This week saw the submission of ten
amicus curae briefs filed from a combined
87 individuals, businesses, and associations in support of Microsoft's challenge to a US search warrant for an email stored on a data center in Ireland to the court. The fight between the US government and the Windows maker centers around US law's reach into a customer's private records when the records are actually stored in another country.
In a
post on the Microsoft blog on Monday, Brad Smith, General Counsel and Executive Vice President Legal and Corporate Affairs, said that Microsoft is not trying to prevent law enforcement from investigating crimes and keeping communities safe, but the US already have treaties and agreements in place to obtain evidence housed in other countries. This, explained Smith, was an opportunity for the US to lead the way in updating those agreements to bring them in line with current technologies.
Microsoft maintains that "unilateral use of a search warrant to reach email in another country puts both fundamental privacy rights and cordial international relations at risk." To say nothing of the continuing damage it could do not only to international confidence in US based companies to keep their information secure, but by other countries employing the same tactics to get at data stored on servers here in the US.
The list of tech companies supporting Microsoft's position that the US is overreaching its authority include Amazon, AT&T, eBay, HP, Rackspace, Verizon, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Apple. The iPhone maker's presence is significant, in that it is also under pressure from a government agency to loosen its policies on consumer privacy.
The confrontation started when Microsoft was served with a search warrant related to a drug investigation, but the account in question was located in Ireland. US investigative agencies do not have jurisdiction over foreign countries and their assets, and must go through proper international law enforcement channels. The fight has implications far beyond the particular drug investigation; if the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is re-interpreted as allowing US agencies to demand records stored on multi-national corporation's foreign servers, it would cripple cloud-based services and US credibility for technology companies making international deals.
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