COURT: US GOVERNMENT CAN'T MAKE MICROSOFT REVEAL CLOUD DATA

Associated Press ^ | July 14, 2016 | BY LARRY NEUMEISTER

[Swordmaker]

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal appeals court delivered a victory to U.S. companies housing customer data overseas, ruling Thursday that prosecutors cannot force Microsoft to reveal content from a customer's email account stored in Ireland.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned a lower court order finding the company in civil contempt for not handing over the data.

Microsoft offers storage through its "public cloud," which places data from over 1 billion customers and over 20 million businesses on servers in over 40 countries, the court noted.

[Swordmaker]

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the US Government cannot force Microsoft (or any company, for that matter) to divulge customer data they are storing for them in the cloud if it is kept off shore. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp. sees the ruling as a "major victory for the protection of people's privacy rights under their own laws rather than the reach of foreign governments," Brad Smith, its president and chief legal officer, said in a statement. He said it also "helps ensure that the legal protections of the physical world apply in the digital domain." — PING!

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[aMorePerfectUnion]

I’ve had overseas email for years for this reason...

[pgyanke]

COURT: US GOVERNMENT CAN'T MAKE MICROSOFT REVEAL CLOUD DATA yet...

[ColdOne]

For now. You know that is why the cloud was invented.

[drypowder]

this current government can and does what ever it wants and to hell with anything a judge says.

[i_robot73]

W/out reading the full details: How do I doubt it was ruled/based upon the 4th A., but some other ‘out’ instead?

Courts, let alone any other level of govt, aren’t basing SQUAT from a Constitutional stand-point.

[ThunderSleeps]

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If I were using cloud storage for anything important I would make sure I encrypted it locally with my own encryption (not the cloud provider's) before storage. That would reduce the utility of cloud storage somewhat - any device that I wanted to access it from would have to be able to decrypt it - but would increase the security. However, the only thing I really have in the cloud are some vacation photos.