9 ms·

Microsoft calls for dismissal of U.S. Supreme Court privacy fight

200 points by djacobs 9y ago

rgbrenner 9y ago
no mention of the law in the article. CLOUD Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflect... The bill (passed as part of the spending bill a week ago): https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4943 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4943
olympus 9y ago
While the new law isn't the best, this particular course of action based on the law seems completely reasonable. New law -> new warrant -> no reason to continue wasting government $$ on fighting a court case that now has federal law clarifying the issues. Microsoft gets to save some money as well.
- gm-conspiracy 9y ago
  No warrant needed now. That is part of the problem
  - olympus 9y ago
    The article specifically says the Justice department is dripping the case because they have a new warrant and Microsoft is complying.
    - nareiber 9y ago
      They want a warrant for Microsofts data. The warrant comment is probably aimed at US citizens data on a third parties servers. EFF explicitly says the Cloud Act enables: 'Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it's a U.S. person's or not, no matter where it is stored.'
craigc 9y ago
It is really sad and disturbing to me how little coverage the CLOUD act has gotten. A law was passed quietly that was snuck into page 2,201 of an unrelated spending/budget bill just before Congress voted on it to allow warrantless surveillance by foreign governments and law enforcement on any US citizen, and not one mainstream media source has written about it. It was signed into law by Trump just a couple days later without a single hearing or debate in Congress. Please read: - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/23/cloud_act_spending_bill/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/23/cloud_act_spending_... - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflect... I personally believe the Facebook “scandal” is/was a smoke screen to draw the media attention away from this (4 or 5 year old scandal with regards to data collected for the Government to begin with). No private information was leaked (private messages, chats, etc) from Facebook as far as I am aware. I am not saying Facebook is innocent here – they are far from it, but I can’t stop thinking that the timing is too convenient and too much of a coincidence. Also recall that Zuckerberg liquidated around $500 million of Facebook stock in February. All of the major tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc) co-authored a letter supporting this legislation saying that it represents “notable progress to protect consumers’ rights.” despite the fact that it does the exact opposite. I think it will save them money from drawn out legal battles, legal fees, and the possibility of having to build additional data centers in other countries/continents to replicate and provide access to customer’s data for law enforcement agencies. The CLOUD act allows access to ANY data including emails, private messages, etc. without requiring a warrant or having to inform the person that it is being collected. It gives additional power to the executive branch as the attorney general and certain members of the cabinet can access data on unsuspecting individuals without having to notify Congress or the Judicial branch. Also data collected from another party interacting with someone else could be used to criminally prosecute them even if they were not under any suspicion or investigation to begin with.
- cmurf 9y ago
  It's a combination of corporate money in politics, and a nation of spectators, not citizens. The citizens have yielded their participation and power to corporations, on purpose, and many are proud that they've done this, if they care at all. It's only hindsight being 20/20 that they go, oh fuck that was a bad idea, how did we get here? Complacency. No one said democracy was easy. It requires constant vigilance. And people are too happy to be entertained by other things. Of course the better system would be the benevolent dictator for a push button operation, the small problem is they're not benevolent for very long.
mtgx 9y ago
I was afraid this was going to happen, after Microsoft became one of the primary supporters of the CLOUD Act recently. https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/03/21/microsoft-statement-on-the-inclusion-of-the-cloud-act-in-the-omnibus-funding-bill/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/03/21/microso... It's also the second time in the last few months that Microsoft has settled with the government instead of pushing forward the privacy fight. The government pinky-promised that it wouldn't abuse the gag orders anymore, and that's all it took for Microsoft to give up: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/10/23/doj-acts-curb-overuse-secrecy-orders-now-congress-turn/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/10/23/doj-act... It was starting to look like Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith was starting to care a bit about privacy with all the things he was proposing (like the Digital Geneva Convention) and these recent lawsuits he pushed the company to start against the government. But it looks like that fight was very short-lived and the pro-surveillance people in the company (Nadella, probably, going by how they implemented law enforcement's whole wishlist into Windows 10) won that debate. So I guess we can no longer trust Microsoft to fight for privacy at all anymore. And with the CLOUD Act, nobody should trust any US-based company anymore anyway.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  > So I guess we can no longer trust Microsoft Microsoft has not been trustworthy since the mid 90s, at the latest. http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/ http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/
