The global nature of cloud services such as Google Mail has long prompted thorny questions over the rights of investigating government authorities to serve warrants on information stored on servers in other countries. Now a U.S. judge has thrown a fresh spanner into the works, ruling that Google must comply with FBI search warrants for emails digitally located abroad. Reuters has the key details:
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter in Philadelphia ruled on Friday that transferring emails from a foreign server so FBI agents could review them locally as part of a domestic fraud probe did not qualify as a seizure.
The judge said this was because there was "no meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest" in the data sought.
"Though the retrieval of the electronic data by Google from its multiple data centers abroad has the potential for an invasion of privacy, the actual infringement of privacy occurs at the time of disclosure in the United States," Rueter wrote.
The ruling came less than seven months after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said Microsoft could not be forced to turn over emails stored on a server in Dublin, Ireland that U.S. investigators sought in a narcotics case.
That decision last July 14 was welcomed by dozens of technology and media companies, privacy advocates, and both the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The appeals court voted not to revisit its decision, but four judges on the panel dissented, saying the ruling hampered the ability of law enforcement to fight crime. Google says it plans to appeal Rueter's decision.
In the U.S., federal courts are organized at the state level and also grouped into circuits of multiple state courts, which each have their own appeals court. Hence, the ruling favorable to Microsoft did not apply in Pennsylvania, where Google's case was heard, but it nonetheless stands as a strong precedent on which Google can base an appeal.
There's a broader message to take home from Google's dispute with the FBI, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Steve Wilson. "Overall, these cases are frustrating. They serve to show that jurisprudence had a long way to go to interpret things like locality and ownership online," he says. "I do not line up to criticize lawyers, and I especially do not panic that the law is outdated by technology. What's going on here is just like what happened with air travel and international trade: It takes time."
"I also note that technologists are not great at expressing principles cleanly and unambiguously," Wilson adds. "Look at how much ambiguous nonsense gets written about blockchain. Technologists can't agree on what 'database' or 'decentralized' means."
"So I say this in the interests of balance," Wilson says. "It's all too easy for technocrats jump on lawyers and judges. But the world is complex. The cloud is very, very complex. There are all sorts of permutations emerging in time and space. So let's not panic."
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