Warrants and Data Stored Overseas: Microsoft’s Case Against the Government

Microsoft's challenge to a federal warrant for emails stored at a data facility in Dublin, Ireland raises a host of questions about whether the Electronic Communications Privacy Act applies to data stored outside the US, whether content stored in the cloud becomes the service provider’s business records, what is the role of the Fourth Amendment in an era of cloud computing, and how do we address the increasingly complex nature of overlapping jurisdictions in the digital age. James Garland of Covington & Burling and Nate Jones of Microsoft discussed what the Washington Post refers to as “one of the most intriguing, consequential, and complex legal cases having to do with technology now in the courts.”