American Judge Claims Jurisdiction Over Data Stored In Other Countries 226
New submitter sim2com writes: "An American judge has just added another reason why foreign (non-American) companies should avoid using American Internet service companies. The judge ruled that search warrants for customer email and other content must be turned over, even when that data is stored on servers in other countries. The ruling came out of a case in which U.S. law enforcement was demanding data from Microsoft's servers in Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft fought back, saying, 'A U.S. prosecutor cannot obtain a U.S. warrant to search someone's home located in another country, just as another country's prosecutor cannot obtain a court order in her home country to conduct a search in the United States. We think the same rules should apply in the online world, but the government disagrees.'
If this ruling stands, foreign governments will not be happy about having their legal jurisdiction trespassed by American courts that force American companies to turn over customers' data stored in their countries. The question is: who does have legal jurisdiction on data stored in a given country? The courts of that country, or the courts of the nationality of the company who manages the data storage? This is a matter that has to be decided by International treaties. While we're at it, let's try to establish an International cyber law enforcement system. In the meantime."
If this ruling stands, foreign governments will not be happy about having their legal jurisdiction trespassed by American courts that force American companies to turn over customers' data stored in their countries. The question is: who does have legal jurisdiction on data stored in a given country? The courts of that country, or the courts of the nationality of the company who manages the data storage? This is a matter that has to be decided by International treaties. While we're at it, let's try to establish an International cyber law enforcement system. In the meantime."
American company (Score:5, Informative)
I think the fact that it's an American company being ordered to produce the data factors in here. The judge does have jurisdiction over the company, which makes it a different situation from ordering a company in another country to turn over data stored there. If you want to get out of a country's legal jurisdiction, you need to be out of their jurisdiction.
Re:American company (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:American company (Score:4, Insightful)
Then the company is going to have to choose which country's laws to break, and suffer the consequences. In the extreme case, this will result in companies deciding that it's not worth operating in particular sets of countries.
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What if I encrypted a block of my data, broke those blocks up, then stored separate (non-duplicate) pieces in every country in the world? Would a court need to get every country's permission to assemble the data? Is the data an entity that has to be pursued independently of the owner (me)? Or as the owner, can my citizenship country (or a country that is pursuing me) instead demand all pieces based on me as the owner?
To summarize: Is my data legally independent from me?
Re:American company (Score:4, Informative)
Data is legally owned and controlled by somebody, and that's the one getting the subpoena. So as far as I know the law over here (IANAL) the answer is yes: the court that can claim jurisdiction can apply its laws and if they say they can order you to give up the data and decrypt it, then you have to.
In my (amateur) opinion, the only way Microsoft would have gotten out of this one is if they had sold the data to another company that would reside in Ireland and that would be legally independent. Say, "MicrosoftDataHolding Ireland". However, *that* company could be ordered by the Irish courts to turn over the data to the Irish government, independent of what Microsoft USA would want. They wouldn't even be part of the case.
Re:American company (Score:4, Insightful)
Data is legally owned and controlled by somebody, and that's the one getting the subpoena.
Read it again. Even the /. summary covers it properly.
They did not get a subpoena, which would have forced Microsoft to turn it over. The used a search warrant, which allows the (unspecified) government to swoop in and seize the servers. Located in Ireland. Using a US's renound paramilitary law enforcement. In Ireland. Seizing Irish equipment from an Irish branch of the company, used by Irish people and defended by an Irish police force.
The (unspecified) US government agency requested the ability (and the judge authorized) to enter the Irish facility and take the machines by force if necessary -- that is how search warrants work.
The fact that they even requested it is troubling. The fact that the agency was granted it is fairly terrifying. If this doesn't get taken down in an appeal, the article and summary are correct, it means the US government is basically declaring sovereignty over the world even more than before. This isn't Afghanistan or Iraq, but Ireland they would be using force against.
Re:American company (Score:4, Informative)
Stop lying.
The actual articles says *nothing* about US agencies gaining physical access purely on the basis of a US warrant.
From the actual article:
"A search warrant for email information, he said, is a "hybrid" order: obtained like a search warrant but executed like a subpoena for documents. Longstanding U.S. law holds that the recipient of a subpoena must provide the information sought, no matter where it is held, he said."
