Microsoft Fights Us In High Court To Protect Global Business

Microsoft Fights Us In High Court To Protect Global Business

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Microsoft has an eye on its international customers as it confronts the Trump administration in a Supreme Court fight about turning over emails to investigators.

The justices will hear arguments over whether the company, as part of an international drug trafficking investigation, must comply with an American warrant for emails stored on a server in a Microsoft facility in Dublin, Ireland.

The case turns on a law written in 1986, long before the advent of cloud computing, when lawmakers couldn’t imagine a world in which Microsoft and other technology companies store data around the world. The Stored Communications Act sets rules for authorities when they want to gain access to electronic communications.

A federal appeals court agreed with Microsoft that the emails were beyond the warrant’s reach because they are kept outside the United States.

But the larger context is the technology sector’s need “to give customers around the world confidence that they can rely on us,” Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told reporters in a telephone call last week.

The concerns stem in part from the 2013 leak of classified information detailing America’s surveillance programs and the role Microsoft and others played in turning over emails and other information.