Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

windowsitpro.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 120 posts

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#91

Post by waps »

mrich wrote: post #47
jnbiche wrote: post #5

The casualness with which the U.S. Government asks a private company to violate EU and Irish law is truly disturbing. The U.S. Gov has gone mad with power. And for perhaps the first time ever: bravo Microsoft! I don't even care if you did if for the PR, it's still a brave stand.

I'm amazed how even these US judges cannot see what is wrong with this. Or are they themselves under pressure/threat from the executive and NSA/CIA?

The job of a judge is exactly to NOT see "what is wrong with this". Activist judges are very, very bad.

Congress, and to a lesser extent POTUS, are the parties that have voted in these laws and are controlling the agencies doing this, and have the power to change them. Judges should NOT attempt to do so. That is the very definition of what a judge does.

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#92

Post by waps »

toyg wrote: post #79
curiousDog wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. And I'm surprised the European governments are just taking it.

That's incorrect. European governments are "just taking it" when it comes to some areas; in particular anything to do with security is left to the US to do as they please, because they bear the brunt of our defensive needs (something that is not going change anytime soon); and multinational companies are powerful because of their money, regardless of where they come from. In this case, EU data-privacy laws emerged as…

> Then the US Congress passed the PATRIOT Act in haste, and broke everything. It took years to sketch out a way to make these incompatible laws work together, sort of. Grey areas were swept under the carpet, in hope that particular circumstances they covered "would never happen". Now they are happening, due to a combination of factors (the emergence of cloud computing, NSA revelations, differences in foreign policy stances, etc).

This is what judges are always complaining about. Congress/parliament wants to look good and votes stuff in with utter disregard to the legal implications and how it interacts with other laws.

There is still a big fight in EU law about equality between men and women interaction with divorce proceedings (you can imagine how long this has been going on). Before the equality vote is was okay to treat women differently when it comes to infidelity. Why ? Because in practice, offspring resulting from infidelity has rights (ie. inheritance + money) from both partners in a marriage. If a man has extramarital offspring, he can choose to not be known and he can choose not to be the legal parent. But men and women are equal, it's in the law.

So ... what do we do ?

a) can women deny legal parentage for kids (this would be a disaster for those kids) after giving birth ? The answer is no. Men, of course, can do this for obvious reasons.

b) will we force natural parentage to be registered ? (problem here is, of course, that in many cases it's simply not known. And if the woman doesn't know, gets it wrong (unintentionally or otherwise) or isn't talking, what are you going to do ?)

c) do you revise legal parentage during divorce proceedings (again, in many cases a disaster for the kids)

For obvious reasons, parliaments are not touching this with a 10-foot pole.

> In this case, EU data-privacy laws emerged as a way to harmonize EU trade and law enforcement practices. They were then made compatible with US laws through various international agreements and treaties. Things were working, more or less.

I wonder why this even needs to be stated, but of course EU privacy laws do not protect against search and seizure as part of a criminal investigation.

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#93

Post by nl »

jodrellblank wrote: post #73
AndyNemmity wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My work is very much involving this, and it does have to do with protecting customers, because those customers won't exist unless Microsoft stands up to this. It's very much an issue with all companies that are non-US. That's why my company is putting datacenters everywhere. Chinese demand a Chinese data center for Cloud computing. This happens all over the world, and our strategy is all about that. This is a very re…

This is a very real issue, and if the US states that any US company has to turn over data, you can kiss every customer from another country goodbye. It's not as if Microsoft is selling access to the highest bidder, or considering a request from another company or a charity. Turning over specific data in the face of a court order is not going to drive every customer away, many will see that as acceptable, low risk, re…

That's actually not the case.

I've worked on many bid (on both sides of the table) where US based hosting was forbidden either by the bid process or by law (the new Australian privacy legislation makes it much simpler to keep data on-shore).

At the moment many companies just resort to using the Australian Amazon data centre, and everyone is ok.

If MS loses this case, I'd say 70% of those (enterprise) contracts using Amazon will use a non-US-owned provider simply because the risk is yet another things that has to be overcome.

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#95

Post by zmmmmm »

It's a very confusing article, I must say. On the one hand it seems to imply Microsoft is defying the law on behalf of its customers. If that is the case MS is in contempt of court and presumably the board of directors and other executives could face criminal sanctions. However there's certainly no mention of that and in other parts of the article it sounds like this is just one more round in an ongoing legal case ...

