A U. S. appeals court will not reconsider its groundbreaking decision denying Department of Justice efforts to force Microsoft to turn over customer emails stored outside the country.
The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a 4-4 decision Tuesday, declined to rehear its July decision that denied the DOJ access to the email of a drug trafficking suspect stored on a Microsoft server in Ireland. Microsoft has been fighting DOJ requests for the email since 2013.
The DOJ has argued that tech companies can avoid valid warrants by storing customer data outside the U. S.
Judges “readily acknowledge the gravity of this concern,” but the 31-year-old U. S. Stored Communications Act (SCA) doesn’t allow worldwide search under a U.