So the instrument really is more like a subpoena in that it forces action on the recipient, in this case to retrieve the data from the foreign location. It does not authorize any US official to seize the data from the foreign location without the involvement of the foreign authorities.
This ruling literally does NONE of the things you accuse it of.
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Nope. The jurisdiction concerned about the information would need two things: Your physical presence and a rubber hose.
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What if I encrypted a block of my data, broke those blocks up, then stored separate (non-duplicate) pieces in every country in the world? Would a court need to get every country's permission to assemble the data? Is the data an entity that has to be pursued independently of the owner (me)? Or as the owner, can my citizenship country (or a country that is pursuing me) instead demand all pieces based on me as the owner?
To summarize: Is my data legally independent from me?
They would simply ask you nicely to produce the data within some period of time. Then if you didn't do it they'd just lock you up until you did.
In just about any country the court is only going to ask you nicely to do something once. So, think about that before you put data you might be asked to produce in a place where you might have trouble getting to it.
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It automatically breaks the law of the foreign country. It is after all a search warrant and if the country has similar laws requiring a search warrant then the foreign part of the company is protected by law of that country. In this case the simple answer is, the warrant is issued, then served locally, then the company forwards the request and the foreign part of the company then refuses citing local law at their location. So locally they adhered to the law in both locations, both nothing happens and stup
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Now consider US military successes and failures.
Win, lose, or draw, the invaded nation is going to have a helluva mess to clean up.
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Re:American company (Score:4, Insightful)
Right - that's why AMS-IX opened 'their' NY location as a separate company, so that U.S. jurisdiction can't touch their Dutch operations.
https://ams-ix.net/newsitems/1... [ams-ix.net]
Or so their lawyers are interpreting anyway - probably nothing a stroke of the pen in the U.S. can't make disappear.
Re:American company (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the fact that it's an American company being ordered to produce the data factors in here. The judge does have jurisdiction over the company, which makes it a different situation from ordering a company in another country to turn over data stored there. If you want to get out of a country's legal jurisdiction, you need to be out of their jurisdiction.
What is an "American" company? MS Europe is incorporated in Ireland, has a datacentre in Ireland, and pays taxes in Ireland. The FBI should be approaching the Irish authorities for access to this data.
Or look at it another way: Is Sony USA an American company, or a Japanese company? If it's a Japanese company, that means that the Japanese have the right to all data stored on Sony USA servers.
Or let's take this further: let's say the government of China had reason to believe that Cisco China had an NSA backdoor in its products as they were being deployed in China, and so ordered Cisco USA to turn over all emails, technical specifications and documentation.
Rinse and repeat with pretty much any middle east country and Haliburton.
This is a dangerous precedent for the US to set, as their only possible responses to foreign country's requests for similar information would be either "sure, here it is" or "sorry, we have a bigger army. Don't mess with us." Land of the Free much?
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Well... let's follow up on the argument a bit.
If MS Europe is *really* independent, they can now turn down the request of MS USA for the data and the request will have to go through the Irish courts. But if they are *not* all that independent, and the data is not in fact controlled by them but by MS USA, then they can't interfere, MS USA will have to comply and I can just imagine what the tax authorities are going to do the morning after they produce the data: go after MS with a pretty big hammer.
Interestin
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Oh I agree, but that's usually why multinationals *do* have a real home. In case of Microsoft, it's the USA. So they're stuck with their laws. Their only solution is to give up control on part of their assets and split, but they'll fight tooth and nail to avoid that. So they're stuck. Or rather, they're not stuck - *we* are stuck. Because MS will just *shrug* and hand over the data, eventually.
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This is a dangerous precedent for the US to set, as their only possible responses to foreign country's requests for similar information would be either "sure, here it is" or "sorry, we have a bigger army. Don't mess with us." Land of the Free much?
This is exactly what multinationals do. They love to have some weird, three-room office in an industrial park near the airport in someplace like Ireland that they can use as their tax headquarters to shelter a bunch of income from American taxes, but then keep t
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This is a dangerous precedent for the US to set, as their only possible responses to foreign country's requests for similar information would be either "sure, here it is" or "sorry, we have a bigger army. Don't mess with us." Land of the Free much?
