Microsoft Continues To Resist US Warrant For Irish Data

Bruce66423 writes: Microsoft is back in court over the claim by the U.S. authorities that because it is a U.S.-based company, it can be ordered to ignore the rules of the countries it's operating in. "If the U.S. government is permitted to serve warrants on tech companies in the United States and obtain people's emails in any country, it will open the floodgate for other countries to serve warrants on tech companies for the private communications of American citizens that are stored in the United States in a data center owned by a foreign company," said Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith. Apple and other tech companies are fighting back as well. Actually, the U.S. firms may be missing a trick here; because the U.S. government charges a far higher rate of corporation tax than others do, U.S. companies are at a disadvantage. So it seems to make sense for the tech firms in the firing line to use this harassment as an excuse to move their domicile overseas... nothing to do with the tax advantages, honest! We're making a principled stand to resist government encroachment.

Comments

Re:I agree with Microsoft here.

[FlyHelicopters]

Your reply tells me you don't understand the current issue.

This is Irish data, physically localed in Ireland, that the U.S. Government wants.

The U.S. Government is asking MS to break EU laws to give them what they want.

Re:if you can't do it legally, legally you can't d

[lgw]

Microsoft operates a major data center in Ireland, like all the cloud providers do, and l'd bet they have a large tech support presence there as well, as many major tech companies do. It's not like they just have a PO Box: quite a bit of their EU business really is done from Ireland. It's the mix of low labor cost and tax incentives that works for many companies.