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Google, Unlike Microsoft, Must Turn Over Foreign Emails, Rules Judge (fortune.com)
Every year Google receives more than 25,000 requests from U.S. authorities for "disclosures of user data in criminal matters," according to a U.S. judge's recent ruling. But this one is different. An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
A U.S. judge has ordered Google to comply with search warrants seeking customer emails stored outside the U.S., diverging from a federal appeals court that reached the opposite conclusion in a similar case involving Microsoft. U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter in Philadelphia ruled on Friday that transferring emails from a foreign server so FBI agents could review them locally as part of a domestic fraud probe did not qualify as a seizure...because there was "no meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest" in the data sought.
"Though the retrieval of the electronic data by Google from its multiple data centers abroad has the potential for an invasion of privacy, the actual infringement of privacy occurs at the time of disclosure in the United States," Rueter wrote... The ruling came less than seven months after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said Microsoft could not be forced to turn over emails stored on a server in Dublin, Ireland that U.S. investigators sought in a narcotics case.
Google announced they'd appeal the case, saying "We will continue to push back on overbroad warrants."
"Though the retrieval of the electronic data by Google from its multiple data centers abroad has the potential for an invasion of privacy, the actual infringement of privacy occurs at the time of disclosure in the United States," Rueter wrote... The ruling came less than seven months after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said Microsoft could not be forced to turn over emails stored on a server in Dublin, Ireland that U.S. investigators sought in a narcotics case.
Google announced they'd appeal the case, saying "We will continue to push back on overbroad warrants."
US courts might have legal power over Google US, but it still has none over Google EU.
That was the point of the Microsoft ruling. Rulings like in this Google case can put companies (and by precedent, people) in an impossible position where in order to comply with one country's laws, they're forced to break another country's laws. Kinda like the U.S. policy that U.S. citizens have to pay U.S. taxes on income earned abroad could hypothetically cause a U.S. citizen to owe more than 100% in taxes (if the combined tax rates of the U.S. and other country exceeded 100%).
Other countries avoid the problem by accepting that their laws end at their borders, and if they want something from another country they have to work with that country for joint law enforcement action or extradition. But for some reason politicians and judges in the U.S. keep thinking U.S. law should apply all around the world.
I believe a federal judge just ruled that "copying isn't theft, since the owner still has his copy". I know I've heard that argument before somewhere. Interesting precedent.
Only a minority of joe schmoes believe that copyright infringement is theft. Everyone else, including federal prosecutors, know that it is not. That's why we have laws addressing copyright infringement; if it were theft, you wouldn't need any new laws to prosecute offenders, because we already have laws addressing theft.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Kinda like the U.S. policy that U.S. citizens have to pay U.S. taxes on income earned abroad could hypothetically cause a U.S. citizen to owe more than 100% in taxes
No it can't. You claim a Foreign Tax Credit for any income tax paid to a foreign government and it's deducted from your tax payable in the US. For example if your US tax rate was 35% and your foreign tax rate was 30%, you would pay 30% to the foreign government and then 5% (35% - 30%) to the US government.
See: IRS Publication 514 https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pd...
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