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posted by janrinok on Saturday April 26 2014, @11:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-jurisdiction-without-representation!-Pass-my-musket dept.

People all over the world should consider US companies as controlled by their (i.e. the US) government in all matters. Because a judge in US has now ruled that search warrants for customer email and other content must be turned over, regardless of whether the data is stored on servers in other countries. The case is one where law enforcement demanded data from Microsoft's servers in 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.'

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  • (Score: 1) by Theophrastus on Saturday April 26 2014, @11:24PM

    by Theophrastus (4044) on Saturday April 26 2014, @11:24PM (#36725)

    ..has always been notably lacking, (and don't get me started on legal versus basic statistics. "we find the defendant one sigma guilty!")

    for instance, what if the demanded "data" existed only as an aggregate spread over several jurisdictions? (oh i dunno... data from satellites; or a fragmented torrent file)

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by broken on Saturday April 26 2014, @11:46PM

    by broken (4018) on Saturday April 26 2014, @11:46PM (#36727) Journal

    Why does Soylent need to reproduce the bad stories that have been posted from Slashdot? There is nothing to see here but an inflammatory headline. Microsoft does business in the U.S. so is under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Microsoft is being ordered to produce data for a court case. No physical search is taking place in a foreign country. This all seems perfectly legitimate.

    If any company wants their data (or any part of their business) to be outside U.S. jurisdiction, they need to reincorporate outside of the U.S. and stop doing business there. If after they did that, a court ordered that they produce this data then we would have a story.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by number11 on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:17AM

      by number11 (1170) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:17AM (#36743)

      Microsoft does business in the U.S. so is under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

      And Facebook does some business in Saudi Arabia, so your Facebook account is under the jurisdiction of Saudi courts. I do hope you haven't posted any pictures of women that have skin showing.

      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:37AM

        by Reziac (2489) on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:37AM (#36745) Homepage

        That's actually a good point. If US courts claim jurisdiction over data on a foreign server, then another country should have a reciprocal right to claim jurisdiction over data on a US server.

        What's good for the goose... oh wait, betcha THAT one won't fly!

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 2, Informative) by rich0 on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:50AM

          by rich0 (3632) on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:50AM (#36752)

          Every country already does this sort of thing. The only thing that matters is whether YOU are in their jurisdiction. If you are, then they'll ask you to turn over the data, and if you don't they'll just lock you up until you do.

          Companies that do business in places like Saudi Arabia are generally careful to not keep any of their assets there, or send their officers there. Saudi Arabia could of course demand that Facebook turn over some data, and Facebook could just ignore them.

          Governments are governments because they have a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Any government that doesn't have this isn't really the government. Jurisdiction is just a fancy way of describing a government's sphere of influence. If you own a lot of property in some country, then you're basically in their jurisdiction and at their mercy unless you don't mind losing that property. If your body is in their jurisdiction then your freedom is at their mercy.

          There isn't a government on the planet that doesn't work this way.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 27 2014, @06:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 27 2014, @06:35AM (#36792)

      Because these are the stories that the community have submitted. Which story did you submit?

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by TGV on Sunday April 27 2014, @08:01AM

        by TGV (2838) on Sunday April 27 2014, @08:01AM (#36808)

        Definitely right. Apart from the judicial aspects, people and companies should know this can happen to their email and other data too.

      • (Score: 2) by gottabeme on Monday April 28 2014, @12:40PM

        by gottabeme (1531) on Monday April 28 2014, @12:40PM (#37131)

        Is there a formal name for the "Well we have to post something!" fallacy?

        I'd rather see 3 good stories a day than 3 good stories and 9 bad ones.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Appalbarry on Sunday April 27 2014, @12:07AM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Sunday April 27 2014, @12:07AM (#36730) Journal
    OK, here are the money shots from TFA:

    1) Microsoft has recently emphasized to its customers abroad that their data should not be searchable by U.S. authorities and said it would fight such requests.

    2)Microsoft determined that the target account is hosted on a server in Dublin and asked Francis to throw out the request, citing U.S. law that search warrants do not extend overseas.

    Francis agreed that this is true for "traditional" search warrants but not warrants seeking digital content, which are governed by a federal law called the Stored Communications Act.

    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.

    All of which suggests that there is prior case law to support the judge's decision.

    I'd also wonder about he possibility that the data in question at some point will travel through US server space anyhow. Certainly the NSA etc will be watching those access points.

    All of this proves once again that you should not ever assume that any communications are private or protected.
  • (Score: 3) by tathra on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:55AM

    by tathra (3367) on Sunday April 27 2014, @01:55AM (#36753)

    the whole point of being a sovereign nation is that other countries' laws, etc, arent supposed to matter. if the US wants their laws to apply elsewhere, then its empire-building we go. so are we going to try to annex the whole world, or just have a shadow cabal control everything from behind the scenes, illuminati/new world order style?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by caffeinated bacon on Sunday April 27 2014, @05:50AM

      by caffeinated bacon (4151) on Sunday April 27 2014, @05:50AM (#36787)

      Definitely the second option. The government is too busy taking away all your rights as fast as they can, they are hardly going to want to annex anybody else and give rights to them too if they can avoid it.