Microsoft Agrees To Contempt Order So It Can Appeal Email Privacy Case 123
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft made news some weeks ago for refusing to hand over customer emails stored on its Dublin, Ireland servers to the U.S. government. The district judge presiding over the case agreed with the government and ordered Microsoft to comply with its demands. On Monday, Microsoft struck a deal with the U.S. government in which the company would be held on contempt charges but would not be penalized for it until after the outcome of an appeal. The district judge endorsed the agreement (PDF) on Thursday.
About Time (Score:5, Insightful)
First time I've wanted to actually compliment Mickeysoft on something in years.
Re:About Time (Score:5, Interesting)
First time I've wanted to actually compliment Mickeysoft on something in years.
You think they're doing this for the right reasons? Wakey wakey!
Right or not - if the EU is too weak to force the US to back down with these laws, maybe money is the way to go.
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Right or not - if the EU is too weak to force the US to back down with these laws, maybe money is the way to go.
It is out of EU's jurisdiction, what they can do is to fine Microsoft into bankruptcy until they start following the law. Microsoft is probably quite aware that this might be a problem and thus they decides to fight in the US courts.
Many (if not most) governments around the world have laws in place that says that their agencies can't outsource services to companies that hands out sensitive information willy nilly. If Microsoft has to hand over the data then many of their large customers have to look for alt
Re:About Time (Score:5, Insightful)
They know they won't win. I think MS is trying to force a clear judgment so everyone going forward knows what the rules are. My understanding is that they don't have a good case because the person in the case is a US citizen. If I commit a crime and the evidence is in a Hilton hotel room in the UK nobody expects Hilton to hold onto that evidence just because it happened to be in one of their hotels outside the US.
So I think the concern by other countries is over done. In this case it's a US citizen and a US company. But MS wants that clearly spelled out to reassure people.
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Exactly! (someone should mod this up he gets it). Microsoft wants this crystal clear so everyone understands the scope of US courts. If the data goes onto Azure it is subject to Washington State, Nevada State and Federal courts, period. Take it up with the US government not with Microsoft.
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If I commit a crime and the evidence is in a Hilton hotel room in the UK nobody expects Hilton
Everybody however expects U.S. police to go the U.K. police and courts who will check if it was a crime in the U.K. in the first place then ask the U.K. Hilton to hand over the data, aka due process .
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If I commit a crime and the evidence is in a Hilton hotel room in the UK nobody expects Hilton
Everybody however expects U.S. police to go the U.K. police and courts who will check if it was a crime in the U.K. in the first place then ask the U.K. Hilton to hand over the data, aka due process .
The problem here is that the evidence is the property of a US company. The US can't send in police to seize the evidence overseas, but it can punish the owner of the evidence until they voluntarily turn it over.
It is like refusing to hand over an encryption key - they may not have the ability to seize it without cooperation, but they can still beat you with a hose.
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No, the evidence is not the property of a US company. The evidence is the property of a US citizen and is being held by a foreign subsidiary of a US company and is, therefore, exactly like the hotel example.
The world really would be simpler if we stopped trying to define how information on computer is the same as information on paper in some circumstances and different in others and just say that correspondence is correspondence, personal effects are personal effects, etc.
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No, the evidence is not the property of a US company. The evidence is the property of a US citizen and is being held by a foreign subsidiary of a US company and is, therefore, exactly like the hotel example.
The world really would be simpler if we stopped trying to define how information on computer is the same as information on paper in some circumstances and different in others and just say that correspondence is correspondence, personal effects are personal effects, etc.
Which is, I would think, what MS is trying to do... get the courts to rule on it, one way or another, from the highest court possible.
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No, the evidence is not the property of a US company. The evidence is the property of a US citizen and is being held by a foreign subsidiary of a US company and is, therefore, exactly like the hotel example.
No argument there. However, if I leave evidence in a US hotel chain's London hotel, a US court can certainly order the hotel chain to fly it back to the US and threaten to fine it until it complies.
I'm not arguing morality here - just practicality. If a guy walks into your house and manages to hold you at gunpoint and you're unarmed, as far as you're concerned, he's the boss and he gets what he wants until somebody else shows up and bails you out. As Augustine pointed out, pirates and emporers are the sa
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No, the evidence is not the property of a US company. The evidence is the property of a US citizen and is being held by a foreign subsidiary of a US company and is, therefore, exactly like the hotel example.
