Microsoft Wins Widespread Support in Privacy Clash with Feds

Privacy advocates are lauding Microsoft for bringing suit against the government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails.

Efforts to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is at the heart of Microsoft’s beef with the government.

Andrew Crocker, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said: “We applaud Microsoft for challenging government gag orders that prevent companies from being more transparent with their customers about government searches of their data. In nearly all cases, indefinite gag orders and gag orders issued routinely rather than in exceptional cases are unconstitutional prior restraints on free speech and infringe on First Amendment rights."

The software giant’s chief legal officer Brad Smith said Microsoft said it has been required to maintain secrecy about more than 2,500 legal demands over the past 18 months. Smith noted that, “This means we effectively are prohibited forever from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data.”

Microsoft’s lawsuit is the latest in a string of high-profile battles with the government over privacy issues.


Alan Butler, senior counsel at Electronic Privacy Information Center said that such secret orders by the government should be the exception, but increasingly the requests have become the rule. “Notice is one of the key protections provided under the Fourth Amendment, and law enforcement efforts to delay or otherwise restrict notice should be viewed skeptically by the courts,” he said.

Because of the secrecy involve, it is impossible to tell how many secret government information requests businesses receive.

Source: ThreatPost