Noah Feldman, Columnist

Cloud-Storage Ruling for Microsoft Helps Criminals, Not Privacy

Congress needs to update a law from before the internet was a thing.

July 15, 2016 at 4:29 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

The cloud has no borders.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

In an important decision with immense consequences for data storage services and law enforcement, a federal appeals court has quashed a warrant for e-mails that Microsoft was storing on a server in Ireland. Unless Congress changes the relevant law, this ruling creates the incentive for criminals -- or anyone else who wants privacy protection from government surveillance -- to make sure their data is held outside the borders of the U.S.

The reasoning of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan arguably followed from Supreme Court precedent -- but it was probably a mistake nonetheless, and it isn’t really a win for privacy rights.