Precisely. The evidence IS the property of a US citizen. If the government want to see it then they should demand it from the US Citizen. Simultaneously they should request Microsoft to take a copy of the evidence for safe keeping so that the US citizen cannot delete the evidence. If the US Citizen refuses to provide the evidence then the US government should then request the evidence through the European courts, citing the fact that their own citizen has refused to provide it.
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If I commit a crime and the evidence is in a Hilton hotel room in the UK nobody expects Hilton to hold onto that evidence just because it happened to be in one of their hotels outside the US.
The situation might be closer to the evidence being in a safety deposit box in a Hilton hotel in the UK. Or perhaps in a safety deposit box in a UK subsidiary of a US-owned bank. The hotel room analogy might carry too much implication of accessibility as a run-of-the-mill expectation.
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I've used your analogy before. And USA law is that the USA corporation is legal obliged to instruct and take measures to get the data from the UK subsidiary. Nothing is changing here this has always been the case.
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I've used your analogy before. And USA law is that the USA corporation is legal obliged to instruct and take measures to get the data from the UK subsidiary. Nothing is changing here this has always been the case.
Which is, in effect, saying that MS then would have to take their UK subsidiary to a UK court to get a ruling, spending their own money taking themselves to court, in essence. That really should be for the US courts (prosecution) to take up with the UK court, shouldn't it? I mean, the whole concept of "me suing myself, and having to hire *both* prosecuting & defense attorneys" is ludicrous...
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They don't have to take them to court. What is the court going to do other than order the UK people to do something. They are a subsidiary. The executives in the subsidiary work directly for the USA company, i.e. they are hired directly by them. They either do what they are told, probably by cooperate in some way to eliminate liability on both sides, or they get fired and replaced with people who would.
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Regardless, MS just wants this clearly spelled out so people know what the rules are and that they'll be the same rules for Google, Amazon, Apple etc.
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Please clue me in. For what wrong reasons are they doing this, and in what way does that negatively affect me (as a non user) or any of the people who are users and may have been negatively affected had Microsoft complied with the order?
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Lesson here is don't cause the US government to want to get into you data and they won't. Otherwise they will. Data out of your hands is not safe anywhere. This has been true of money for a long time with offshore accounts becoming less and less isolated from big government such as the US.
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Just because the reasons are wrong doesn't mean the results would be wrong.
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Just because the reasons are wrong doesn't mean the results would be wrong.
I think these reasons are pretty damned right, actually. The reason is the ol' invisible hand of the free market finally doing the right thing for a change. Microsoft has no choice but to demand what their customers are demanding, which is pretty much what a corporation should actually do, rather than trying to fuck them over at every turn with the normal Microsoft EEE strategy.
Re: About Time (Score:2)
Mickeysoft? (Score:2)
First time I've heard that in years... How's the weather in the 1990's ?
Re: Mickeysoft? (Score:1)
Quite a bit cooler.
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There is exactly one reason why they do that: If they don't, they can kiss the storage business abroad good bye. Nobody would ever even think about touching any of their storage services with a ten foot pole, and, if sufficiently security conscious, contemplate moving away from MS wherever possible. At the very least in the server area, if possible at clients, too.
And I'm not that certain whether companies in the US would agree with it either.
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Which is why people have mentioned that Microsoft is pushing to the bitter end. They want it painfully obvious that the same rule applies to their major competitors as well so customers won't leave Microsoft for Amazon or Google.
Re:I don't see how MS can comply (Score:4, Interesting)
The ruling applies to anyone doing business in the United States. So it would apply to European companies having a cloud that included the USA as well. What it will mean is either:
a) Europe and the USA create a treaty covering this so there is black letter law
b) There are not global clouds
c) There is de-facto situation where the USA rules governing warrants are enforceable for most everyone and anyone not wanting to be subject to USA warrants needs to stay on Europe only cloud services.
Microsoft has already hedged themselves in Europe by informing their customers that using Azure is agreeing to export and to not upload any data for which would be illegal to export. So legally they should be fine in Europe. I think they are very worried about (b) becoming the outcome. I just don't see it though. Apple, Google, IBM, Amazon... all face the same issue. Corporations want global clouds. They are probably on balance hostile to European privacy laws. The pressure is going to be applied to European governments to go towards (a) or (c).
