Microsoft Wins Lawsuit Concerning the Provision of Customer Data
Microsoft has gained again a victory in lawsuit concerning the provision of customer data in foreign data centers. In New York, the Court of Appeals confirmed that the software company must still not grant access to the US-government to customer data held on a server abroad, and thus upheld a decision from July last year.
The US Justice Department had asked the US-Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to review the decision concerning the provision of customer data stored in Ireland. However, the eight-member jury of the Court of Appeals remains committed to the judgement that US law is inapplicable to foreign countries. As a consequence, Microsoft cannot be forced to grant access to the US-government.
Only in July last year a Court of Appeals had annulled the decision of the previous instance, after which a US judicial search warrant would have been sufficient to enforce the provisioning of costumer data from extraterritorial databases.
However, the now proclaimed judgement of the Court of Appeals was not unanimously: four out of eight judges supported the Justice Department’s petition for a rehearing. It is to be expected that the decision will be litigated by the superior instance or by the US Congress.
In this context Microsoft refers again and again to EU privacy policy. An order or judgment by any court or authority of a third country that demands the transmission or disclosure of personal data could only be accepted or implemented if it is based on an international arrangement, like a mutual assistance agreement.