How is that a dangerous precedent for the US to set? As you just pointed out, they can say that they have a bigger army, and that is true. It would be a dangerous precedent for another country to set for sure.
In practice this is how most countries have operated since the dawn of time. They fully expect their citizens and corporations to collaborate with them in intelligence gathering against other nations, and they expect those same citizens and corporations to not collaborate with other nations in intel
Re:American company (Score:5, Informative)
I think the fact that it's an American company being ordered to produce the data factors in here.
Close, but wrong.
Being ordered to produce data is called a subpoena. That is the normal tool for producing emails and documents. A subpoena orders the company to find the documents meeting the criteria and produce them for the court.
A search warrant allows LEOs to enter the building, search for everything themselves, and seize anything that might appear to satisfy the warrant. So they would enter the server room and immediately seize any computer that looks like it might have the email on it.
The unnamed government agency got a warrant to seize a bunch of computers, and are acting under the guise that they are asking for specific information.
It is completely the wrong tool. It would be nice to think it was a simple mistake, picking the wrong tool to get information. ... unless it is an agency looking to do far more than find some specific emails. Unfortunately it is probably the latter, given that everything is under seal and they are demanding to allow US federal agents into a non-US facility to seize servers.
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So if I store a document in a vault provided by an American company in a foreign country, they must turn it over? Suppose the American company owns a building which they rent space in. Must they turn over documents stored there by third parties who are renting space?
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Under US law a renter is legal possession of the property they are renting, so no. As to the vault that you're not renting but that the company is storing your document in, yes.
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Exactly. If this were an Irish company, located in Ireland, this wouldn't be an issue. It's no different than if the Court wanted access to your banking records in Switzerland. You're an American citizen, living in America, and sitting in an American courtroom, so they have the legal right to this information or money. If you refuse to comply, they can lock you up. If you're a Swiss citizen, living in Switzerland, and currently sitting somewhere in Europe, they have no power over you.
There's a simple l
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It's not quite that simple. You also have to avoid companies which might be bought out by an American or multinational company at some point in the future.
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Well that's pretty hard to predict, so you just need to be prepared to abandon a company quickly if they are bought out by an American or multinational. It goes back to that "don't put all your eggs in one basket" axiom, plus the idea of being self-reliant when possible.
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There is no precedent here, this is an obvious outcome of a basic issue. MS did a "hail Mary" trying to get a new type of protection, and (predictably) failed.
MS was always a US company, and US courts always had jurisdiction over any evidence in their possession or under their control.
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Well, that's basically what I said in my post above, with my analogy about the US citizen in a US court trying to hide information about their holdings in a foreign bank account.
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"We know you have a house in Ireland, but you're an American, and we demand you let us federal agents into your Irish estate."
Somehow, I imagine Ireland or the EU are not going to be enthused about this.
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They don't hide their money, that is illegal. What they really do is use evey tax loophole they can to shift money around to the most favorable spot on he planet for tax purposes. They report every red cent to the US agencies, and use every trick they lobbied to put into the book to say "Neener neener its legal and you can;t have any."
Been this way for about 20 years or more now, thank you Reagan.
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It's been that way a lot longer than 20 years. The difference now is that instead of buying large yachts and other luxury items as business expenses that can be depreciated then resold as a capital gain later, other countries have lowered their tax rates so moving the funds around makes more sense.
But if you really want to blame a president, you can blame Clinton because all of this off shoring wasn't prevalent until he became president and enacted policies that globalized companies in the way we see them t
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"Why the fuck the legal system isn't going after THAT shit [...]"
Cause they've been paid not to. Lobbied, bought and paid for, our tax system is literally the best money can buy now.
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More likely than not, it is because no matter how nasty and illegal you want to think hiding those assets off shore in havens might be, there is a possibility that it is done legally even if not ethically.
Look at it this way, several years ago, I purchased a rehab home. I moved into it, rented the old home out which made it my primary residence. I then used a grant through the utility company paid for by the state in order to remove the old plaster and lath, install modern insulation, seal the walls and dry
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Yes, there is no difference and there never was. The legal issue is if it is under your control. Even forming a foreign company doesn't help, if it is a wholly owned a subsidiary. You'd need a foreign partnership with other companies that you can't directly control, but that you still trust. And that is hard to come by at any price. So that game involves being able to control the company in reality, but not on paper. MS is probably too big to make that game work. And that works for random documents, but not
Slightly misleading... (Score:2, Insightful)
The judge said that the warrant served on Microsoft is valid, meaning that Microsoft, which has control of the servers in Dublin, can be required to use its access to its own servers to turn over information within its control. Nothing Earth-shattering here.
