By Matt Day, The Seattle Times
A U.S. court overstepped its bounds in demanding Microsoft turn over the contents of an email account stored in Ireland, a federal appeals court said Thursday.
The ruling is the latest twist in a court battle that is among the highest-profile fights between U.S. technology giants and governments over the state’s powers to police cyberspace.
A Microsoft spokesman didn’t immediately provide a comment.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Lawyers who have been tracking the case said the government would likely appeal in the event it lost.
The case centers on an MSN.com email account U.S. prosecutors sought in 2013 as part of a drug-trafficking investigation.
Microsoft, after discovering the email account’s contents were stored in an Irish data center, challenged the ruling, saying the warrant amounted to an international seizure beyond the government’s powers.
The government has said existing data storage law gives it the right to compel Microsoft to turn over the emails.
Two federal courts agreed with the government. Microsoft’s latest appeal was heard in September.
In Thursday’s ruling, a panel of judges on the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the Stored Communications Act, a statute that outlines privacy for electronic records, does not give courts the authority to compel U.S. email providers to hand over customer content stored exclusively on foreign servers.
The case has worldwide implications, legal experts say. Internet service providers like Microsoft store an increasing number of documents, photos and sensitive material on behalf of businesses and individuals, raising the importance of the rules that govern law enforcement access to that material.
Microsoft’s case is among a handful of prominent clashes as technology companies and government agencies fight to define the line between privacy and surveillance in the internet age.
Earlier this year, Apple and the FBI sparred over the law enforcement agency’s request for help unlocking an iPhone owned by one of the perpetrators of the December mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. More recently, Twitter cut off intelligence agency access to the data mining service that tracks posts on the site.
And Microsoft is currently suing the Justice Department, arguing that a law that can be used to prohibit companies from ever telling their customers that law enforcement agencies came knocking for their data is unconstitutional.
As in the Apple iPhone case, Microsoft’s resistance to the government in the Ireland case drew support from a range of technology giants and civil liberties groups.
The technology industry’s newfound resistance to some government requests was spurred, in part, by Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the extent of U.S. government access into the internet.
“The perception of U.S. companies kind of working at the bidding of the U.S. government is not good for their businesses,” said Jennifer Daskal, a professor with the American University Law School and a former Justice Department official. “Post-Snowden, you see a lot more public pushback on a whole host of things.”
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, has said the U.S. technology industry needs to restore trust in American technology, or risk losing business at home and abroad. Smith has used the Ireland warrant case as a cornerstone of Microsoft’s advocacy for an update to laws concerning government access to stored data.
©2016 The Seattle Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
