Microsoft Gets Allies to Help Tell U.S. to Back Off on Irish Search Warrant
The U.S. Department of Justice should back off its request for Microsoft to turn over a suspect’s digital documents stored on a server in Ireland, or be prepared for other governments demanding documents stored on U.S. servers, the company’s general counsel said.
The DOJ’s ongoing search warrant for email and other documents stored at a Dublin server farm risks exposing U.S. records to foreign law enforcement agencies and foments distrust around the world in U.S. tech companies, Microsoft Brad Smith and a group of allies in the Irish search warrant fight argued.
“Everybody wants to have their rights protected by their own law,” Smith said at a Microsoft-sponsored event in New York City Monday. “Try telling an American that their rights are no longer going to be protected by the Constitution, they’re no longer going to be protected by U.S. law; they’re going to be protected by Irish law or Chinese law or Brazilian law.”
Smith called on the U.S. Congress to pass rules protecting the privacy of email stored in the cloud. The U.S. government and technology companies can find a workable solution to a significant legal issue that pits criminal investigations against personal privacy, he said.
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