In light of Edward Snowden's surveillance revelations, regular transparency reports from technology companies about the requests they have received from governments about data requests have become very common. But despite the name, transparency reports are not very transparent -- there are great restrictions on what companies like Microsoft are able to report. The company believes this is unconstitutional.
The restrictions are so strict that it is not even possible to precisely report the number of requests for user data that have been received. Instead, this data must be conveyed in bands such as 0-499, 500-999, and so on. Now Microsoft has had enough. There are privacy concerns, of course, but most disturbing is that in half of cases of requests for customer data, Microsoft has been gagged from letting those affected know about the governmental interest. As a result, Microsoft has decided to sue the Department of Justice in a bid to be more transparent.
In its lawsuit, Microsoft harks back to a different era, saying that in the days before the internet "the government had to give notice when it sought private information and communications" that was stored in hard copy or locally. But with Microsoft's -- and other companies' -- predilection for the cloud, it has become far easier for the government to demand instant access to private data that might otherwise have stayed out of sight.
