Microsoft and email was the subject of Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday. It seems as though the company is going to bat for folks that have emails stored on its servers overseas and whether or not those emails are to be turned over with a search warrant filed here in the U.S. Those folks happen to be facing some nasty drug charges. This case will have wide ranging implications as it is about to set a precedent that will likely impact many facing charges in the United States. The laws that Microsoft is citing for not turning over the emails was put into effect before the implications of email evidence could be realized. And remember kids, the “E” in “email” stands for “evidence.” At least that is what my lawyers have always told me.



The warrant in question was issued under the Stored Communications Act. Congress enacted the law in 1986 when email and the Internet were in their nascent stages, and the idea of data floating around the world was inconceivable.

Siding with Microsoft in this case are a raft of major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. They point out that the public did not even have access to the Internet until 1989 and the “World Wide Web” didn’t exist until 1991. Nor were emails stored after they were received. So Congress could not have intended to cover data stored forever in a cloud.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – United States v. Microsoft at the Supreme Court