Last Monday, several academics, corporate lobbyists and new organisations joined hands with Microsoft Corp in the company's legal fight with the US government over access to international customer data storage.
The different group of people filed briefs with a New York federal appeals court, urging for the reversal of a judge's order. The judge made a decision that Microsoft turn over emails from a data center located in Ireland. The group made an argument that turning them over would risk the future of global cloud computing.
There is urgency in this case for media and tech companies in the stir of revelations regarding huge volume of electronic data collection by the United States National Security Agency from ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Like Apple Inc, AT&T Inc also filed briefs in support of Microsoft's proposition to fend off "a government search warrant for emails."
In 2013, Microsoft started battling the warrant, telling that US prosecutors were going too far by challenging data held overseas with the absences of the local authorities' assistance.
Until now, it is not known whose emails are being sought, but the prosecutors stated that they liked them for a drug-related investigation. The prosecutors also added that their demand did not actually disobeyed the authority of Ireland because Microsoft's US workers had power over the emails and could recover them without ever going to Ireland. Loretta Preska, US District Judge approved and ordered Microsoft to comply last July.
This particular ruling might cause chaos in cloud computing for individuals and companies, nations might frequently start to assert authority over data stored somewhere else according to Andrew Pincus. He is a lawyer who filed a brief for groups which include the Chamber of Commerce of US, the largest US business lobby.
Pincus made a statement at Microsoft's New York conference that, "If by putting them in the cloud, you lose control over them and the government just gets access whenever it wants, nobody's going to do that." "Businesses want to be sure their legal records, intellectual property and merger plans are generally private from authorities worldwide," he concluded.