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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 It's incredibly outdated, yet it still governs many internet-related rights for U.S. citizens.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."
Fooled ya!
Once upon a time, we expected our intelligence agencies to spy overseas but leave our local privacy alone.
Now, spy agencies tap every domestic communications channel, but apparently spying overseas is bad.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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...
There are a whole lot of people in the US who have no business whining about the government "rewriting" laws to suit its purpose. They have been perfectly happy with that when it suits their purpose.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Would the US tolerate a foreign company operating in the US doing what complies with its home country laws but that violates US laws? I doubt it.
In case there's someone here that doesn't know since the media has buried this story of racism and hate, this is the new ruler of Microsoft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Thompson
He even hates the Democrats so much that he supported Obama in 2008 pretty hard and spent six figures of his own money in support because he knew that his dumbass's support hurts Obama. That is how much he hates Obama. He fucking supported him to fuck him. Those Republicans are devious. Microsoft was regressive under the rule of that Gates tyrant, but Thompson makes Gates look kindly and progressive in comparison. You have to be so full of hate to hate African Americans and actively campaign for their deaths and be African American yourself!
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.
You can change your law no matter what, your laws don't extend beyond your own borders.. US laws are not valid in say United kingdom or sweden..
Film at 11. This will really hurt MS's credibility overseas, what little it has. It will drive people to move off Hotmail, Live, and God forbid their Microsoft Account (which is used to login to Windows machines now!!! Can you imagine if BUSH were doing this? I can't stand either Bush or Obama in this area so you partisan hacks know that up front. Only hope is Rand Paul or Ted Cruz at this point (unless you know of others?? I'm seriously open to anyone right now, please respond!). Gay marriage, universal healthcare, yadda yadda.. etc..all are trivial compared to this issue of humongous government that is treating us like subjects not like their bosses.
No, its just a foreign investment by a US company. Like T-Mobile is the US investment of German company Deutsche Telekom, or Sony Corporation of American is the US investment of Japan's Sony Corp. But the whole thing is rather moot, since because of mutual legal assistance treaties its very likely that a foreign court wouldn't block a US court order to produce evidence if such an order were legal in that country. Microsoft is arguing against extraterritorial application of US law, but courts have ruled in the past that the US can do it. It just depends on whether the foreign government will oppose such an order. And I don't believe that Microsoft has argued its cased before a European court, have they?
Well, the first and last time I installed iTunes, just to check it out, it installed Safari and Bonjour without my approval. It also automatically scanned my music library, retagging and renaming my stuff without input or consent. That is the definition of malware and installing something as utterly worthless as Bonjour was probably for spying/phoning home.
Are you too young to understand why Microsoft earned the nickname : The Evil Empire? Or are you just completely uninformed and willing to sound like a fool? If this seems rude to you, it is because you know you have no idea what you're talking about.
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!
This is a new low for Slashdot...
What happened to the nerds that were there 15 years ago ? Are they all dead ? How can we communicate with tech-unsavvy people who decided to hang here ?
Every install Java? Forget to tell it you don't want that browser bar? Much as I hate to say it, installing superfluous software is mainstream.
Got any evidence that Bonjour is phoning home or spying? If not, I'd remove that tinfoil hat, as it seems to be concentrating the mind control rays.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
because of mutual legal assistance treaties its very likely that a foreign court wouldn't block a US court order to produce evidence
I think this is correct. But I believe that the problem here is that the FBI is expecting a foreign government to comply with one of its national security letters. In other words, no courts, no warrants.
As to whether Microsoft Ireland is a seperate legal entity in the eyes of the Irish legal system, that's an issue for Irish law as well. In the USA, a US subsidiary of a foreign parent is expected to comply with US law.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
And your branch is doing business in Ireland which means it's subject to Irish law, which says that if you hand over those documents you're breaking it.
So, MS, you may decide now which law you wish to break.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They have their business in mind. And they know exactly that nobody is going to entrust them with their sensitive data if this could at any time get siphoned away by US government who just might have an interest to hand over valuable research data to US companies that just so happened to stuff the campaign purse of whoever is in charge.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The other countries already do this. And no, the US doesn't like it. No one does.
Every country expects their laws to be followed and considers them supreme to all others. If a law is broken in the US, the US expects to be able to subpoena the evidence even if it is in another country. And other countries feel the same way.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Every American manufacturer and service provider is suspect because of these government demands. Digital equipment may have back doors for the convenience of government spies. Cloud services are probably being watched. Software may have embedded spyware.
If you were a foreign company or government would you trust anything coming from the US? Even a US company or individual can't trust our own companies. Our government is making us non-competitive worldwide. (Open source products may be safer.)
...omphaloskepsis often...
Why should it tolerate a multi-national corporation getting itself into a situation where observing the laws of one nation put it violation of another?
No individual country has an obligation to make it easy or hard for a multi-national corporation to comply with the laws of multiple countries simultaneously. That is a responsibility the corporation took on when it entered business in multiple countries.
