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from the and-if-some-american-ones-slip-in-there-who-will-notice? dept.
A U.S. judge has ordered Google to hand over emails stored outside the country in order to comply with an FBI search warrant. The warrant in question pertains to a domestic fraud probe.
The ruling is notable because it goes against an appeals court judgement last year — recently upheld — pertaining to Microsoft customer data held in servers outside the US. In that instance a federal court ruled the company did not have to hand over data stored on its servers in Ireland to the US government, declining to "disregard the presumption against extraterritoriality," as the judge put it.
However in the Google case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter ruled on Friday that the act of transferring emails from a foreign server did not qualify as a seizure. According to Reuters, the judge ruled there is no "meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest", going on to assert that any privacy infringement occurs "at the time of disclosure in the United States", rather than when the data itself is transferred.
Google's legal team had sought to use the Microsoft ruling as precedent to challenge the warrant's scope. The company had turned over data that was stored in the US only. In a statement it said it will be appealing the judgement. "The magistrate in this case departed from precedent, and we plan to appeal the decision. We will continue to push back on overbroad warrants," it said.
Both cases involve warrants issued under a 1986 federal law called the Stored Communications Act, which — as you can imagine, given its date-stamp — has long been described as a "woefully outdated" piece of legislation vs the technology it is now being used to regulate.
Source:
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:03PM
According to Reuters, the judge ruled there is no "meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest", going on to assert that any privacy infringement occurs "at the time of disclosure in the United States", rather than when the data itself is transferred.
Hilarious. Fucking hilarious. For those of you not old enough to remember VRML plugins for browsers, set the way-back machine to "Mitnick", and learn of the reason why you now have the proper noun "Intellectual Property" engraved in your mind ...
Prosecutors have maintained that Mitnick’s activities — copying computer and cell-phone source code from Motorola, Nokia and Sun – involved property worth $80 million. Mitnick acknowledged $10 million worth in his plea. Yet even this figure is misleading, says lawyer Granick: “If he never redistributed the information, and never used it or profited from it in any way, how does the act that he merely copied it deprive the owner of its full value?”
From 1999; http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0419/6308050a.html [forbes.com] (requires forbes.com, forbesimg.com and scorecardsearch.com enabled for those of you who remember when running untrusted code on your computer wasn't a prerequisite for reading an a news article).
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Wednesday February 08 2017, @01:09AM
That which belongs to ordinary people has no value. That which belongs to the government or large companies has inestimable value.
How is this so hard to understand?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:00AM
Hmmm... elinks had no issue showing the text. What code are you talking about?