- da_chicken 9y ago
  This isn't Microsoft's fault. Don't blame Microsoft because they're unwilling to continue a case which what just rendered moot. The law changed and the case now lacks merit. The legal question at issue in the SCotUS case can't magically include the CLOUD Act. That's not how the courts work. Microsoft will have to start over and file complaints against data requests under the CLOUD Act, but since that involves a different question of law this case before SCotUS is moot. Regardless of the decision in this case, the Federal government could just make another request under the CLOUD Act.
strstr 9y ago
Just going to give a shout out to the openness of the Supreme Court oral arguments. You can find them directly from the Supreme Court (https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2017 https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2...) or in Podcast form (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral-arguments/id1048210550?mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral-a...). First Mondays (http://www.firstmondays.fm http://www.firstmondays.fm) did an interview with Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer about the Supreme Court case and the CLOUD Act. The combination of these sources made both the CLOUD Act and this call for dismissal somewhat unsurprising. It was pretty clear that the Supreme Court wanted congress to clarify the now antiquated Stored Communications Act.
- perpetualpatzer 9y ago
  Agree that this isn't as surprising or impactful as others are reporting and strongly second your audio recommendations. For the oral arguments, check out Oyez (https://www.oyez.org https://www.oyez.org). I like it much better because it: * has argument audio from cases going back 50+ years (as compared to 8 yrs on scotus.gov), so you can listen to big cases from before 2010 (e.g. Citizens United), and when modern cases draw heavily on prior decisions, you can go back and listen to the reasoning in the previous case (e.g. Vieth for Gill/Benisek, Bakke for Fisher). * has the audio synced to the court transcript, which helps identify voices and follow when there's poor audio quality. * has audio of opinion announcements when they're given (so you know the outcome and reasoning of the decision without looking it up) * lets you sort by popularity, which makes it easier to find the cases that are important and interesting rather than merely politically charged.
justinclift 9y ago
Fairly unfortunate (mind understatement). Especially for the US Corp which literally added mandatory uploading and sharing of random end user docs to Win 10. Hopefully this starts the ball rolling on Windows being completely unacceptable for use by all non-US goverments and business. Giving your docs to an unfriendly foreign state isn't cool. ;)
- jstanley 9y ago
  > added mandatory uploading and sharing of random end user docs to Win 10. What does this mean? Does Windows 10 automatically upload randomly-selected Word documents to Microsoft? Or something else?
  - justinclift 9y ago
    Windows 10 is known to upload random end user docs to Microsoft. For example, if a computer with Win10 on it crashes / has some level of fault (etc), it can upload docs it determines are related to MS (to assist diagnosis). To bad if those docs happen to be medical records - or anything else sensitive. :( Note - that's just one example. Win 10 really is a privacy shit show.
    - mercer 9y ago
      Can this functionality be turned off?
      - justinclift 9y ago
        Apparently it's possible to temporarily turn it off. Saying temporarily because there are (apparently) settings which can be used to minimise it (unsure about "complete off"). The setting names and meaning appear to be unstable though. eg the required settings change name, change their meaning, (etc) with subsequent Win 10 updates and releases Just in case that sounds like it might be "on purpose" by Microsoft in order to make things difficult for their targets/end users to stop this abhorrent behaviour... it does seem that way. Microsoft is absolutely not operating in good faith. :( For in depth details, there's plenty of info available by looking online. Using HN's search feature should bring up a wealth of helpful pointers too. Personally, I can't tell you the settings needed for disabling this stuff, as I've never run Win10 (due to this crap). Everything possible has been migrated to non-Windows, and the last few pieces (running Win7) are on not-connected-to-the-internet VM's or hardware while non-windows alternatives are being tried out.