> The removal of the suspension legally requires Microsoft to hand over the email immediately

vs

> The judge has now ordered both Microsoft and federal prosecutors to advise her how to proceed by next Friday, September 5

Paul Thurrott is of course a relentlessly pro-Microsoft writer, and I can't help but get the feeling he's trying to take advantage of strategic ambiguity to put out a positive story here. I will stay tuned to see if indeed there is some kind of punishment meted out to Miscrosoft - otherwise my assumption would be that this is much less of a story than it sounds.

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#96

Post by diafygi »

zmmmmm wrote: post #95

It's a very confusing article, I must say. On the one hand it seems to imply Microsoft is defying the law on behalf of its customers. If that is the case MS is in contempt of court and presumably the board of directors and other executives could face criminal sanctions. However there's certainly no mention of that and in other parts of the article it sounds like this is just one more round in an ongoing legal case ..…

Huh, it does appear that officers are the ones who are locked up in the event that a corporation is held in contempt[1].

Which brings up another question. Instead of proposing that the officers be held in contempt, could the judge instead rule that the corporate charter get suspended? It seems like that would be more analogous to imprisoning a "person".

[1] - http://www.millerjohnson.com/pubs/xprPubDetail.aspx?xpST=Pub...

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#97

Post by yxhuvud »

waps wrote: post #92
toyg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect. European governments are "just taking it" when it comes to some areas; in particular anything to do with security is left to the US to do as they please, because they bear the brunt of our defensive needs (something that is not going change anytime soon); and multinational companies are powerful because of their money, regardless of where they come from. In this case, EU data-privacy laws emerged as…

> Then the US Congress passed the PATRIOT Act in haste, and broke everything. It took years to sketch out a way to make these incompatible laws work together, sort of. Grey areas were swept under the carpet, in hope that particular circumstances they covered "would never happen". Now they are happening, due to a combination of factors (the emergence of cloud computing, NSA revelations, differences in foreign policy s…

Criminal investigations in the USA have obviously no legal standing in the EU. What the US would have to do in that case would be to contact European law enforcement and ask them to help them.

Which they wouldn't do, because what they would ask would be against the law.

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#98

Post by rtpg »

Igglyboo wrote: post #35
ignostic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The U.S. Gov has gone mad with power. Agreed. Hopefully this encourages more people to stand up to unreasonable violations of privacy from our government. > And for perhaps the first time ever: bravo Microsoft! I don't even care if you did if for the PR, it's still a brave stand. The question of whether a company is following principles or motivated by profit/PR is so strange to me. The question is nonsense and the…

Seriously, I can't even count the amount of times I read about a company doing something good/bad/neutral in a day and reading comments about said action that boil down to "they only did it for money". Who fucking cares what their motivations are, a business is an entity designed to make money and they are made up of multiple different people with different morals and convictions. I wish these people would comment on…

I have a technique when trying to judge actions of companies I don't really like.

If a company I liked did this would I think it's a good thing?If so, it's probably a good thing.

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#99

Post by rtpg »

waps wrote: post #91
mrich wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm amazed how even these US judges cannot see what is wrong with this. Or are they themselves under pressure/threat from the executive and NSA/CIA?

The job of a judge is exactly to NOT see "what is wrong with this". Activist judges are very, very bad. Congress, and to a lesser extent POTUS, are the parties that have voted in these laws and are controlling the agencies doing this, and have the power to change them. Judges should NOT attempt to do so. That is the very definition of what a judge does.

at what point in your conception of the world do unjust laws get struck down?

Re: Microsoft Defies Court Order, Will Not Give Emails to US Government

#100

Post by justincormack »

Irish wrote: post #37
tracker1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, I don't think this has much to do with protecting MS's customers, or for that matter standing up for them as it is presented. I'm pretty sure it's more about MS operations being able to continue to run in Ireland and the rest of the EU. If MS hands this data over, you can be assured that MS would face stiff penalties and restrictions to even be able to operate in the EU, and would likely have their Azure f…

I don't think the foreign country would care unless it was data that was owned or related to an entity in that country. Its an american owned and operated data center in Irelend (where I live). Presumably the email is 'owned' by an american and the case involves all american actors(cant really make that assumption I guess) so there dosn't seem to be anything to spark the interest of the Irish legislature. Unless you…

It is the EU notbIreland that sets the framework for the legislation. Ireland has little choice.
Post reply on HN