Microsoft Case Ending

You will remember that the US Justice Department sought to get Microsoft to turn over email held on servers Microsoft said were in Ireland.  That was always a little suspect to me because it would be difficult to know, with the precision Microsoft was claiming, that it was there and only there.  European privacy rules were partly at issue, but the case was mostly about whether domestic warrants were valid for cloud-stored data.

All is good says Justice, after the President signed an Executive Order that allows judges to ask for such data, but allows them to claim conflict with another country’s rules.  This might make everyone happy, and Microsoft thinking it won, but I don’t think they should be happy and no legislation came out of this.  The issue will revive with a the first President who wants to cancel the Order.  This is a short-term solution because nobody wants to handle the real problem:  where are the clouds actually storing data?  

I live in a neighborhood of data centers- there are hundreds and more on the way.  So, is data really stored in the data centers?  Yes, of course it is, but a data center may not hold all the data and the vendors know it.  We looked into this several years ago when we wanted US government data to be stored in the US.  Everybody else demands it, so why shouldn’t we?  Except we found it difficult to find a vendor who could support that requirement.  One was storing cloud data in “other countries” one of which was China.  We thought that was a bad idea.  Most were not willing to say if they were storing data in any other country.

I still think Microsoft has no idea where that Mail was, even though they say it was stored in Ireland.
It must have not been sent outside Ireland.  That is possible, but unlikely.  It is just as complicated on the Justice side.  If China says Microsoft can’t have any data produced in China, even if stored somewhere else, does Microsoft comply?  Actually, China says all data produced in China has to be stored in China.  Microsoft is willing to do that, but does not do it for the US.  This cries out for legislation, but like most really complicated issues it is very hard to create policy with hundreds of lobbiests looking over their shoulders.