AppleInsider Staff
Microsoft's long-running battle with the Department of Justice over a federal court ruling that could force American companies to hand data about foreign customers over to the U.S. government will soon be heard by the Supreme Court.
Apple was among nearly 300 organizations and individuals who signed fresh amicus briefs in the case, Microsoft's top lawyer Brad Smith announced on Friday. Smith called the wide-ranging coalition "extraordinary."
"Members of Congress took the same position as members of the European Parliament. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce approvingly quoted a statement by the European Commission. Business groups and big companies agreed with consumer and privacy advocates. Faculty from Harvard joined with professors from Princeton. Professors from Duke joined rivals from the University of North Carolina, while those at Berkeley sided with Stanford. And Fox News agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union," he observed.
Microsoft is appealing portions of a warrant issued by U.S. magistrate judge James Francis IV ordering the company to give U.S. authorities access to email data from an Irish customer. That data is held in Ireland, and Microsoft charges that complying with the order would force it to break Irish data protection laws.
Apple has been supporting Microsoft in the fight since 2014. The company, along with networking giant Cisco, was one of the first to sign on.
The Supreme Court is set to take up Microsoft's case next month.
Malcolm Owen
Charles Martin
Andrew O'Hara
Amber Neely
Oliver Haslam
Christine McKee
9 Comments
They'd better uphold this, as it's common sense. The US in general is overbearing when it comes to entitlement. They are not entitled to data stored in another country. Period.
This is government over-reach and I hope the SCOTUS sees this.
It's surprising that the judge isn't seeing the overreach and legal issues in this case.
If anyone should see the conflicts and compliance issues for Microsoft, it is him.
He should also be aware of any options that would permit him to use Irish legal proceedings to get the information he wants.
If the situation were reversed and an Irish company were required by an Irish judge to reveal information from a US citizen which was stored on US servers, would he not see the data protection issues?
It would damage the interest of all American cloud providers enormously. Owning a European app company, I would have to stop the subscription of my American cloud providers (mainly Google, but also some parts at Amazon and Microsoft). The American government must not have access to my company data.
Moving my company to other European cloud providers is not easy, especially finding a good alternative to the Google Cloud Platform, where the cloud services for my customer are running in a Kubernetes cluster. But if needed it will move.
And I am pretty sure that a lot of Europeans thinking in a similar way.
If the US government compels US companies to break the laws of other nations in which they operate, won't they be obliged to shut down operations in those countries?