Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice over data requests, the company is alleging that it is unconstitutional that they are not allowed to inform their customers when law enforcement has requested their personal data and emails.
The company received 5,264 demands for information from law enforcement between September 2014 and Match 2016, half of those requested were accompanied by secrecy orders.
There were a total of 2,576 requests with secrecy orders and 1,752 of those came with no time limit on them, this means that the company can never inform those customers about the requests.
Microsoft brings this 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. Yet the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”) allows courts to order Microsoft to keep its customers in the dark when the government seeks their email content or other private information, based solely on a “reason to believe” that disclosure might hinder an investigation.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the case, if Microsoft wins than this could change the way that many Internet companies deal with data requests and how they inform their customers about them.
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