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Microsoft: Feds Are 'Rewriting' the Law To Obtain Emails Overseas
An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was written in 1986. It's incredibly outdated, yet it still governs many internet-related rights for U.S. citizens. Microsoft has now challenged Congress to update the legislation for how online communications work in 2015. The company is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the government over a court order to release emails stored in a foreign country to U.S. authorities. In a new legal brief (PDF), Microsoft says, "For an argument that purports to rest on the 'explicit text of the statute,' the Government rewrites an awful lot of it. Congress never intended to reach, nor even anticipated, private communications stored in a foreign country when it enacted [the ECPA]." In an accompanying blog post, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith wrote, "Until U.S. law is rewritten, we believe that the court in our case should honor well-established precedents that limit the government's reach from extending beyond U.S. borders. ... To the contrary, it is clear Congress's intent was to ensure that your digital information is afforded the same legal protections as your physical documents and correspondence, a principle we at Microsoft believe should be preserved."
It's funny when Google, Apple or Microsoft complain about privacy issues.
Maybe that should tell you something about how overweening the US government has become...
This isn't about spying its about compliance with records requests and privacy laws. EU has all kinds of (frankly downright crazy) privacy laws around email. That make it difficult to hand records to anything third party (that isn't an EU or member nation organ) and still be in compliance with the letter of the law; the US government is arguing that our courts etc have the power to subpena records on overseas servers.
This puts companies like Microsoft between a rock an hard place, they essentially can't follow both sets of rules if US jurisdictional rules are not limited in scope to well, the US.
I am not sure what the right answer is here, but it is a problem.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The feds cant use a warrant obtained in the USA to require a US based company to hand over physical documents stored in a foreign company, why should they be able to do it for electronic documents?
If the feds REALLY need this data so badly, why dont they just go to Ireland or wherever the data is being held and get a warrant from there?
You're a US based corporation, subject to US law,
Are you certain? Isn't it possible that Microsoft Ireland is a separate corporate entity from Microsoft USA?
Have gnu, will travel.
Two sides of the same coin, isn't it? The government wants data about foreigners, from a foreign place. They want, in short, to spy. Their chosen method of attack is to pressure people in the USA who happen to have access to that data, as opposed to e.g. placing a mole inside a foreign organisation, but the tactic used does not change the goal of the mission.
EU privacy regulators don't have a great reputation I agree, but perhaps once the most productive parts of America have been ruled for decades by a totalitarian communist state that has informers in every street, you might not see the rules as all that crazy.
Indeed. ACA employer mandate causing politically inconvenient layoffs in election years? Punt that down the road. Three times. Yay! ACA Cadillac plan excise tax giving your union constituents heartburn? Punt that one to 2018. Yay! Immigration laws angering your constituents? Ignore/rewrite that stuff. Yay! Medicare Advantage cuts have the AARP up in arms? Pencil whip that one out of existence. Yay!
NSA playing fast and loose with your papers and effects? (selective) OUTRAGE! (selective) OUTRAGE!
A government powerful enough to deliver all the social justice you demand is powerful enough to exercise its own prerogatives.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Privacy? None of the companies care about privacy. But they care about losing business. And that's something that can happen very easily if the US can simply say "fork it over" when it comes to data stored in their data centers abroad.
The insecurity is already bad enough for their business, and if your congresscritters don't act quickly and decide against it, US companies will be an absolute no-go for data storage for companies in Europe and even more so in the middle east. Knowing that the US government could at a whim decide that they want to have all your email traffic means that companies will decide against US companies when it comes to storing their data. Simply out of self interest.
And in the current climate, being able to say that no US company gets a hold of your precious data is also good PR.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So how is it then when "Target Canada" or other such companies go bankrupt, that "Target USA" isn't liable for all the debts they left behind?