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And what happens when Ireland, the UK, the EU etc pass laws which specifically prevent Microsoft et al from responding to such warrants when they are issued from countries where the data does not reside?
Microsoft would be between a rock and a hard place.
Already in place.... (Score:4, Informative)
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That's precisely why Microsoft is opposing this order, not so much to avoid turning this particular data over, but because it may damage their European business. Microsoft has made a big marketing push in Europe trumpeting that their cloud products comply with EU data-protection laws, and this has been somewhat successful: several big companies and universities have signed up with Office 365 as their email/calendaring provider, in part because they were convinced that doing so is compatible with their oblig
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Ah, but it's not Irish citizen's data - it's Microsoft's data about Irish citizens. Possession is 9/10ths of the law after all. I'd bet you good money that the EULA even says something to that effect down around page 29475.
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Sent it to them at 300 baud
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The judge said that the warrant served on Microsoft is valid, meaning that Microsoft, which has control of the servers in Dublin, can be required to use its access to its own servers to turn over information within its control. Nothing Earth-shattering here.
Unless servers actually belong to a business entity registered in Ireland (Microsoft office there or whatever), which is subject to EU laws and regulations, not to US judge opinions and wisehs.
If server belongs to company registered in Ireland (regardless of who is the 'parent' company), they would likely be breaking EU laws and regulations if they would follow orders from US judge.
Do you have objections to Chinese judge ordering Huawei to disclose personal data of their US customers?
If you don't, I guess t
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If you're debating about what you have "objections" to, that is a discussion better had on a thread about legislation. A thread about legal rulings hopefully centers around understanding what the law actually is right now, and potential differences of understanding on what that is.
Good job. (Score:2)
The judge has now made sure that no American company will ever admit to having stored any data anywhere, or risk losing business.
And Denmark just sold its digital IDs to USA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Denmark recently sold its digital infrastructure (digital identities, national bank payments, etc) to a US company. The Danish government said there was nothing to worry about, because the servers would still be in Denmark. Thank you, USA, for proving the Danish government wrong.
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You should know better than that.
Get the facts. (Score:3)
I mean come on!
This is reported on by Reuters, and they do not supply a link to the ruling itself. Which means they probably state the ruling all wrong and also leave out important details. In fact one detail I see at once is missing. Whose emails are these?
They could be Boris Putins,.or Kim Dotcoms, in which case I would have severe problems with the judges orders.
Or they could be Dread Pirate Roberts, or even Microsofts operating emails stored in Dublin just to avoid having to turn them over in which case I would have no problems with the judges orders.
In any case please get us all the facts before putting up such a story.
Is that really too much to ask?
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Cyber Law? (Score:3)
Why would I want to build an enforcement system when I don't know who's rules it will end up enforcing? Chinas? North Koreas? NSAs?
American? (Score:2)
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http://www.snopes.com/cokelore... [snopes.com]
The other countries need protect jurisdiction (Score:2)
I would suggest a law that forbids information to be retrieved from servers for the purposes of satisfying a warrant or supposed legal order that has not been validated by a court within jurisdiction.
The question is: who does have legal jurisdiction on data stored in a given country? The courts of that country, or the courts of the nationality of the company who manages the data storage?
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The question is: who does have legal jurisdiction on data stored in a given country? The courts of that country, or the courts of the nationality of the company who manages the data storage?
Any court that has personal jurisdiction over the corporation. Which is to say wherever the company is incorporated or resides. At a minimum the Federal and State court where the company is incorporated will have personal jurisdiction. There are no jurisdictional borders when it comes to corporations, ether the court has personal jurisdiction over the company or it doesn't, and if it does it can issue any warrant it wants on the corporation. The court can't send it's agents to another country to execute the
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Any court that has personal jurisdiction over the corporation. Which is to say wherever the company is incorporated or resides.
