Microsoft sues Justice Dept. over secret demands for customer data
Parts of the law governing national security requests have been declared unconstitutional by previous courts.
Microsoft is suing the Justice Dept. to try to prevent the government from forcing tech companies to turn over data without their customers' knowledge.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch was personally named in the lawsuit. (Image: file photo)
The software giant filed the case in federal court on Thursday with an aim to strike down a key legal mechanism used by the government, a tool that can force companies to turn over data but gags them from informing their customers.
These gag orders -- typically used in national security investigations -- prevent tip-offs, which may result in leaks or destruction of data.
But that's becoming an increasingly bigger problem for tech companies, like Microsoft, which over the past 18 months has been forced to maintain secrecy in 2,576 cases.
In more than two-thirds of those cases, the company has been gagged permanently.
Microsoft chief counsel Brad Smith said in a blog post on Thursday that it was "not a decision we made lightly" to take on the government, but Microsoft did so because the company believes "that critical principles and important practical consequences are at stake."
"We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records," said Smith. "Yet it's becoming routine for the US government to issue orders that require email providers to keep these types of legal demands secret."
Smith argued that the gag orders are unconstitutional and in breach of the First Amendment, which "guarantees our right to talk to customers about how government action is affecting their data."
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-sues-justice-dept-over-secret-demands-for-customer-data