Microsoft Wins Appeals Ruling on Data Searches
< < Go Back
Court: U.S. agents can’t access data held on overseas computers.
Microsoft Corp. won a major legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department Thursday when a federal appeals court ruled that the government can’t force the company to turn over emails or other personal data stored on computers overseas.
The case, closely watched by Silicon Valley, comes amid tensions between Europe and the U.S. over government access to data that resides on the computers of social-media and other internet companies.
The ruling is another setback for the Justice Department’s efforts to force technology companies to comply with government orders for data, following the collapse earlier this year of two cases involving Apple Inc. ’s refusal to help open locked iPhones.
The ramifications of Thursday’s ruling by the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan could be sweeping. If the appeals court’s legal rationale stands, it also could influence companies’ and their customers’ decisions about how and where to store data. It also alter the course of talks between the U.S. and other governments, in terrorism and criminal cases, about access to evidence stored in servers on foreign soil.
Much of the data lately sought in such probes by European investigators is kept on servers in the U.S. European officials, particularly in Belgium, have complained that the current legal framework makes it difficult to detect and prevent plots such as the bombing of the Brussels airport earlier this year.
More From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):