Apple & others back Google in opposing FBI warrant for overseas emails
Apple has reportedly joined Amazon, Cisco, and Microsoft in signing an amicus brief in support of Google, which a Pennsylvania court recently ordered to hand over emails from foreign servers in compliance with an FBI warrant.
"When a warrant seeks email content from a foreign data center, that invasion of privacy occurs outside the United States -- in the place where the customers' private communications are stored, and where they are accessed, and copied for the benefit of law enforcement, without the customer's consent," the brief said according to Business Insider.
The amicus parties also argued that other countries view such warrants as an "extraterritorial act on the part of the U.S. government," and that complying with the FBI would invite those nations to demand email from American citizens.
It's up to the U.S. Congress to decide whether the Stored Communications Act can be applied to overseas data, not the court, the brief continued. As added defense it referred to a Microsoft court victory in January, in which the company successfully refused to hand over emails stored on Irish servers. A government appeal to have the case reheard was denied.
Apple likely has a vested interest in the Google case, given the potential for countries like China or the U.K. to request data from its American data centers. It's also working on its first European centers in Ireland and Denmark, though the Irish facility has yet to begin construction owing to outside concerns over issues like power consumption and environmental damage.
Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has also taken a broader pro-privacy stance, most famously refusing to code a backdoor into iOS so the FBI could access the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The agency ultimately paid for outside help, something which is still drawing investigation by news agencies.
"When a warrant seeks email content from a foreign data center, that invasion of privacy occurs outside the United States -- in the place where the customers' private communications are stored, and where they are accessed, and copied for the benefit of law enforcement, without the customer's consent," the brief said according to Business Insider.
The amicus parties also argued that other countries view such warrants as an "extraterritorial act on the part of the U.S. government," and that complying with the FBI would invite those nations to demand email from American citizens.
It's up to the U.S. Congress to decide whether the Stored Communications Act can be applied to overseas data, not the court, the brief continued. As added defense it referred to a Microsoft court victory in January, in which the company successfully refused to hand over emails stored on Irish servers. A government appeal to have the case reheard was denied.
Apple likely has a vested interest in the Google case, given the potential for countries like China or the U.K. to request data from its American data centers. It's also working on its first European centers in Ireland and Denmark, though the Irish facility has yet to begin construction owing to outside concerns over issues like power consumption and environmental damage.
Under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has also taken a broader pro-privacy stance, most famously refusing to code a backdoor into iOS so the FBI could access the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The agency ultimately paid for outside help, something which is still drawing investigation by news agencies.
Comments
Seriously, though, it's pretty clear who's in the right here. This will be interesting to follow.
The real question is how much thought do these guys put on the consequence of these demands, coz you can bet you're mama's china
Or at least read a little.
This has zero to do with anyone spying on Google. It's all to do with what is legally required disclosure of information that might (or might not be) important to a law enforcement related investigation. It's an issue where fandom has no place.
What part of "the data is not in the US" do you have the issue with? Would you be ok if a cop from another country just turned up, arrested you and dragged you back to their country without applying the US laws?
The magistrate judge distinguished the facts in this case from those in the Microsoft case in which the Second Circuit recently reached a contrary conclusion based on that - i.e., on Google not knowing where the data was. In the Second Circuit case, Microsoft knew that all of the data in question was in a data center in Ireland. However, as I read the reasoning of the magistrate judge in this case, that distinction wasn't really dispositive. In other words, based on his reasoning, the same conclusion should have been reached even if Google knew that the data was outside of the United States.
Without getting lost in the legal nuances of the cases (which there are plenty of), the magistrate judge in this case disagreed with the Second Circuit panel on the legal question of whether a (Fourth Amendment) seizure occurs when Google (or in the alternative Microsoft) retrieves the data in question from a data center outside of the United States. He doesn't think a seizure occurs when that happens and thinks that the subsequent (Fourth Amendment) search of that data occurs in the United States.
It seems to me that, if the reasoning of this decision is ultimately substantively upheld by the Third Circuit, that would represent a Circuit split. That might lead to the Supreme Court weighing in on the general issue.
To be clear, it wasn't Pennsylvania requesting this data, it was the FBI. The Pennsylvania court that the article refers to is a federal district court in Pennsylvania, not a Pennsylvania state court.
Not disagreeing with your position, but to be more clear and this information comes from a source who has some knowledge how Google stores information. You are correct Google has storage systems all over the world and specific date could be anywhere. However, what Google routinely does with data is this, when information comes in they immediately replicated the information in 3 separate location in the storage facility, once they do this, they immediately copy the data to 2 or 3 other data centers and then copy it to 3 locations in each of those facilities. The reason they do this is due to the fact Google does not use high performance enterprise class drives with high reliability they use the larges and cheapest drives they can buy and when a drives fails they toss it since they know the data is somewhere else on the network and they do not have to go through a restore process, like is normally done on enterprise class storage servers. Also this help speed up the search results to people. Google to claim they do not know where is information may be accurate on the surface, but they do know the data exist in at least 9 locations and at least 2 or 3 of them most likely are on US soil. Unless they are barred from storing some countries citizens data outside that countries boarders.
In this case I am not sure what the FBI is asking for, are they asking for someone's data which is a US citizen or are they asking for someone's data who is not a US citizen and the FBI know what I know and asking for the data which is stored on US servers and the non-US citizen has not implied right to privacy in the US. This is why some countries demand Google only store data locally for local citizens.
Google's position, however, is that - for at least some of its services - it doesn't (currently) have the ability to determine where certain data is at any given time. Files are sometimes broken into pieces and different parts can be stored in different locations, and Google's network sometimes automatically moves data from one location to another.
As for what the FBI is asking for: The warrants relate to account holders who reside in the U.S. and who are being investigated for crimes believed to have occurred in the United States. The information the FBI is seeking is believed to have been exchanged between people in the United States.