Universal Jurisdiction Laws….scary stuff

[Presser]

So im not sure i got this story right but i think it goes like this, the U.S. justice department is going after drug traffickers, they haven't even arrested them yet, but they are investigating them and they got a warrant fot their emails, well their email is set up on servers in dublin ireland, and fall outside the U.S. jurisdiction, however the justice department is arguing because the servers are Microsoft servers, and because microsoft is a U.S. based company that microsoft must hand over the emails from the servers based off shore,

Microsoft so far has refused and was found in contempt of court, so this is some scary stuff, i mean i could give a shit less about some scum bag drug traffickers, but thats not the point, point is, Ireland is a sovereign country and The United States Justice department says we have a right under a Universal Law of sorts to these emails on a server based in another country.

Very scary and a slippery slope if the U.S. wins!

i will try to find the article and see if i explained it properly

 

[Presser]

[h=1]Can the U.S. demand emails stored in Ireland?[/h]Court arguments in a case pitting Microsoft vs. the Justice Department will test the government's authority to seize data from servers abroad.




A drug-related court case pitting Microsoft against the Justice Department will test the U.S. government's reach over data stored in far-flung computers abroad — the latest fight between online privacy and the demands of law enforcement and national security.
The case, involving DOJ's attempts to obtain customer emails stored in a server in Dublin, could also heighten tensions between the United States and Europe on privacy policy and further complicate life for U.S.-based technology companies, which have already lost business because of Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA spying.


Some technology experts say the global nature of the Internet itself is at risk if Microsoft loses and other countries follow the United States' lead in demanding digital data stored outside their borders.
“What is at stake is basically the future of what the Internet looks like,” said Arne Schönbohm, president of the Cyber Security Council of Germany, which advises the German federal and regional governments on cybersecurity issues. “Do we have different islands where you store U.S. data and data for Europe. Do you do the same for China and the same for Saudi Arabia? Or will we have a global Internet?”
The government won the case's first two rounds before a magistrate judge and in U.S. District Court. Judges from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York will hear Microsoft's appeal Wednesday.
For tech companies already bloodied by the Snowden battles, a loss by Microsoft — or continued uncertainty about the government's powers — could be severely damaging, one industry official said. Following the Snowden leaks, many U.S. companies signed contracts with foreign customers promising not to share data with other governments, the official added — contracts it would be difficult to honor if the Justice Department wins.
A Microsoft loss would leave tech companies with a choice, industry supporters say: Either violate European laws by turning customer data over to the U.S. government, or violate U.S. law by refusing to. They say it would also increase pressure on European companies to cut ties with U.S. partners.
“It would create an economic problem for the entire industry that, I think, would have to get resolved legislatively,” said the official, speaking without attribution because of sensitivities surounding the case.
A decision in the government’s favor could also complicate other trans-Atlantic issues such as European antitrust investigations into Google, Schönbohm warned.
In court papers, government lawyers portray their demand for the emails as standard fare for criminal probes. If companies like Microsoft can refuse to turn over data stored on their servers, the DOJ writes, that would "deprive law enforcement of the ability to investigate and prosecute criminals using evidence obtained through a mechanism created by Congress and overseen by the courts.”
The debate takes on added importance with the rise of cloud computing, because cloud providers frequently store customer data in distant locations or transfer data from one jurisdiction to another to use server space more efficiently and cut costs.
No matter who wins, technology experts and privacy activists say, Congress will face mounting pressure to step in. Lawmakers took similar action just three months ago, when the expiration of key provisions of the PATRIOT Act prompted them to approve a bill that added more privacy checks to the government's controversial program of querying bulk phone data.
The Justice Department, which wants the emails as part of a drug trafficking probe, has said nothing publicly about the email account holder at the center of the probe, including his or her nationality.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/emails-microsoft-case-cloud-computing-213361#ixzz3lGy5QkIY



