Judge: US Search Warrants Apply To Overseas Computers 502
jfruh (300774) writes Investigators in a criminal case want to see some emails stored on Microsoft's servers in Ireland. Microsoft has resisted, on the grounds that U.S. law enforcement doesn't have jurisdiction there, but a New York judge ruled against them, responding to prosecutors' worries that web service providers could just move information around the world to avoid investigation. The case will be appealed.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
So would you be in favor of China being able to subpoena any / all of Microsofts records, regardless of where they are stored?
Re:It's almost sane(really) (Score:3, Informative)
Why would "the USA mind"? Any country is free to issue warrants for whatever it wants. But, in practice, it can only enforce them within its jurisdiction or via treaty.
The US can enforce its warrant against Microsoft because Microsoft operates within its jurisdiction. Microsoft has to decide whether it values more operating in the US or whether it values the privacy of its foreign operations more. I think it's pretty clear how that's going to shake out.
Re:Murica (Score:4, Informative)
But of course the US also has anti-hate speech:
In 1942, the Supreme Court sustained the conviction of a Jehovah's witness who addressed a police officer as a "God dammed racketeer" and "a damned facist" (Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire). The Court's opinion in the case stated that there was a category of face-to-face epithets, or "fighting words," that was wholly outside of the protection of the First Amendment: those words "which by their very utterance inflict injury" and which "are no essential part of any exposition of ideas."
Re:It's almost sane(really) (Score:5, Informative)
But this is how it already works. For example, China could say to Google "give us access to G-Mail or we'll just block it completely, may be even kick your company out". Then it's a game of chicken. But China does have the right under their laws to block G-Mail or ban Google, as well as to demand unreasonable things from resident companies as the price of doing business. Laws everywhere have always worked this way. This is not new.
Now the question: if (beyond a certain point) businesses really have no choice but to deal with corrupt regimes, and customers have no choice but to deal with businesses that deal with corrupt regimes, what protects consumers in one jurisdiction from corruption in another? The answer is competing laws. If China imposes harsh penalties for failing to do X, but the U.S. or Europe impose equally harsh penalties for doing X, then businesses torn between them actually have some refuge through ceded responsibility.
This is exactly how U.S. bribery laws work: "We would love grease your palms, great Poo-bah, but U.S. law says that if we do then we can't do business there, which would mean we also don't have business to do here, so please don't even ask." When there is risk of cross-corruption in the market, it is the government's responsibility to step in and throw up a wall.
(As a side note, this notion of ceded responsibility is why there are some industries that actually petition for _stronger_ regulations. For example, it's common in some parts for large arms dealers to have to "sweeten the pot" with government buyers by agreeing to pay for side projects, such as the construction of a hospital, as a condition of sale. This is a cost arms dealers would rather avoid, so they petitioned Congress for years to have such "gifts" declared a form of illegal bribery.)
Clearly you're not Canadian. (Score:5, Informative)