Apple stands by Microsoft against 'global search warrant' as case moves to Supreme Court
Microsoft's long-running battle with the Department of Justice over a federal court ruling that could force American companies to hand data about foreign customers over to the U.S. government will soon be heard by the Supreme Court.
Apple was among nearly 300 organizations and individuals who signed fresh amicus briefs in the case, Microsoft's top lawyer Brad Smith announced on Friday. Smith called the wide-ranging coalition "extraordinary."
"Members of Congress took the same position as members of the European Parliament. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce approvingly quoted a statement by the European Commission. Business groups and big companies agreed with consumer and privacy advocates. Faculty from Harvard joined with professors from Princeton. Professors from Duke joined rivals from the University of North Carolina, while those at Berkeley sided with Stanford. And Fox News agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union," he observed.
Microsoft is appealing portions of a warrant issued by U.S. magistrate judge James Francis IV ordering the company to give U.S. authorities access to email data from an Irish customer. That data is held in Ireland, and Microsoft charges that complying with the order would force it to break Irish data protection laws.
Apple has been supporting Microsoft in the fight since 2014. The company, along with networking giant Cisco, was one of the first to sign on.
The Supreme Court is set to take up Microsoft's case next month.
Apple was among nearly 300 organizations and individuals who signed fresh amicus briefs in the case, Microsoft's top lawyer Brad Smith announced on Friday. Smith called the wide-ranging coalition "extraordinary."
"Members of Congress took the same position as members of the European Parliament. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce approvingly quoted a statement by the European Commission. Business groups and big companies agreed with consumer and privacy advocates. Faculty from Harvard joined with professors from Princeton. Professors from Duke joined rivals from the University of North Carolina, while those at Berkeley sided with Stanford. And Fox News agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union," he observed.
Microsoft is appealing portions of a warrant issued by U.S. magistrate judge James Francis IV ordering the company to give U.S. authorities access to email data from an Irish customer. That data is held in Ireland, and Microsoft charges that complying with the order would force it to break Irish data protection laws.
Apple has been supporting Microsoft in the fight since 2014. The company, along with networking giant Cisco, was one of the first to sign on.
The Supreme Court is set to take up Microsoft's case next month.
Comments
If anyone should see the conflicts and compliance issues for Microsoft, it is him.
He should also be aware of any options that would permit him to use Irish legal proceedings to get the information he wants.
If the situation were reversed and an Irish company were required by an Irish judge to reveal information from a US citizen which was stored on US servers, would he not see the data protection issues?
Moving my company to other European cloud providers is not easy, especially finding a good alternative to the Google Cloud Platform, where the cloud services for my customer are running in a Kubernetes cluster. But if needed it will move.
And I am pretty sure that a lot of Europeans thinking in a similar way.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-microsoft/eu-to-intervene-in-microsofts-u-s-supreme-court-data-protection-case-idUSKBN1E12AO
The US Government know about the GDPR and are trying to force the likes of MS, IBM, Google, Apple etc to break it.
As a European I see this move by the USA as bad, bad, and bad.
The USA would not like it if we tried to enact a similar law in reverse.
As it typical, the US is trying to rule the world. Have it’s fingers in everything and tell other country’s what it wants and better get.
The bigger government gets, the more corrupt it becomes.