Microsoft has refused to hand over customer email data stored in Redmond’s Dublin data center to the US government agencies arguing that the move would lead to violation of a users’ privacy rights.
In a court filing made public on Monday, Microsoft’s attorneys have objected the order issued by a New York magistrate judge, as a part of a drug trafficking investigation, last December that required the company to leak out customer’s email-account data stored in Dublin, Ireland to the U.S. regulators.
According to Redmond’s appeal, the government’s order to search the Dublin facility “would violate international law and treaties, and reduce the privacy protection of everyone on the planet.”
The company argued saying that the customer’s emails data stored in Dublin were beyond the reach of a domestic search warrant.
“The government cannot seek and a court cannot issue a warrant allowing federal agents to break down the doors of Microsoft’s Dublin facility,” the software giant said in its filing.
“The Warrant in this case violates the Fourth Amendment because it fails to identify the place to be searched with particularity.
Instead, the Warrant purports to authorize law enforcement officers to search for any information associated with the target email account that is stored at premises owned, maintained, controlled, or operated by Microsoft anywhere in the world, and further seeks to conscript Microsoft to execute it on their behalf.”
“Likewise, the Government cannot conscript Microsoft to do what it has no authority to do—i.e. execute a search warrant aboard … the Government takes the extraordinary position that by merely serving a warrant on any US-based email provider, it has the right to obtain the private emails of any subscriber, no matter where in the world the data may be located, and without the knowledge of or consent of the subscriber or relevant foreign government where the data is stored,” the court filing said.
Lastly, the Redmond said that the government should opt for a so-called mutual legal assistance treaty, or MLAT to access such kind of data.
The case will be further discussed in a New York court on July 31, and a decision can be expected sometime in August.