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The previous poster implies that the law applies to ANY company doing business in the US. If that is the case, Microsoft would have to stop doing business in the US.
There needs to be a clarification of the law as to the scope of jurisdiction and whether it is domestic or international law that applies.
Re:I don't see how MS can comply (Score:4, Informative)
The scope of jurisdiction in the ruling is clear cut. Physical presence on the USA. BTW there is no law. This has been existing law for two centuries. It is just being applied to computer data the same way it was to objects and paper historically. The difference is that law enforcement agencies didn't ask for multiple shipping containers full of paper documents but with big data search tools are perfectly comfortable asking for those kinds of quantities of electronic data.
Re:I don't see how MS can comply (Score:4, Informative)
It is actually illegal. You can't deliberate engage in activities to make it more expensive or complex for law enforcement to search subpoenaed records. That's contempt of court.
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That's not quite accurate.
If the intent is to make it more difficult... then you best not have any evidence that it was done deliberately then you will be in for a world of pain.
If however it is part of your normal business processes and as a side effect it makes law enforcement's job harder... that is still perfectly legal.
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The company in this hypothetical has the data electronically is refusing to turn it over electronically and instead prints it. Obviously a company that only uses paper records is free to hand those over and doesn't need to create electronic records.
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Correct, Lavabit tried just that ( http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co... [sophos.com] ) and was held in contempt for it ( http://www.theguardian.com/tec... [theguardian.com] ).
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It is actually illegal. You can't deliberate engage in activities to make it more expensive or complex for law enforcement to search subpoenaed records. That's contempt of court.
Emphasis in your quote.
As gets mentioned every time this story appears on slashdot, this is a warrant not a subpoena. The two are different tools. Both are used to find things but one is clean and neat, the other broad and aggressive. As a parallel, a subpoena is a scalpel and a warrant is a chainsaw.
A subpoena says 'We know you have this specific information, provide it to us within a time frame'. They get subpoenas of this type all the time. There is no dispute a subpoena would get the document no matt
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I imagine that criminal law has been updated to the same standards as civil law, under FRCP you can no longer bury the opponent with paper, if they make a request for digital records in a digital format then you must supply the records in that format if it is at all reasonable to do so (ie if you ask for PDFs from email that is reasonable, as would be TIFF, but .123 files would probably not be reasonable unless the source documents were in that format)
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Yes that is what I'm saying. The US government in fact has notified American companies and customers that is the rule. That Huawei answers to the Chinese government and they should not store things they wouldn't want China to make use of for its own purposes. This isn't a situation where the USA is being hypocritical this is a situation where Europeans want to apply a geographical model and the USA wants to apply a financial model. In addition to just factually asserting this is the law I think a finan
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Let me just say the US postal service can open letters with a warrant. The issue for privacy of correspondence was about them doing it without one (i.e. random searches in transit). What the European /.ers are asking for is that warrants simply don't exist at all and the postal service freely, openly and deliberate act to facilitate crime. (I get that the warrants can pass between countries and so this analogy doesn't quite hold).
But in general and not in this specific, it is a real problem how the laws
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They already do this. Microsoft Ireland, Microsoft UK ltd. Etc.
Re:I don't see how MS can comply (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft has already hedged themselves in Europe by informing their customers that using Azure is agreeing to export and to not upload any data for which would be illegal to export. So legally they should be fine in Europe.
Just because they put something in a license, doesn't make it legal.
For instance, EULA's are meaningless in a number of European countries.
Also, contract do not trump law. So if there are laws that prohibit this, the contract (or atleast those specific terms) is invalid.
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But where did the crime occur? No one argues that gmail is subject to these privacy laws because gmail is known to copy information to the USA. The problem here is that Europeans believed that Azure Europe wasn't part of a global system. Now Microsoft has informed that isn't true. Uploading to Azure is transferring data to the USA. It is not Microsoft doing the transfer but their customers. Their customers are now prohibited from uploading data that it is illegal to export. They are the ones breaking
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Again; all that is meaningless if it contradicts local laws.
If Microsoft wants to sell to users in a country that has laws that Microsoft cannot obey, then it cannot sell regardless of any claims or notifications they make.
