Microsoft sues U.S. government over data requests

[SnakeMasteR]

 

 

Microsoft Corp has sued the U.S. government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails,

the latest in a series of clashes over privacy between the technology industry and Washington.

 

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in federal court in Seattle, argues that the government is violating the U.S. Constitution by preventing

Microsoft from notifying thousands of customers about government requests for their emails and other documents.

 

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment.

 

The government's actions contravene the Fourth Amendment, which establishes the right for people and businesses to know if the

government searches or seizes their property, the suit argues, and Microsoft's First Amendment right to free speech.

 

Microsoft's suit focuses on the storage of data on remote servers, rather than locally on people's computers, which Microsoft says

has provided a new opening for the government to access electronic data.

 

Using the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the government is increasingly directing investigations at the parties that

store data in the so-called cloud, Microsoft says in the lawsuit. The 30-year-old law has long drawn scrutiny from technology

companies and privacy advocates who say it was written before the rise of the commercial Internet and is therefore outdated.

 

"People do not give up their rights when they move their private information from physical storage to the cloud," Microsoft says in the

lawsuit. It adds that the government "has exploited the transition to cloud computing as a means of expanding its power to conduct

secret investigations."

 

SURVEILLANCE BATTLE

 

The lawsuit represents the newest front in the battle between technology companies and the U.S. government over how much private

businesses should assist government surveillance.

 

By filing the suit, Microsoft is taking a more prominent role in that battle, dominated by Apple Inc in recent months due to the

government's efforts to get the company to write software to unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a December massacre

in San Bernardino, California.

 

Apple, backed by big technology companies including Microsoft, had complained that cooperating would turn businesses into arms of

the state.

 

"Just as Apple was the company in the last case and we stood with Apple, we expect other tech companies to stand with us,"

Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a phone interview after the suit was filed.

 

In its complaint, Microsoft says over the past 18 months it has received 5,624 legal orders under the ECPA, of which 2,576 prevented

Microsoft from disclosing that the government is seeking customer data through warrants, subpoenas and other requests. Most of the

ECPA requests apply to individuals, not companies, and provide no fixed end date to the secrecy provision, Microsoft said.

 

Microsoft and other companies won the right two years ago to disclose the number of government demands for data they receive.

This case goes farther, requesting that it be allowed to notify individual businesses and people that the government is seeking

information about them.

 

Increasingly, U.S. companies are under pressure to prove they are helping protect consumer privacy. The campaign gained momentum

in the wake of revelations by former government contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 that the government routinely conducted extensive

phone and Internet surveillance to a much greater degree than believed.

 

Microsoft's lawsuit comes a day after a U.S. congressional panel voted unanimously to advance a package of reforms to the ECPA.

 

Last-minute changes to the legislation removed an obligation for the government to notify a targeted user whose communications are

being sought. Instead, the bill would require disclosure of a warrant only to a service provider, which retains the right to voluntarily notify

users, unless a court grants a gag order.

 

It is unclear if the bill will advance through the Senate and become law this year.

 

Separately, Microsoft is fighting a U.S. government warrant to turn over data held in a server in Ireland, which the government argues

is lawful under another part of the ECPA. Microsoft argues the government needs to go through a procedure outlined in a legal-assistance

 treaty between the U.S. and Ireland.

 

Twitter Inc is fighting a separate battle in federal court in Northern California over public disclosure of government requests for

information on users.

 

The case is Microsoft Corp v United States Department of Justice et al in the United States District Court, Western District of Washington,

No. 2:16-cv-00537. (Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington)

 

Source

[straycat19]

The government needs to start thinking about the cloud like they do a safety deposit box in a bank.  If they want to access it they have to issue a warrant, and since it takes two keys, they need to warrants.  If they want to access an email container (a box) in the cloud then they need to issue a warrant  to the owner, not the company that owns the cloud.  And everyone has a right to know if their data is being accessed, unless email is considered a conversation similar to a phone conversation in which case it can be tapped by issuing a warrant to the phone company.  In which case the suspect does not know he is being recorded.  It really is going to require some new rules to define what email is and what rights an individual has or doesn't have.  It is not a black and white issue since there are too many gray areas that require being defined.

[Batu69]

Redmond wants to inform users when their data is tracked

Microsoft is suing the U.S. Justice Department, asking a federal judge to declare unconstitutional a provision of U.S. law that lets the government keep Microsoft and other tech companies from informing their customers when investigators seek access to emails and other cloud data.

 

The suit, filed moments ago in U.S. District Court in Seattle, targets Section 2705(b) of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows the government to seek and obtain secrecy orders preventing companies from letting their customers know when their data is the target of a federal warrant, subpoena or court order.

 

Microsoft says in its complaint, “This statute violates both the Fourth Amendment, which affords people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and the First Amendment, which enshrines Microsoft’s rights to talk to its customers and to discuss how the government conducts its investigations—subject only to restraints narrowly tailored to serve compelling government interests.”

 

The complaint adds, “People do not give up their rights when they move their private information from physical storage to the cloud. Microsoft therefore asks the Court to declare that Section 2705(b) is unconstitutional on its face.”

 

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, criticized the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act as outdated during his testimony in February before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee — bringing along IBM’s first laptop, released the same year, to help illustrate his point.

 

In a post this morning about the lawsuit, Smith says, “We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records. Yet it’s becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation.”

 

Microsoft says in the suit that federal courts have issued nearly 2,600 secrecy orders to the company over the past 18 months, and more than two-thirds of those orders didn’t have a defined ending date.

 

The suit is the latest battle between the Redmond, Wash.-based tech company and the U.S. government over issues of consumer privacy and cloud services. Microsoft and the government are already fighting an ongoing legal case over the government’s attempt to access a customer’s data stored on a server in Ireland.

 

It’s also the latest skirmish between the government and the tech industry, after a high-profile battle between Apple and the FBI over access to a terrorist’s iPhone. Microsoft, Amazon, Google and other tech companies sided with Apple in that case.

 

Box, the enterprise cloud storage company that partners with Microsoft, said in a statement that it will “fully support Microsoft’s effort to require more transparency in government data requests and the government’s full observance of the protections guaranteed by the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

 

Here’s a copy of Microsoft’s suit