A Cloud Over the Microsoft Warrant Case
May 1, 2017 | The Insider: White Collar Defense and Securities Enforcement
Almost a year ago, the Second Circuit held that Microsoft had no obligation to produce to the government—in response to a court-issued warrant—customer emails that were stored on a server located in Ireland. In so ruling, the Second Circuit found that the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”), under which the warrant was issued, cannot be applied extraterritorially, and thus can only be relied on to authorize warrants to seize data stored in the United States. The opinion remains binding law in the Second Circuit, and has been the basis on which other service providers (including Google and Yahoo!) have refused to provide data to federal prosecutors not only in the Second Circuit, but throughout the United States as well. [...]