Good news, everyone... Microsoft US, Inc. and Microsoft Ireland, Inc. are separate corporations with their own separate trustees/agents. The court might want to issue a search warrant for officers to visit Microsoft Ireland's premises and seize potential evidence, BUT only Microsoft US has a presence in the US, therefore, the court has no ability to hold Microsoft
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MS resides in Washington State, if Ireland manages to hold them in prison to prevent them complying with the order, that is fine. They might rethink their Irish strategy when they get back, though. ;)
The ruling makes sense. (Score:2)
Where the servers reside is simply not relevant because the corporation resides within the jurisdiction of the court, corporations are people and because a company is one legal entity the court has jurisdiction over all of the company, regardless of where it's assets are physically located. It's called personal jurisdiction and the ruling is correct, it will be upheld if appealed. If you don't want to be subject to american jurisdiction then don't incorporate in america, it's really that simple.
Microsoft US != Microsoft Ireland (Score:2)
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If the subsidiary is wholly-owned then the parent company does indeed control the information and has to produce it. The tax-game stuff is not a loophole created by lack of jurisdiction, it is loopholes created by the specific ways the tax laws are written to favor certain strategies.
The issue is 'control' (Score:2)
So this is an "American" problem? (Score:2)
How is this different than French judges insisting that the internet use French, German judges trying to ban Nazi logos in global games hosted elsewhere, etc?
I mean seriously, there's like a story a week about some dumbass judge thinking he can tell the internet what it can and cannot do?
It's about the "stupid", not the "America". Although those are often enough synonymous, I admit.
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There is plenty of stupid to go around, I can assure you.
And yes, French courts could issue any sort of ruling they want against French companies. If you're a French company and there is some French law about online language, you'd be well advised to obey it.
Renders US Cloud services useless (Score:2)
For EU companies it is now impossible to store user related or other sensitive data on servers or cloud nodes provided by US American companies. Data privacy regulations in the EU would prohibit the use of such infrastructure. Even though there is a "safe harbor" treaty.
Americans vs. Russians (Score:2)
The Americans like to complain about Russia's "invasion" of Crimea, and claim that it's a power grab.
But with this decision, the judge is trying for a GLOBAL power grab the likes of which the world has never seen.
Quite frankly, the US judge and administration can go fuck themselves. YOU ARE NOT THE WORLD.
data ownership needs to change (Score:2)
It is data about a person, in many cases it is literally the documents, calls, emails, tweets, IMs of people to people. That clearly belongs to the persons themselves, not to some company that wrote an app used to interact with that data or the companies providing the pipes for it to travel across. So that it is an American company really has nothing to do with it if we see it from the logical point of view of who the data belongs to. If it belongs to a European then it is government by European law. P
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They're not demanding from the countries. They're going after Microsoft, which happens to have offices in the US. Either way, those who believe should encrypt their mails. The rest can hide their secret messages in spam.
Re:No jurisdiction (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft, however, is subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Federal Court system, and when a Magistrate Judge orders them to produce something, they are compelled to produce it. It doesn't really matter where the something is. Basically the court is saying the search warrant can be executed like a subpoena.
From the linked article:
A search warrant for email information, he said, is a "hybrid" order: obtained like a search warrant but executed like a subpoena for documents. Longstanding U.S. law holds that the recipient of a subpoena must provide the information sought, no matter where it is held, he said.
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This pretty obviously needs to be a subpeona, a search warrant is from a law enforcement standpoint and that has zero use for data in a physical location outside the US. It's an attempt to end run around the system and it's far reaching and needs to be quashed immediately.
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This pretty obviously needs to be a subpeona, a search warrant is from a law enforcement standpoint and that has zero use for data in a physical location outside the US. It's an attempt to end run around the system and it's far reaching and needs to be quashed immediately.
I see lots of money being made in the WAN acceleration industry.
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The alternative would be to go in and physically remove the server; then have all the data on the drives vulnerable to the whims of law enforcement.
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Yes, but generally the FBI cannot go into an office in Ireland and physically take something, the local security forces would be correct in stopping them.
And I'd be shocked if MS's main server hubs are not guarded by real security forces.
