Microsoft filed a reply brief overnight in its ongoing legal fight against a U.S. search warrant that seeks access to customer email stored on a Microsoft server in Ireland. The company argues that the government is improperly stretching U.S. law beyond the country’s borders.
The company’s top lawyer, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, is simultaneously calling for reforms in privacy laws — asking Congress and the White House to “seize this opportunity to update the law and advance international solutions.”
“While there are many areas where we disagree with the government, we both agree that outdated electronic privacy laws need to be modernized,” writes Smith in a post about the filing. “The statute in this case, the Electronics Communications Privacy Act, is almost 30 years old. That’s an eternity in the era of information technology.”
Smith points, as an example, to the bi-partisan Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad (LEADS) Act as an example. “It would address a number of the government’s concerns about the needs of law enforcement while offering strong privacy protections for people everywhere, including non-US citizens and residents,” he writes.
Microsoft lost the initial ruling in a lower court, leading to the appeal.
In previous filings, lawyers for the U.S. government called Microsoft’s arguments against the warrant “entirely incompatible with the express text of the statute, which orders service providers to disclose records upon receipt of a warrant or other appropriate legal instrument.” They added, “Nothing in the text or structure of the statute carves out an exception for records stored abroad, and none exists in precedent construing the scope of compulsory process.”
Microsoft’s reply brief, available here, is the last legal brief before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals hears oral arguments on the case this summer.
Editor’s Note: Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith will be the guest this week on the GeekWire radio show and podcast, airing at 7 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. on KIRO Radio (97.3 FM) in the Seattle region, and available as a podcast on GeekWire.com on Saturday morning. The interview will also be available as written Q&A on GeekWire next week.
