Friday, February fourteenth, the UN says at least 22 people have been killed in a village in the Northwest region of Cameroon. Over half of those killed were children. No one has claimed responsibility for Friday’s incident but the opposition parties blame the killing on the government.
Microsoft sues US government over Customer's data
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Microsoft has sued the U.S. government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails, the latest in a series of clashes over privacy between the technology industry and Washington.
The
lawsuit, filed on Thursday in federal court in Seattle, argues that the
government is violating the U.S. Constitution by preventing Microsoft from
notifying thousands of customers about government requests for their emails and
other documents.
A
U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment.
The
government's actions contravene the Fourth Amendment, which establishes the
right for people and businesses to know if the government searches or seizes
their property, the suit argues, and Microsoft's First Amendment right to free
speech.
Microsoft's
suit focuses on the storage of data on remote servers, rather than locally on
people's computers, which Microsoft says has provided a new opening for the
government to access electronic data.
Using
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the government is
increasingly directing investigations at the parties that store data in the
so-called cloud, Microsoft says in the lawsuit. The 30-year-old law has long
drawn scrutiny from technology companies and privacy advocates who say it was
written before the rise of the commercial Internet and is therefore outdated.
"People
do not give up their rights when they move their private information from
physical storage to the cloud," Microsoft says in the lawsuit. It adds that
the government "has exploited the transition to cloud computing as a means
of expanding its power to conduct secret investigations."
Surveillance
battle
The
lawsuit represents the newest front in the battle between technology companies
and the U.S. government over how much private businesses should assist
government surveillance.
By
filing the suit, Microsoft is taking a more prominent role in that battle,
dominated by Apple in recent months due to the government's efforts to get the
company to write software to unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a
December massacre in San Bernardino, California.
Apple,
backed by big technology companies including Microsoft, had complained that
cooperating would turn businesses into arms of the state.
"Just
as Apple was the company in the last case and we stood with Apple, we expect
other tech companies to stand with us," Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer
Brad Smith said in a phone interview after the suit was filed.
In
its complaint, Microsoft says over the past 18 months it has received 5,624
legal orders under the ECPA, of which 2,576 prevented Microsoft from disclosing
that the government is seeking customer data through warrants, subpoenas and
other requests. Most of the ECPA requests apply to individuals, not companies,
and provide no fixed end date to the secrecy provision, Microsoft said.
Microsoft
and other companies won the right two years ago to disclose the number of
government demands for data they receive. This case goes farther, requesting
that it be allowed to notify individual businesses and people that the
government is seeking information about them.
Increasingly,
U.S. companies are under pressure to prove they are helping protect consumer
privacy. The campaign gained momentum in the wake of revelations by former
government contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 that the government routinely
conducted extensive phone and Internet surveillance to a much greater degree
than believed.
Microsoft's
lawsuit comes a day after a U.S. congressional panel voted unanimously to
advance a package of reforms to the ECPA.
Last-minute
changes to the legislation removed an obligation for the government to notify a
targeted user whose communications are being sought. Instead, the bill would
require disclosure of a warrant only to a service provider, which retains the
right to voluntarily notify users, unless a court grants a gag order. It is
unclear if the bill will advance through the Senate and become law this year.
Separately,
Microsoft is fighting a U.S. government warrant to turn over data held in a
server in Ireland, which the government argues is lawful under another part of
the ECPA. Microsoft argues the government needs to go through a procedure
outlined in a legal-assistance treaty between the U.S. and Ireland.
Twitter
is fighting a separate battle in federal court in Northern California over
public disclosure of government requests for information on users.
The
case is Microsoft Corp v United States Department of Justice et al in the
United States District Court, Western District of Washington, No.
2:16-cv-00537.
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