This was rejected as a submission, so I'm posting it here.
In reports from both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether search warrants from U.S. law enforcement agencies include emails stored in other countries.
For two years, Microsoft Corp. has resisted a warrant requiring it to divulge customer emails located in a data center in Ireland, where, according to the company, they are protected by Irish and European privacy laws and are beyond the grip of U.S. authorities.
Amicus briefs filed by numerous parties warn that allowing overseas searches could harm business.
Household names like Amazon.com Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc., as well as lobbying groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Software Alliance, pitched in legal briefs supporting Microsoft. Revelations about U.S. spying with the help of telecom companies have heightened foreign sensitivities, placing U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage abroad, they argued.
However, the Obama administration claims that warrants should be handled the same as subpoenas since the contents of the servers are accessable from the U.S.
"A corporation cannot resist compliance with a subpoena merely on the ground that the responsive records are stored abroad."
U.S. to Decide if Warrants Include Data Stored in Europe
This was rejected as a submission, so I'm posting it here.
In reports from both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether search warrants from U.S. law enforcement agencies include emails stored in other countries.
Amicus briefs filed by numerous parties warn that allowing overseas searches could harm business.
However, the Obama administration claims that warrants should be handled the same as subpoenas since the contents of the servers are accessable from the U.S.