News - Microsoft rejects warrant to turn over emails stored overseas

[crossy]

We already had a better way, presumption of innocence, due process, etc. Unfortunately we let ourselves get distracted by 9/11, and opportunistic politicians exploited our vulnerability and fears to slip draconian policies in while we were dazed. Now we have to clean that mess up.

Unfortunately unless there's some kind of "people's revolution" ( Hi NSA! ) I can't see that happening. US politicians in particular seem to be either verging on neo-nazi's or in the back pocket of someone. UK politicians seem to have completely forgotten about country and instead are concentrating on doing what's best for their party alone (i.e. the "we look after our own, the rest of you can go hang" attitude). Apologies if that last bit sounds particularly venom-laden but after all I am a victim of the current Scottish Independence "debate" - and yes, I definitely DO include Plaid and SNP in that "UK politicians" group.

If you read the rest of my post you'll see that what I was asking for was not some road-to-Damascus style revision of the political system, but instead asking what we - as people for whom privacy is a right not a privilege - can do to exclude ourselves from the "dragnet". To be clear, I'm meaning casual reading of emails, analysis of web traffic, etc. I've no problem with "deep probes" (with a warrant!) being launched against paedophile rings, terrorists and serious-and-organised crime.

There's things like TOR (Hi again NSA!) for anonymizing web traffic, but protecting email seems to be something that needs more technical input - especially if your addressee is not using the same OS as you, or worse still, is reading emails on mobile devices.

[stoatwblr]

Microsoft Eire is not Microsoft USA - it's a separate company, which is operated via 2 levels of holding companies at arms' length from the mothership.

MS made a big song and dance to my employers about there being NO access to data stored on EU servers for MS USA employees/companies until we mentioned the PATRIOT act, at which point they admitted they would have to hand over data then, but under normal circumstances the only way to release data on EU servers is to obtain a EU court order - something which the prosecutors wouldn't normally have a problem with if the EU courts believed they had a case.

Something's pretty fishy about the whole case. Why are the prosecutors trying to do an end-run around due process?

[aidanjt]

Why are the prosecutors trying to do an end-run around due process?

Probably because their case is a joke, and they don't care about ethical legal procedure.