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Microsoft is obeying the law now. Cutting out the middle man, when a user uploads data that user is exporting the data to countries without protections. Including the middle man: when application uses Azure as its backend that application is certifying that all its data is legal for export. Gmail isn't illegal in Europe.
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Can everyone agree that there exists information that is legal to export from an EU country and there exists information that is illegal to export from said EU country? If so, then how is Microsoft in violation of the law if it tells its users that anything uploaded may be exported and to, therefore, not upload non-exportable things? Are we now expecting companies to employ the magic fairies to divine which uploads contain exportable data and which do not?
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Well put. I'm not sure why the European /.ers are having such a hard time with this.
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If you snail-mail a letter from one EU country to another EU country, are you also exporting that letter to the US?
Microsoft claims that uploading data to a European server is the same as exporting data to the US.
European laws may prohibit that re-interpretation, making it invalid.
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If you send that letter through a courier service that tells you before you give it to them that they will make a photocopy of the letter and send the copy to the US and tell you not to use their service if all of that would violate the law because they don't read the letter to verify whether it is in violation of the law, then continuing to use them is not the burden of having violated the law on you instead of the courier service?
How is it that the EUers seem to want to totally exhonerate individuals and
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In terms of USA law the law enforcement agencies are using established international channels and legal orders. They aren't doing anything different from what they've done for decades. Microsoft is asking to do something different because the frequency and quantity as opposed to the previous situations with paper records is skyrocketing.
Also it is important to understand that between WWI and the 1970s we lived in a world where governments were mostly mildly hostile to international trade. Governments were
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I'm not sure that is ever true. But we certainly aren't using military force in Europe. There are Europe only cloud companies and last I checked we didn't hit them with cruise missiles.
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Colonial powers did use force to get people to at least be in a position where they had to trade with the colonizing power or suffer. The opium wars were about the Chinese trying to ban the sale of opium and the British using military force to overturn that ban.
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The USA I don't think ever forced markets open with violence. Japan there was a threat of violence but to the best of my knowledge that's the worst we've ever done. The British I agree forced markets open that way. Though I think you are missing a bit of context on the opium wars.
Re:Don't know what to think (Score:4)
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I don't think Microsoft has a problem. Imagine for a moment that all customer data on European Azure was always copied back to the USA. That wouldn't be illegal. Now imagine that some European application used copy-Azure for their data storage which had personal data. That's what would be illegal.
Microsoft has already told their European customers don't store information illegal to export on European Azure. I'm not sure that Microsoft can be held responsible at this point. They've made it clear that t
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I get that it would be illegal in Ireland. The issue is whether it is illegal in the USA. That's where the disclosure it taking place.
Take for example a situation where a European uses Gmail. Clearly they understand that this is governed by USA law and a USA warrant would apply. The issue here is that Europeans on /. believe that this wouldn't apply to Azure because Azure is "in Ireland" which is factually untrue and Microsoft has officially notified their customers it is untrue.
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Not so simple if they knew Americans had the ability to copy at will. That makes the upload the criminal act.
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What law in Europe prevents a company from copying their own data?
What law in Europe makes it legal to deliberately copy data to the USA and then argue the American company that accepted the data is the one violating the law?
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What law in Europe prevents a company from copying their own data?
Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data
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A directive is not a law. Moreover the directive is binding on Ireland not Microsoft. It is Ireland that needs to pass laws. But even if we ignore that your interpretation is questionable. "Processing of data relating to offences, criminal convictions or security measures may be carried out only under the control of official authority, or if suitable specific safeguards are provided under national law," Which is clearly the case here. There is an official authority the USA federal government, the regul
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OK good example. Given the structure of Azure and your laws it seems to me the company was violating German law when they stored emails on Azure. Azure has always been managed out of Washington and thus Americans have always had access. The question (which IMHO isn't really a question it is too clear cut) is whether a count can compel Americans to use their access not whether they had it.
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Go to Azure website and read the terms of service they are crystal clear that law enforcement has access. I don't know what they said in private but I do know what they've said in public. They have never claimed that the US group that administers Azure doesn't have access to everything on Azure. This is the reason they sell Azure pack: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us... [microsoft.com] . That way a company can use Azure technology and Microsoft doesn't have Azure.
