US search warrant extends to Irish data centres

liamo

In a worrying, but not entirely surprising development, a US judge has ruled that data stored in jurisdictions other than the US is covered by a US search warrant.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/25/us-usa-tech-warrants-idUSBREA3O24P20140425

mneylon

Yes, but they're talking about US providers.
Microsoft are intentionally picking a fight

AnCatDubh

The US government's logic is soooo flawed with this. They can, and do compel US legal entities such as Microsoft to breach the privacy and data protection laws of other jurisdictions.

We haven't yet seen Ireland inc. prosecuting any company for giving such information belonging to their customers and held in an Irish jurisdiction to the US government. There was that Facebook investigation. Is that still being challenged by Europe?

Khannie

That's gonna burn amazon. Data centre in Ireland? US doesn't care. Give us the data. Irish law bedamned.

cnocbui

The obvious response to this by the EU ought to be to ban US based companies from holding any user data on EU citizens whatsoever. So they can all basically shut up shop and go home.

Wonder who will blink first.

Manach

The Data Protection directive and the Privacy one in Europe, from what I've read are fairly close to being a political sensitive area - from both a policy issue and with their connection to Art 8 ECHR rights. Thus any move to impinge on that from an outside source will provide a measure of resistance. My understanding is that international cooperation means there is a measure of leeway when other jurisdications seek to impose domestic orders in differing territories - but a good part of that is dependant on good will, which the order US warrant seems to have squandered.

riclad

i Think the usa has an agreement with europe,
where they can apply for a court order in an irish court or a european court to seek acess to data on irish servers .
BUT this court order is ridiculous and an insult to common sense .

MS ARE picking a fight ,they are standing up for users,
if this order stands ,
what company is gonna do business with a us based company cloud service provider ,
as the us has acess to any private business or financial data any time it wants.
ITS an attack on cloud computing.
Its a suprising development ,as it says usa law applys in any country.
regardless where the server is located.
The reason yahoo is moving to ireland is to give users more privacy ,protection from uk data acess laws.
The european union needs to look at reforming laws to bring in more protection
for users and companys against countrys or other agents getting acess to their
data.
Imagine a european country trying to get a court order to acess all gmail servers in nyc new york,
i don,t think the american courts would accept that order.

Stheno

riclad wrote: »

i Think the usa has an agreement with europe,
where they can apply for a court order in an irish court or a european court to seek acess to data on irish servers .

.

Are you talking about Blue Harbor? That's under scrutiny in Irish courts at the moment too.

Also US Law iirc via the patriot act, does specify that the data stored by American based firms can be made available to the US Govt regardless of where it is stored?

Mr. G

Stheno wrote: »

Are you talking about Blue Harbor? That's under scrutiny in Irish courts at the moment too.

Also US Law iirc via the patriot act, does specify that the data stored by American based firms can be made available to the US Govt regardless of where it is stored?

There needs to be a statement by the Irish government regarding this in my opinion.

I have to agree with riclad, certainly a political issue. I personally would refuse to host data with a US company due to the revelations in the past year.

Mr. G

riclad wrote: »

Its a suprising development ,as it says usa law applys in any country.
regardless where the server is located.
The reason yahoo is moving to ireland is to give users more privacy ,protection from uk data acess laws.
The european union needs to look at reforming laws to bring in more protection
for users and companys against countrys or other agents getting acess to their
data.
Imagine a european country trying to get a court order to acess all gmail servers in nyc new york,
i don,t think the american courts would accept that order.

How about if a European based company's servers where also in the US and there was a court order from that EU country, how would the US react? It would be a straight out "No".

AnCatDubh

On related matters:

Facebook data transfer interfered with privacy daily, court told via Irish Times

WhatNowForUs?

Mr. G wrote: »

There needs to be a statement by the Irish government regarding this in my opinion.

I have to agree with riclad, certainly a political issue. I personally would refuse to host data with a US company due to the revelations in the past year.

I wait with baited breath for a statement from Sean Sherlock.

riclad

ITS like sopa,eu politicians stopped sopa ,
when people protested against it.
eu politicians must take action,
Make it clear its not acceptable that all data on eu servers is avaidable to
us agencys .
Otherwise why would any eu company do business with usa company,s cloud providers.
since it only takes 1 usa judge to give a court order, to acess all data on say yahoo ireland email servers.

Theres, lots of laws in the usa that are different to irish law.

industrialhorse

riclad wrote: »

ITS like sopa,eu politicians stopped sopa ,
when people protested against it.
eu politicians must take action,
Make it clear its not acceptable that all data on eu servers is avaidable to
us agencys .
Otherwise why would any eu company do business with usa company,s cloud providers.
since it only takes 1 usa judge to give a court order, to acess all data on say yahoo ireland email servers.

Theres, lots of laws in the usa that are different to irish law.

Yes lots of laws because when you look at it real closely, the united states are actually countries that make their own laws when it comes to abortion, gambling, marijuana, same-sex marraige etc. The fact that they are still referred to as the USA and have a president ruling over their governors is no better than ex-soviet countries when they were still under the guise of the USSR!!!

cnocbui

I bought a Nokia phone to use as a GPS and I was not happy with the way the Windows phone OS treats the users data. If you put your SIM in it, and want to access your contacts - which is sort of mandatory if you want to call people and not type their number in for every call - you have to import the contacts from the SIM to the phone. The phone will then upload all your contacts to the Microsoft account you have to create in order to use the phone. So all your contact details will be stored on MS servers, whether you want that or not.

When I said on the Windows OS forum that I thought this was an issue I was not happy with I was told I was paranoid. Certainly there would be nothing in my contacts or the perpetual transmission of my physical location to MS servers that I need to hide from anyone, but it's the principle of the thing.

It's a great GPS - not so good as a phone since it doesn't have a SIM in it