Overview
(July 15, 2016, New York) — The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on July 14 ruled in favor of the position advanced in a Steptoe-authored amicus brief in the closely watched case of Microsoft Corporation v. United States of America. Steptoe’s brief was submitted on behalf of a large number of major cloud computing, internet, and technology companies including Verizon, Salesforce.com, Cisco Systems, eBay, Hewlett-Packard, Infor, and AOL.
On an issue of first impression, the Second Circuit concluded that the US government lacked the authority to issue a warrant under the Stored Communications Act to seize emails stored outside the United States. As part of a criminal investigation, the government had sought the content of emails in an Outlook.com e-mail account stored on Microsoft servers in Ireland. The court reasoned that the Stored Communications Act was not intended to apply extraterritorially and that the seizure of emails overseas would result in an extraterritorial application of the act, even though the data could be retrieved by Microsoft from the United States.
The case sits at the intersection of two areas of law courts have grappled with in recent years: the extraterritorial application of US laws and privacy in the digital age. The decision means law enforcement will need to rely on the cooperation of foreign law enforcement agencies in order to obtain the content of communications held abroad rather than trying to compel US companies to turn the data over directly. More broadly, the decision may help US cloud service providers deflect claims (made largely by their European competitors and privacy advocates) that data stored by with US-owned providers are too readily obtainable by the US government. The decision also defuses potential clashes between the United States and foreign countries over US access to communications stored abroad.
The Steptoe brief was filed by partner Michael Vatis with associate Jeffrey Novack, both in the firm’s New York office.
About Steptoe
Steptoe & Johnson LLP is an international law firm widely recognized for vigorous advocacy in complex litigation and arbitration, successful representation of clients before governmental agencies, and creative and practical advice in guiding business transactions. The firm has more than 500 lawyers and other professionals in offices in Beijing, Brussels, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, Phoenix and Washington. For more information, visit www.steptoe.com.