The article linked seems odd since it certainly has Micr
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EU Directive 95/46/EC is a directive to countries in the EU to implement laws. It isn't a directive for Microsoft. What it does say is that the countries need to implement laws which protect privacy. So first off it is the laws that come from the directive not the directive that have anything to do with Microsoft. Now if we tried to apply the directive directly to Microsoft one of the exceptions is law enforcement which would apply in this case, so I'm not even sure there is an issue at all under that
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What Microsoft is doing is standard US legal practice. They want an unambiguous appealed all the way up ruling. Everyone is agreeing to move forward this way. Which means the contempt fine will just be token. I think both the judge and the government see the problem. Were the government serious about wanting the data they would not accept a fine. Instead something like the court issues a warrant, the FBI would walk into the Azure USA hosting location and tell the employees to move the data now or face
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OK. So assume I'm right that the Americans always had access. Were the German companies who uploaded the emails in the first place breaking the law?
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Employees of Microsoft working in, living in and generally citizens of the USA.
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Well again I disagree that Azure ever claimed to be an EU datacenter. The claimed to be a global cloud service that used an EU datacenter for delivery. For example if I created contact in Italian I can upload it to Alkamai in the USA and it will distribute locally to Italy. On the other hand if someone in Mexico wanted to watch it and I allowed that, Alkamai would pass a copy over to them in Mexico. Alkamai is a global network.
But how is Microsoft going to know what customer data is legal to export and
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I think this is our core point of disagreement. I'm asserting this is 100% false.
a) What they say unambiguously under the security section of their website
b) What is unambiguously true about their architecture
c) That they offer another product that does do what you are claiming Microsoft is promising to do with Azure Clou
Microsoft has to fight this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Microsoft will become persona non grata in Europe if they are required to hand over data to the US against local law.
This has always been something people have warned about ... the PATRIOT act basically says "we can force any company to hand over your data from anywhere in the world, and we don't give a damn about your laws and it stays secret".
So Microsoft is in the position of complying with the US government, and losing business elsewhere ... or telling the US government to shove it.
When the US has decided their secret laws trump the laws of every other country, this was inevitable -- and people have been warning about this for years.
I know many governments already basically say "you can't store government data in a US cloud service or on a US server" for exactly this reason.
Basically, the US passed a law which put companies between a rock and a hard place. And now they have to choose between long term profits, or America's zeal for security.
Quite frankly, the US needs to get slapped back down and told by the rest of the world not our fucking problem.
Re:Microsoft has to fight this ... (Score:5, Informative)
I know many governments already basically say "you can't store government data in a US cloud service or on a US server" for exactly this reason.
Make that "you can't store government data on any server from any company doing any kind of business within the US".
Re:Microsoft has to fight this ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Exactly. That's where this is likely to go. Europe only cloud services storing European specific data and those are governed by European law. Put it on a Chinese service and it is governed by Chinese law. Then you have a simple financial model for regulating international corporations.
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You got that wrong, this is the US providing heavy stimulus for foreign companies creating their own cloud services. They're basically giving free reign to European providers, who do not own a single server in the US, and telling them to go ahead and dominate the market. Europeans should be thanking them, if anything!
They could only dominate the European market though. Those companies wouldn't be able to do business with companies in the US. If they did, then the US government would just threaten them until they gave in - just seize all their US bank accounts, or seize all their payments, harass employees if they travel to the US, etc.
It isn't as simple as you make it out to be. And it isn't just the US doing this sort of thing. Everybody wants the "Internet" to follow their local laws.
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And that's the trillion-dollar (literally, in terms of GDP for a country whose economy is based in large part on software) question: Microsoft has called the government's bluff. If the government is owned by economic interests, it will back down in order to grow GDP. If the government is owned by the security apparatus, it will sacrifice a
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There is no question in my mind which way this is going to go. The implications of courts basically having no ability to issue subpoenas or warrants anymore is more or less the complete collapse of the ability of the US government to enforce any law regarding white collar crime. The implications of the USA companies losing out contracts to European cloud services is a few billion. This is like would you rather have a mosquito bite have your leg amputated.
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Sorry, but when your courts violate the law of the country in question ... it comes down to a measure of sovereignty.
Are you suggesting that Microsoft is exempt from the laws of Ireland because a US court says so? Or that it's Microsoft's problem?
Microsoft is saying "this isn't us, this is you, and can you really do this?".
