Microsoft sues US over secret warrants to search email
SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft on Thursday sued the US government, arguing that secret warrants to search people’s email violate constitutional rights of Americans.
The US tech giant brought the case “because its customers have a right to know when the government obtains a warrant to read their emails, and because Microsoft has a right to tell them,” said the court filing in federal court in Seattle, near the company headquarters in Washington state.
The lawsuit said that a requirement to keep silent on warrants for data — based on a presumption that tipping people off might hamper investigations — violates constitutional protection of free speech and safeguards against unreasonable searches.
In the past 18 months, federal courts have issued nearly 2,600 secrecy orders gagging Microsoft from saying anything about warrants and other legal actions targeting customers’ data, according to the filing.
“We be lieve that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records,” Microsoft chief legal officer Brad Smith said in a blog post.
“Yet it’s becoming routine for the US government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation.”
Internet giants have complained that these types of secret search warrants erode trust in US technology companies while trampling on the rights of citizens and businesses.
The situation has become more urgent as computing and data storage services shift from software packages loaded onto individual computers to servers running in the Internet cloud. — AFP