Irrelevant. The US court isn't ordering Microsoft Ireland to do anything, it is ordering Microsoft US. If Microsoft US can't get it back from Microsoft Ireland that is not the US court's problem.
I stopped keeping a large digital music collection when I upgraded iTunes and it decided to nuke my entire library on installing the newest version. 80 GB of music, all perfectly tagged, all gone. That was back around 2007, whichever version that was.
Needless to say, I was furious. I also no longer use iTunes.
Would you be willing to pay Microsoft US to store you data if one day they could say "whoops, we gave it to Microsoft Ireland and now it is illegal to get it back. Here's your bill"?
Irrelevant. Microsoft US already stipulated that they could aces the records.
Nobody is going to entrust their data to Microsoft US if one day it turns out they can't get your data back from whatever foreign country they shipped it off to.
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?
Yes, Anonymous Coward was born a LONG time ago. Unfortunately, he is also immortal.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I don't know about them but I learned machine language on an HP Tester with 256 bytes (yes, I said bytes) of memory back in 1983.
For those of you that don't get it, 256 bytes of memory is 2048 bits, or 0.25 k.
Yes, we really did write entire programs that would fit into a pair of tweets, or less.
Guys (or Girls, it doesn't matter), this isn't the thread for an Apple Fan vs Hater "discussion".
Besides, to properly list the various activities involved, it would take way more space than anyone else cares to scroll through.
On top of that, the Haters aren't going to become fans no matter how much you disagree, and the Fans aren't going to see past their apple colored glasses and agree with the haters.
Thanks, now please get back to the task at hand of declaring microsoft evil for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, or whatever flavor of corp bashing is in this week.
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?
What are you smoking. Sure the feds can't use a warrant obtained in the US to go kick in a door on foreign soil, they have to ask the local government their nicely to do it for them (unless its in the Middle East than we just do it anyway); but they certainly can subpena records.
You think for example during the Enron trials if they had just said "gee SEC we don't have to comply with these subpenas for records because we do all out accounting out of our Mexico City office", the feds would have responded "Oh well than I guess there is nothing we can do". No they would have been held in contempt and punished that way.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You wouldn't want the IRS using these laws to get to your overseas accounting records, would you?
look man it's simple business.
they will lose the cloud services to local players if they have to act as if everything was stored in the usa.
what's shameful is that other governments aren't bitching to usa. some of them may be obliged to sue google, apple, ms etc if they export private data in ways that is against the local rules(like giving them to usa without engaging in a legal request in said country).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's funny when Google, Apple or Microsoft complain about privacy issues.
Google, sure. But not Apple or Microsoft. For companies like Google and Facebook, you are the product and privacy is a roadblock they work around. Microsoft and Apple represents a different kind of company that wants you to buy actual products from them, and behave far better in this area. When customers desire privacy, these will try to sell you products that delivers this.
Are you too young to understand why Microsoft earned the nickname : The Evil Empire? Or are you just completely uninformed and willing to sound like a fool? If this seems rude to you, it is because you know you have no idea what you're talking about.
Microsoft acquired that nickname because of nefarious business practices, not gathering and selling customers' private data.
Yes, that's exactly the problem here. Ireland wants MS to comply with its law. That law does allow for legal assistance to the US, but the US would have to honor the process, which they plan not to do.
Simply transferring the "bits" to a US server by itself would already be a legal problem. Possibly. So far nobody bothered to have it taken to court, but "simply" pushing data from a EU storage center to the US ain't so "simple" legal wise. Or what would you say if they "simply" pushed every mail on a US server on a server in the EU because it's "simpler" to store it there?
You accuse MS of "making it more difficult for [the US] law enforcement ... under the ruse of protecting its customer's privacy". So what's their real agenda? Making it difficult for the US law enforcement 'cause it's fun to do it? Yeah, that sure wins them contracts. Especially government contracts. And no, MS certainly doesn't give a shit about customer's privacy. Where's the money in that? But they must comply with the Irish law and of course simply handing over data to a foreign nation won't make them very attractive as data storage providers for people and companies outside the US.
But turnabout is fair game, and hence the question must be asked, why can't the US simply follow due process? Ireland already signaled that they will comply with a legal assistance request, why not simply go through with it? Because the US doesn't want Ireland to know when it siphons data away?
Does the US have something to hide?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Then where's the problem? Tell Ireland what's cooking and they will certainly assist, issue the warrant for the data and MS will not only comply with all laws concerned but certainly gladly hand over the data.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Quite a few of us graybeards here son.
It's funny how corporations have amassed huge stockpiles of cash, too much to even pass out to VIP's. They use it to buy back shares and manipulate the stock market. There's no way corporate taxes would curb this sort of behavior.
Cheap storage VM.
Still, this made me laugh.
Classic anonymous, definitive, condescending, semi-violent reply : Slashdot is back !