Proposed legislation unveiled Thursday seeks to undermine the Obama administration's position that any company with operations in the United States must comply with valid warrants for data, even when that data is stored on overseas servers.
The bipartisan
Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act (LEADS Act) [PDF] comes in response to a federal judge's July decision ordering
Microsoft to turn over e-mails stored on its Irish servers as part of a Department of Justice drug investigation. The Department of Justice argued that global jurisdiction is necessary in an age when "electronic communications are used extensively by criminals of all types in the United States and abroad, from fraudsters to hackers to drug dealers, in furtherance of violations of US law." New York US District Judge Loretta Preska agreed,
ruling that "it is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information." The decision is stayed pending appeal.
Microsoft, along with a slew of other companies, maintains that the Obama administration's position in the case puts US tech companies into conflict with foreign data protection laws. And it fears that if the court decision stands, foreigners could lose more confidence in US companies' cloud and tech offerings, especially in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations.
