I’ve mentioned this ruling on Pogo before, but thought some readers might appreciate this write-up by Bennett B. Borden, Andrea L. D’Ambra and Edward James Beale of Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP:
On April 25, 2014 in the Southern District of New York, U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV compelled extensive production of the contents of an unnamed user’s email account stored on a Microsoft server located in Dublin, Ireland.1 Memorandum and Order, In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corp., 13 Mag. 2814 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 25, 2014). This startling ruling could have a significant impact on not only the use of free email services like Hotmail and Gmail, but also all cloud-based services like Office 365, Google Apps, and even cloud providers like Amazon. If this ruling stands and is widely adopted, U.S. service providers may be compelled to produce customer’s data regardless of the jurisdiction in which it physically resides.
Read more on Mondaq.