Srroy, but when abroad, you are subject to local laws. And a US court should not be able to compel someone to break the law in another country.
What if an Irish court demanded that US la
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Well first off US counts can order Americans to break the laws of another country. A USA court could issue me a warrant to do something illegal in Ireland and if I failed to do so I'd go to jail. That's not even questionable. The claim on authority over US citizens is how the US government is able to arrest people in the small arms trafficking business in Africa or people abroad involved in slave trading of prostitutes or all sorts of things. US law applies to Americans whereever they are. What the Eur
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I think you should ask South America about whether you really want that. In any case were that true you wouldn't be worried about what USA courts rule about Microsoft now would you? It would just be irrelevant and of no concern.
Re:Microsoft has to fight this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your arguement against the PARTIOT Act might be better received if reserved for a case that had anything to do with the PATRIOT Act.
This is just an ordinary, everyday order for an entity to turn over information that it is known to possess, the only exceptional point is "because the Internet" and the various entities that multi-national corporations split themselves up into to have their cake and eat it too.
Microsoft USA has acces to mail relevant ot the case. It have been moved to storage owned by a different Microsoft entity in Ireland. Since Microsoft USA has access to it it should be reasonable for a US court-order that correctly follows due process to require that Microsoft USA provide the mail to the court. Otherwise, multi-nationals could just play a shell game with all their data and never have to comply with any nation's court orders ever while single-nation corporations could never enjoy the same freedom.
An alternative method could very well be for the US to file a request in a Irish court to get the Irish authorities to obtain the mail if the US can show that it is within Irish and EU law, etc. It is correct to say that the former method should not be preferred merely because it is more convenient, but if the for method is more convenient and also follows due process and is legal then objections need to be a little more thorough. On the other hand, since there is now an appeal it may no longer be more convenient that opening a request in an Irish court.
It may be in the latter case that it is against Irish or EU law to provide the mail, though there is every any discussion about why this case would run afoul of any EU privacy protections, etc.. Note that this would not absolve Microsoft USA from any obligations to the US court. It may very well be possible that Microsoft in its structuring of its multi-national divisions has created a scenario where either one division is in violation of the law in one jurisdiction or another division is in violations of the law in another division and sine this would be a structuring that Microsoft deliberately created I do no see where I would feel sympathetic towards them.
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So, your argument is that if Microsoft operates in North Korea, Iran, or any other country .. that those countries should also be able to force Microsoft to hand over any and all records on Americans i
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>Every court on the planet should be able to subpoena any record from a multinational because they want it?
Well, duh. This is how the law works already.
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Yes. This question keeps getting asked of Americans and the answer is yes. Americans don't use global cloud services for sensitive information that would be illegal to export. They use regulated private clouds.
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So, your argument is that if Microsoft operates in North Korea, Iran, or any other country .. that those countries should also be able to force Microsoft to hand over any and all records on Americans if they see fit?
It isn't a matter of "should." The fact is that those countries can do anything they have the power to do - that is what makes them countries and not corporations. You'd be a fool to store your personal data with a company that needs to keep a country like North Korea happy if you don't want the North Koreans to have access to your data.
If you run a business selling swastikas, you'd be foolish to build all your infrastructure on servers owned by a company that counted on the German government for most of
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Courts have power over entities under their jurisdiction. A US court has jurisdiction over Microsoft US. An Iranian court would have jurisdiction over Microsoft Iran (if it exists). A US court can issue orders to Microsoft US, and an Iranian court can issue orders to Microsoft Iran.
The difference here is that Microsoft US is the controlling company, and the US court believes Microsoft US can issue orders to Microsoft Ireland, apparently even when that would require Microsoft Ireland to break Irish law
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You do realize they already do this with taxes right? Microsoft in Ireland is a distinct legal entity, and it not the same corporation as the one in Redmond. Otherwise Microsoft would pay taxes on its global income to the American government, as well as all of the localities in which they operate.
The en
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The solution to this is to use a 3rd company which is only legislated locally. This means MS could turn around and say it's not their data and it's not on their storage. They can then provide the details for the company in question to eventually realize they have to way or prying the data out of them.
Clever stunt (Score:2)
It's down to money (Score:2)
MS can sell data to anyone they want, including USG. If they win this, then they can charge USG a much higher price for access than the 'reasonable costs' for responding to a court order.