Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled, in Microsoft Corporation v. United States of America, that a domestic search warrant cannot compel American companies to provide emails stored outside the United States. The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, in conjunction with the Constitution Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and O’Melveny & Myers LLP as pro bono counsel, filed an amicus brief in the case urging a ruling that maintained Fourth Amendment protections for the increasing amounts of personal data stored digitally.
“The court emphatically rejected the government’s attempts to dilute the traditional understanding of a warrant and rightly found that the central purpose of the Stored Communications Act is to protect privacy interests,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program. “As we live more and more of our lives online, it’s critical that our laws are interpreted to protect digital rights. It’s also high time that Congress acted to update the laws protecting electronic communications, so that our emails enjoy the same protections as our letters.”
Read the Brennan Center’s full amicus brief in Microsoft Corporation v. United States.
Read more about the Brennan Center’s work on Liberty & National Security.
To schedule an interview, contact Naren Daniel at (646) 292–8381 or naren.daniel@nyu.edu.