Warrants for Cloud Mail

We are about to find out if one of the most interesting cases to come along will allow Federal warrants to get email from a service in Ireland, operated by Microsoft.  JOE PALAZZOLO, in today's Wall Street Journal, outlines the story, but there is a good deal more on the line than what is at issue in this one case.

More than Microsoft is involved and a cast of characters involved in the defense is staggering.  Cisco, Verizon, Amazon, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Software Alliance all are helping to file briefs, and the reason for it is fairly obvious - they are operating clouds that store data outside the U.S. where they figure the Feds should not be able to collect data.  The Justice Department thinks that controlling that data from the U.S. makes them subject to the court order, and is trying it out in a drug trafficking case.

The big deal here is whether cloud services can be served warrants on data not in the U.S.  Whether control is more important in the warrant than national borders is part of that issue.  Our data floats around all over the world and none of these companies tell us it is stored outside the U.S.  It seems the same as telephone circuits outside the U.S.  It doesn't stop warrants from being served or the data supplied and it relies on sharing many circuits all over the world.  We aren't plucking the data from Ireland.  We get it from the U.S. side of the conversation.

It seems these companies want to muddy the waters a little for their own self interests.