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Except that the Microsoft servers in Ireland are owned by a different legal entity, Microsoft Ireland (or something), and not the US Microsoft.
It works for taxes... so it must work for other government thingies, right?
Re:No jurisdiction (Score:5, Informative)
The search warrant analogy is completely spurious. An American court cannot compel a search of a foreign property. But they can certainly compel an American company (or individual) to produce information owned by the company that happens to reside in a file folder in another country, or be liable for contempt of court.
Sensationalism, thy name is slashdot.
Brett
Re:No jurisdiction (Score:4, Insightful)
In what appears to be the first court decision addressing the issue, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Francis in New York said Internet service providers such as Microsoft Corp or Google Inc cannot refuse to turn over customer information and emails stored in other countries when issued a valid search warrant from U.S. law enforcement agencies.
Emphasis mine. I read this to mean that if you use any US owned mail provider the FBI can subpoena anything they want through a US judge. That just seems horribly wrong and would put the world wide operation of any company at the mercy of the jurisdiction where they're headquartered. By this logic the NSA can get a subpoena to demand all US companies turn over any information they got anywhere in the world. You could never trust a foreign company to follow local laws. If this stands it's a horrible precedent.
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Now you're getting it. Deal with an American company, you deal with American law, in addition to local law. If those conflict then it simply comes down to which law the company is least willing to break.
Consider, the opposite precedent is even worse - if Microsoft is allowed to hide it's records simply because it stored them overseas then *every* company (and private individuals as well) can reasonably be expected to do the same. Using the company as your private piggy bank? Keep the financial records o
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That's a much better argument than the the one I was commenting on (made by MS lawyer), but hardly a trump card.
The FBI (or any other agency/court) can certainly argue for a subpoena for data given to a third party. Whether they ever actually get it or not is another story.
Party A hands Party B an envelope, and says "store this for me". Party B happens to store it in a foreign country. Said foreign country happens to have a law that requires people holding information fo
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The FBI (or any other agency/court) can certainly argue for a subpoena for data given to a third party. Whether they ever actually get it or not is another story.
That is correct. They can use a subpoena for it.
A subpoena tells the organization to collect the documents and turn it over in a reasonable time frame.
But they are not using a subpoena. They are using a search warrant.
A search warrant allows LEOs to search the buildings and seize anything that looks like it might have the stuff in the warrant. As in, "These servers look like they might have email, remove them all from the building." A search warrant and a subpoena are radically different legal instrumen
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A search warrant and a subpoena are radically different legal instruments.
This seems to be in the form, "they are different, therefore they are very different. They're so radically different they're not even exactly the same!"
If you have to stretch that far, it shows you're not confident in the level of difference. If it turns out that they're actually very similar, especially if the hypothetical subpoena is from a LEO, then the judge might reasonably weigh that difference against MS refusing to produce relevant information, and find that in the balance justice is better served b
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Not at all.
One says "You are not to be trusted, we are taking everything into our possession and searching it ourselves." The other says "You are able to provide the materials, do so."
Read the article and the released ruling. The unspecified agency requested and received legal demand to force their way into an Irish facility and seize their computers.
In some ways I would like to see the (currently unspecified) government agency attempt to execute the warrant. They will have US forces use force to invade
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As an American it seems pretty obvious that if I deal with an Irish company, that company could be forced to release information about me or held for me in response to orders from Irish courts.
I'm surprised people are surprised by this, and it raises the question; with a user id that low, have you made it your whole life without turning to page 2 for the rest of stories about legal disputes? Do you really not read the whole newspaper? How could you not know, and yet somehow be a "nerd" in this age of global
Re:No jurisdiction (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft does not own the information; they as a third party own the server on which someone else's information resides, a server which is held and taxed as a foreign asset outside US regional jurisdiction. It's one thing to compel Microsoft as a transnational company to produce one of their corporate records regardless of where they have stored it: agreeing to subject themselves to the US judicial system is part of incorporating in the US. It's entirely another when they are being told their foreign offices are actually territory of the US government and anyone or anything which resides there must submit to the pleasures of the US judicial system.
If I had written a letter in Britain and put it in a British safety deposit box I don't think the court would have the guts to demand it, even if the bank were jointly owned in the US. But scan that letter and store on the server and suddenly it's free game. Why? Because now it's easy to sneak the data out of the country without bothering the local authorities? Good news for people torrenting.
