Microsoft Deputy GC: Cloud Computing Is On Trial at the Second Circuit

When federal investigators served Microsoft officials with a warrant in late 2013, requesting the contents of a customer’s cloud-based email account in connection with a narcotics investigation, Microsoft said “yes, and no.”

The company agreed that investigators had the right to access emails stored in the U.S., but protested that some of the emails were being kept in the company’s data center in Dublin, Ireland. The government’s authority, Microsoft said, didn’t reach across the pond.

When a federal district court in New York approved the search over Microsoft’s protest, and demanded the tech giant grant access to its Dublin data center, Microsoft appealed to ...