighting to keep them?

Re: It's bullshit, but it's the same bullshit as

[theCzechGuy]

I agree. What I was trying to say is Google adding ads to email is not the same as a cable TV adding ads to a letter with a bill. In one case, it is the sender adding ads (perfectly OK from civil rights point of view), in the other it is the delivery service itself modyfing mail that should have been confident (the opposite of perfectly OK). Perhaps just a rhetoric detail though.