I suppose if you live in other countries you should doublecheck that any web companies you do business with do not also have a US presence because if they do any of your data could be subject to requisition by the US government even if it's data which has never left your country.
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Normally don't respond to ACs but America also thinks it can prosecute anyone, anywhere for committing a crime against American citizens.
Spain thinks the same for crimes committed against Spanish citizens.
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Crimes against humanity can always be prosecuted. By the ICC if necessary.
US Court did *not* say corporations are people ... (Score:3)
With apologies to various political hacks in the judiciary, corporations are not people ...
Actually the U.S. Supreme Court did *not* say that corporations are people. What the court actually said is that *groups of people* have the same rights as individual people, and that the nature of that group -- corporation, labor union, activist group, etc -- does not matter.
I apologize of actually reading the court decision rather than relying on the characterization of it by the talking heads on TV.
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Amusingly enough, "corporation" comes from latin word meaning a "group of people"... so where's the difference?
Latin is not to be taken literally in modern english. For example to decimate does not mean we will kill 10%. :-)
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The court is corrupt; their reasoning is often quite poor for educated, experienced and honorable judges. That is no more likely to be true than a Priest is safe around children; the title doesn't give them unquestionable character.
A group of people is entirely different than a legal corporation! I can't believe they'd do something so idiotic... while I expected the result, I found their justification embarrassingly flawed; I expected better BS.
The history of the word "corporation" is NOT the same as a lega
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Actually I'm pretty sure that if you were subpoenaed to deliver your tax documents or other records that were stored in your house in Ireland, you'd still be legally required to provide them. And it sounds like electronic search warrants are typically handled more like a subpoena than a traditional search warrant - i.e. the company provides the data rather than officers going in to seize it. So no, the US law enforcement has no jurisdiction to search the Ireland offices (without local cooperation), but Mi
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The question is: who does have legal jurisdiction on data stored in a given country? The courts of that country, or the courts of the nationality of the company who manages the data storage?
There are myriad of such questions. But the answer is always the same, "whatever is in the best interests of the richer guy".
You are wrong. The richer guy is Microsoft in this case and the richer guy is being told to hand over his overseas data.
Nope. Microsoft may have a lot of money, but the guy they're up against here is the US Federal government, an entity with nearly $3 TRILLION per year in revenues (and $4 TRILLION per year in expenditure), clearly by far the "richer guy".
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Tell me again, which US Prosecutor is it with a $3T budget?
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No, because the judge and (LEOs) are using the wrong tool.
A subpoena is an order to produce a document (or to require a person to appear). This is the tool they would normally use to get an email or any other document. The LEOs do not get any access except to have the document produced.
A search warrant is an order allowing LEOs to immediately search everything they want, and then seize whatever they think satisfies the warrant.
Normally a subpoena is used to get an email. The company searches their databa
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The Judge ordered the information, there's not much a LEO can do except comply; or appeal to a higher court. This could be considered a stalling tactic. As for the reference to the judge as a tool; now I see comedy.
Yes, a judge can order the information for himself, but that isn't what happened. Almost always it is the LEOs demanding the warrants, and that is what happened here.
The LEOs go to the judge and say "we need a search warrant", or "we need a subpoena". The judge reviews the request and signs off.
In this case the officers requested a search warrant, which allows the seizure of equipment. They want to capture entire servers, make images of them, and then store the servers for the court.
The correct legal in
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It's the Evil Empire of today, baby, and it's going bankrupt just like the last Evil Empire did, and then we'll be rid of the fuckers. It's going to take time though.
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The number of countries that had to change their own laws to permit their banks to previously-illegally hand over data to the IRS under that law is staggering. All because the US government included an enforcement clause allowing them to seize ("tax") essentially 30% of any foreign bank's US holdings if they withheld any data from the IRS.
And to think, this was all in aid of making sure US citizens with no remaining link to the US barring a passport continue to pay US taxes to a government that doesn't rep
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Businesses are in fact taking the second option: If they don't do business with US persons, they can mostly ignore FATCA. Try opening a stock market account as a US person in a foreign country - most financial institutions will probably refuse you.