Microsoft's New Lawsuit Raises Alarming Privacy Concerns

[BallAquatics]

The numbers Microsoft revealed in its suit, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, were alarming. Over the past 18 months, the government has filed 5,624 demands for information residing in a Microsoft cloud datacenter and has put gag orders on nearly half, 2,576 of those requests, meaning the company couldn't alert customers that their data was accessed. And in 68 percent of those cases, there's no end date for the order, the company claimed.

"We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their e-mails or records," said Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, in a blog post explaining the filing of the lawsuit. "Yet it's becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require e-mail providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation."

https://redmondmag.com/blogs/the-schwartz-report/2016/04/alarming-privacy-concerns.aspx

Dennis

[Mugwump]

The numbers Microsoft revealed in its suit, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, were alarming. Over the past 18 months, the government has filed 5,624 demands for information residing in a Microsoft cloud datacenter and has put gag orders on nearly half, 2,576 of those requests, meaning the company couldn't alert customers that their data was accessed. And in 68 percent of those cases, there's no end date for the order, the company claimed.

"We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their e-mails or records," said Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, in a blog post explaining the filing of the lawsuit. "Yet it's becoming routine for the U.S. government to issue orders that require e-mail providers to keep these types of legal demands secret. We believe that this goes too far and we are asking the courts to address the situation."

https://redmondmag.com/blogs/the-schwartz-report/2016/04/alarming-privacy-concerns.aspx

Dennis

Yes..it stinks that the government can be so secretive about it all.....I can see a few cases where they wouldn't want to alert who they're investigating...but not a majority of cases....