Microsoft says the emails are governed by Irish law, the same way physical letters stored in a Dublin file cabinet would be — so if the U.S. government wants them, it should ask the Irish government to obtain them and turn them over. The company also maintains that the emails belong to the customer, and that Microsoft is just storing them on his or her behalf.
The Justice Department contends that Microsoft owns the emails. And it says the data are not really Irish because Microsoft could produce the emails in the U.S. with a few mouse clicks.
Ireland and numerous other nations have signed agreements with the U.S., known as mutual legal assistance treaties, that spell out when and how their law enforcement agencies can share such information. Government officials frequently complain that such agreements are too onerous, but tech companies note that multinational cooperation on data requests can happen quickly during crises, such as the aftermath of January's deadly shooting spree at the offices of the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. In that case, the FBI passed along a French request for Hotmail data to Microsoft and the company complied within 45 minutes, Microsoftgeneral counsel Brad Smith said during a speech several weeks later in Brussels.
Congress has made an early stab at quelling tech companies' concerns with a bill that would give law enforcement explicit authority to use a warrant to obtain customer information that U.S. companies are storing abroad, but only if the subject of the warrant is a U.S. citizen. For the records of non-citizens stored abroad, law enforcement would have to use the mutual legal assistance treaty process.
The largely bipartisan bill, called the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act, would clarify ambiguities in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which has been awkwardly adapted to the Internet age. The bill has gained 12 co-sponsors in the Senate, where it’s sponsored by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and 91 in the House, where Tom Marino (R-Pa.) is sponsoring it. Marino said the Microsoft case demonstrates why it’s imperative to update ECPA.
“Regardless of the outcome in this case, Congress is in the best position to craft a law that balances law enforcement needs, privacy concerns, and foreign sovereignty, not prosecutors or judges,” Marino said in a statement to POLITICO.
The tech industry largely supports the bill.
It’s not clear, however, that the fallout from a Microsoft loss in court would be enough to force the bill to the finish line. Tech companies lodged similar complaints of lost business — and much more loudly — after Snowden disclosed that the NSA was scooping up non-Americans’ metadata. Verizon even lost several contracts with the German government, which declared it did not trust the company to keep its data secret from American spies.
Tech companies are mostly supporting Microsoft in the case through friend-of-the-court briefs and are planning a much more concerted lobbying push for the LEADS Act or similar measures if the company loses at the appellate level, according to several officials from industry organizations.
That won’t assure legislative action, though, especially with the partisan battle over Planned Parenthood funding, election-year wrangling and other tech priorities such as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act vying for attention.




“There’s a good deal of support for the [LEADS] Act in Congress, but it seems like anything related to privacy or security is having a tough time unless there’s a very real and significant forcing mechanism,” said Michael Vatis, a Steptoe & Johnson attorney who wrote Verizon’s friend-of-the-court brief in the Microsoft case and previously led the FBI’s cyber efforts.The quandary over data in foreign servers is likely to become more pressing as cloud storage becomes increasingly global, and as companies develop new tools to make storage more efficient by zipping data among distant servers. Google, for example, is rumored to “load balance” some of its data between the U.S. and Europe each night while one side of the Atlantic logs off to sleep, opening up more server space.Google, which has declined to describe its data storage practices for security reasons, was one of the few tech companies that did not file a brief in the Microsoft case.Asked about the Microsoft dispute during a panel discussion in January, Google’s senior law enforcement and security counsel, Nicole Jones, said the company “is obviously watching [the case] very carefully” but warned that “what might make sense and apply to one company in one situation may not apply at all to the way another company is set up.”For smaller companies that manage customer data inside computer clouds managed by third parties such as Microsoft and Amazon, the situation is even more difficult, said Emilie Hersh, founder of the consultancy Unbuttoned Innovation. That’s because those companies often have little or no control over where their customers’ data is stored at any given time.“How do you keep building your business if you’re made to answer laws in four or five other countries and you didn’t even know the data was sitting there?” Hersh asked.Microsoft has pledged to take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary and expressed some confidence it can get there. Many technology experts also hope the case will reach the high court, but outside lawyers are less sanguine.“I doubt it would get to the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court looks for disagreements among circuits and this is the first case to reach the circuit level,” said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor who has analyzed the Microsoft case at the Washington Post blog The Volokh Conspiracy. "Its novelty is working against it."Vatis agreed, saying it would be an “uphill battle” to persuade the Supreme Court to take the case, but not an impossibility.“There would be a better chance if the government loses,” Vatis added, “simply because the court is a little more sympathetic to the U.S. government’s pleas that a certain decision will thwart law enforcement efforts” than to companies’ complaints about lost customers.




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[Doctor9]

Well, as far as I can see - even if the government wins, it loses. Their argument is that Microsoft is American, and therefore under American jurisdiction. Do they not see what the consequence is of that? Any company that wants to be able to claim to protect it's user's data/privacy will simply refuse to set up shop in the US - the tech investment will go *elsewhere* and the US will continue it's slide from economic powerhouse to indebted mass market for the *real* economies of the world.

 

[gandhisays]

Well, as far as I can see - even if the government wins, it loses. Their argument is that Microsoft is American, and therefore under American jurisdiction. Do they not see what the consequence is of that? Any company that wants to be able to claim to protect it's user's data/privacy will simply refuse to set up shop in the US - the tech investment will go *elsewhere* and the US will continue it's slide from economic powerhouse to indebted mass market for the *real* economies of the world.

yep, and vice versa obviously, our tech companies do massive biz over seas, and now other countries will not want them. its just a lose lose lose lose across the board!