14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Microsoft has agreed to be held in contempt in the New York case against the United States government, thus trying to appeal the court’s ruling to hand over customer data faster.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ordered in July that Microsoft must hand over customer data stored on an Irish server to the United States government as part of a drug probe.
While Microsoft initially refused to comply with the requirements, claiming that a US search warrant must be valid only in the United States, the company then moved the lawsuit to court, trying to block the government from accessing data stored on overseas servers.
The court, however, ordered Microsoft to comply with the government request, but offered the possibility of appealing the decision. Redmond refused to share the data and expressed its intention to appeal the decision soon after the July 31 ruling.
Microsoft: Your email belongs to you
Since the judge’s ruling, Microsoft started a big campaign in the United States to emphasize the risks of complying with the government’s request, explaining that in case the company were forced to provide access to data stored overseas, other countries could follow with similar requests.
“Other governments could demand emails held in datacenters outside their jurisdiction. In fact, earlier this month the British government passed a law asserting its right to require tech companies to produce emails stored anywhere in the world. This would include emails stored in the U.S. by Americans who have never been to the UK,” Brendon Lynch, chief privacy officer, Microsoft, said.
At the same time, Microsoft explained that a search warrant issued by the United States must not be valid outside the country because it could have “important implications outside the US.”
Full-page newspaper ads to protect privacy
Microsoft is clearly using this campaign to show users that it really cares about their privacy, so the company has even placed full-page newspaper ads in top US publications to explain that users’ emails should not be accessed by anyone else.
At the same time, Microsoft’s executives, including Brendon Lynch, explained that the software giant would try anything that’s possible to prevent the government from accessing data stored overseas, thus protecting users’ privacy no matter where the data is stored.
“Microsoft is committed to delivering meaningful privacy protections that build trust with our customers, and we know how much you value the contents of your email. We believe your email belongs to you, not us, and that it should receive the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail--no matter where it is stored,” Lynch pointed out.