Some Supreme Court Justices Back Government in Email Fight With Microsoft

Microsoft seeks to block warrant seeking emails in Ireland
U.S. says ruling for company would hobble law enforcement

Spanish language keys are seen on the keyboard of the Dell Inc. Inspiron 15 laptop during an event at a Curacao Department store in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Wednesday, August 7, 2013. The Inspiron 15, an affordable notebook with an impressive battery life, is the only Spanish-language laptop manufactured and sold in the U.S. offered by Dell.
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

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By Bob Van Voris

February 27, 2018 at 4:28 PM UTC

Updated on

February 27, 2018 at 7:46 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Several U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed support for the government Tuesday in its fight with Microsoft Corp. over whether a decades-old law lets government investigators get digital information stored on overseas servers.

The Trump administration is challenging a lower-court ruling that barred federal law enforcement officials from using the 1986 Stored Communications Act to get a suspected drug trafficker’s emails, which were kept on a Microsoft server in Ireland. During an hour-long argument, the justices struggled to decide how a law older than the World Wide Web affects law enforcement in the era of cloud computing.