Business

Microsoft not giving up fight to hold onto druggie e-mails

Sorry, drug dealers — Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella may not be able to protect you from the long arm of the law much longer.

The tech titan on Thursday lost Round 2 of its months-long fight to stop federal prosecutors from getting hold of e-mails sought as part of a drug trafficking probe.

The Redmond, Wash., company claims law enforcement agents should be barred from getting the evidence on the @MSN.com e-mails because they are stored on computer servers located in Dublin, Ireland — and therefore clearly out of reach of US authorities.

The legal battle, being waged in Manhattan federal court, has sparked a heated international debate on access to e-mails by cops and other government agents.

Judge Loretta Preska on Thursday ordered Microsoft to hand over the e-mails — the second judge to do so. But the company said it will continue to fight Uncle Sam and will appeal.

Microsoft claims that seizing the e-mails in an overseas data center is equivalent to knocking down doors in another country without permission.

Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, who is pursuing the e-mails, has blasted Microsoft for playing high-tech semantic games. Where that data is stored is irrelevant because all the e-mails are easily accessible by Microsoft’s US employees, Bharara’s office has said.

“No law enforcement officer would even be present during Microsoft’s collection of the records to be produced,” prosecutors argued in court filings.

Microsoft wasn’t alone in standing up to Bharara. Apple, Cisco, AT&T and Verizon each filed papers in court siding with Microsoft.

The Silicon Valley giants fear allowing US law enforcement access to overseas servers will hurt their ability to do business abroad — especially as cloud-based storage becomes a growing part of tech services.

“We will appeal promptly and continue to advocate that people’s e-mail deserves strong privacy protection in the US and around the world,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and executive vice president of legal and corporate affairs.

Preska said she agreed with Bharara’s office that the warrant extends to all Microsoft account data, regardless of where it is stored, because the data can be accessed by Microsoft’s US employees with the press of a button.
The judge’s ruling follows a similar decision in April by Magistrate Judge James Francis, who issued the initial warrant in December.

After Microsoft balked at the warrant, Francis agreed to hear the company’s arguments, which he rejected.

Microsoft, which controls Hotmail, MSN and Outlook e-mail accounts, warned that the case could pave the way for other countries to argue for rights to US citizens’ data.

“If this court rules that the US Government may unilaterally reach into foreign countries and expose their citizens’ personal digital letters, the United States and its citizens cannot complain when foreign governments do the same to e-mail content stored here,” Microsoft said in court papers.