[coachmark2]

Source


Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith believes that the US Government's demands for email stored overseas is unconstitutional
Quote:

Smith has emerged as one of the technology industry's loudest voices for reform and greater openness.

Now he is spearheading Microsoft's fight against US government demands for access to emails from a Microsoft customer which are currently sitting on a server in Dublin, Ireland, as part of a narcotics investigation. Earlier this year, a US court ruled that Microsoft should hand the data over. Microsoft declined to comply, voluntarily entering into contempt.

Last week Microsoft filed its appeal: "The power to embark on unilateral law enforcement incursions into a foreign sovereign country - directly or indirectly - has profound foreign policy consequences. Worse still, it threatens the privacy of US citizens," the company said in court documents.

If Microsoft loses, Smith argues it could put all of our private digital information at risk as well as further damaging the standing and reputation of US tech firms still reeling from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's leaks.

 

[Blk]

You know the world is messed up when Microsoft is the good guy

 

[jacksknight]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blk

You know the world is messed up when Microsoft is the good guy

Except they have never been a bad guy...

Oh no a company is trying to make money again, they must be evil!!! Everyone else hates them so im gonna hate them and be cool too.

The only good companies are the ones that spend billions of dollars each year only to see a return of sunshine and lollipops. Also they pay their 100,000+ employees in gum drops.

 

[TheReciever]

Friendly reminder that politics aren't permitted in these forums.

Difficult to abide by considering the subject material

 

[sumitlian]

Was Edward Snowden a child prodigy ?
He has no standard degree and yet NSA/CIA took him in.

 

[coachmark2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheReciever

Friendly reminder that politics aren't permitted in these forums.

Difficult to abide by considering the subject material

Agreed. I am hoping that we can have a civil and non-political discussion about the issue at hand that really does affect everyone here. OCN has proven that subjects like these CAN be handled with grace.

 

[Mrzev]

It sucks that Microsoft is hindering a criminal case, but it's also about the precedent it sets. So, i fall both ways really. I guess I am glad that Microsoft is doing this to bring some attention to it.

 

[GermanyChris]

Fight the good fight MS

 

[iGameInverted]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrzev

It sucks that Microsoft is hindering a criminal case, but it's also about the precedent it sets. So, i fall both ways really. I guess I am glad that Microsoft is doing this to bring some attention to it.

It makes complete sense. You don't give up other rights just because it may hinder a criminal investigation. People seem to forget that anyone and everyone can be a criminal and the only thing stopping that from happening is our rights. Microsoft is the good guy here. One of which why the company I work for and a lot of companies choose to buy Microsoft's enterprise products and trust their cloud solutions over other companies.

 

[Blameless]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jacksknight

Except they have never been a bad guy...

The massive annoyance that is product registration makes them villainous in my eyes. I install or reinstall Windows quite frequently, and have on more than one occasion, had to call Microsoft up several times in the same day and go through tedious manual activations...simply because I was a paying customer with legitimate licence to do what I was doing.

That said, I wholly agree with their current stance and action on the issue that is the topic of this thread.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrzev

It sucks that Microsoft is hindering a criminal case

Not when the prosecution is attempting to force a violation of the highest law of the land.

 

[DNMock]

All this means is that the court costs and impending non-compliance fines combined have a lower value than the positive publicity and projected losses incurred by loss of business due to privacy loss.

Basically, this is a risk worth taking financially for Microsoft, not a case of fighting injustice. Although in some cases, those two things can be one in the same.

 

[47 Knucklehead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jacksknight

Except they have never been a bad guy...

Didn't follow the whole Microsoft/Skype thing eh?

Don't get me wrong, compared to Google, Microsoft is a saint, but personally, I don't trust Microsoft with my data either.

 

[Mrzev]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iGameInverted

It makes complete sense. You don't give up other rights just because it may hinder a criminal investigation. People seem to forget that anyone and everyone can be a criminal and the only thing stopping that from happening is our rights. Microsoft is the good guy here. One of which why the company I work for and a lot of companies choose to buy Microsoft's enterprise products and trust their cloud solutions over other companies.

But the part in contention is only that the files are located on a server outside the US. If it was in the US, they would have it. The part you mention about how anyone and everyone can be a criminal is why i am split. On paper it makes sense to give up the info, but the potential to abuse of power is why I feel it denies liberties. If this guy was sending emails of child porn or other nefarious things, do you think Microsoft should protect them? I guess it comes down to notifying the country of the server of this kind of activity, and hope they have enough evidence on their end to do something about it.

I would hate to waste more tax payers money to try and build up even more evidence to convict the person. These emails could even be a make or break for the case. I personally feel the pros outweigh the cons in this scenario. I just see it like an issue i have at work. I need access to the server and DB for a task that needs to be done right away, but instead of giving me permission from the start, i have to ask wait for the permissions to be given, but sometimes they are too busy to do that. So, that puts me in the position where I am forced to find another solution and potentially lose some quality along the way.

 

[Mrzev]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blameless

Not when the prosecution is attempting to force a violation of the highest law of the land.

What law is that? The law that says if your stuff is out of the country we cant touch it?

 

[Blameless]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrzev

What law is that?

The Constitution of the United States of America; specifically the Fourth Amendment thereof.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mrzev

The law that says if your stuff is out of the country we cant touch it?

The law that says that the clauses in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that are being used to try to obtain this information are themselves unconstitutional and thus illegal.

 

[MerkageTurk]

The Constitution is not even being uphold within America today

"They who can give up essential liberty obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" -BENJAMIN

 

[Shiftstealth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sumitlian

Was Edward Snowden a child prodigy ?
He has no standard degree and yet NSA/CIA took him in.

I don't think you need to be a prodigy to be a System admin.

 

[47 Knucklehead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MerkageTurk

The Constitution is not even being uphold within America today

"They who can give up essential liberty obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" -BENJAMIN

This.

 

[flyin15sec]

Microsoft wants everything moved to the cloud. This will set a bad precedent if they allow this.

If they allow this, then major enterprises would likely not consider Azure or O365 knowing that Microsoft will provide data to the US government. This will hurt their business model more than the legal fees for the next few years.

All they have to do is hold this up on court till the next business model comes along, which would likely mean that everything is moving back locally and not stored on some "cloud".

 

[Ashuiegi]

Exactly the problem is not private data or private e-mail but US will use that to do industrial spying like they did in the past already , boeing used federal ressource to spy on airbus before and with their plan for cloud computing if they cannot protect data they will never have any customer , except the company own by gov directly or indirectly that will be forced to go on it for the exemple.
Do they realize that they sound ridiculous and they give a pretty bad image of the us. The one thing that keep usa from sinking atm is new technology, software and internet , do they really want to atk the only sector that still matter ? instead of asking for data they should ask for their taxes, that would be more productive.