kerng 9y ago
In many ways this case isn't settled until the foreign stakeholders agree with it also, or? I mean Ireland can still force Microsoft to not hand over the data because its on their soil? Or because its digital law makers assume the data is already in US. Doesn't this need agreements between countries? Anyone know more, I'm not super savvy on that topic.
sbov 9y ago
Why does this sort of thing not require an amendment to the constitution?
- tootie 9y ago
  International law enforcement cooperation has existed for a long time and has rarely been abused. This new law is just extending current standards to cross-border digital assets. It's no different than extradition. The State Dept is allowed to negotiate treaties recognizing or denying the legitimacy of foreign search requests.
- PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
  Because the current 9 people, who are not at all in touch with either the original writers or the current population, get total say in what the Constitution actually says. It is just like the rulings that allowed obscenity exception to the first amendment, a fully automatic exception to the second amendment, or for the commerce clause to apply to a person growing food for their own animals to eat, Now, maybe in this case the 9 will claim it does require an amendment, but so many current exceptions and weird interpretations have been allowed that I can't have faith in the decisions of the 9.
  - liberte82 9y ago
    Anyone could make your argument about any Supreme Court that has ever existed or will exist, when they don't agree with the decisions being made. What are you proposing exactly?
    - bluGill 9y ago
      I agree with his assessment of the problem. I have no clue how to fix it. I'm not sure one exists.
    - PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
      You could make this argument about not just any Supreme Court case, but about any law that exists. Someone or some group has to be the authority on interpreting any given law, and if they interpret a law that says "X is allowed" to mean "X is banned", then that is in their power to do so. Ideally when their interpretation becomes some blatantly against the will of the people, the people need to take action. In the case of the US, we need amendments to clarify things. But so far this hasn't really been against the will of the people. So many wanted some level of obscenity ban. So many want some level of gun restrictions. And so many are willing to give up their privacy because of the promises made by those in power of the safety they will receive in turn. Sometimes when people play with fire, they aren't going to learn a lesson until they are burned, and there is nothing we can do other than try to protect ourselves from the blaze. We have enough people right now wanting to restrict rights for promises of safety (even when those promises are not delivered on) that I'm not sure what we can do in the US. More education on reasons why one should not trust an all powerful authority, but we have plenty of evidence that teaching someone something is bad for them might do nothing to stop them from doing it anyways.
jfoutz 9y ago
So, if I’m following the cloud act, it sounds like I could find an officer (anywhere in the world) that needs $500 and in exchange get everything stored by Google and Facebook for a specific person. I have no need for such a thing. However it’s not hard to imagine drug cartels or similar organizations using this right away. Pretty exciting new feature. Surprised they buried it in the patch notes.

200 points by djacobs 9y ago

no mention of the law in the article. CLOUD Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflect... The bill (passed as part of the spending bill a week ago): https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4943 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4943

olympus 9y ago

While the new law isn't the best, this particular course of action based on the law seems completely reasonable. New law -> new warrant -> no reason to continue wasting government $$ on fighting a court case that now has federal law clarifying the issues. Microsoft gets to save some money as well.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago
No warrant needed now. That is part of the problem
- olympus 9y ago
  The article specifically says the Justice department is dripping the case because they have a new warrant and Microsoft is complying.
  - nareiber 9y ago
    They want a warrant for Microsofts data. The warrant comment is probably aimed at US citizens data on a third parties servers. EFF explicitly says the Cloud Act enables: 'Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it's a U.S. person's or not, no matter where it is stored.'

craigc 9y ago

It is really sad and disturbing to me how little coverage the CLOUD act has gotten. A law was passed quietly that was snuck into page 2,201 of an unrelated spending/budget bill just before Congress voted on it to allow warrantless surveillance by foreign governments and law enforcement on any US citizen, and not one mainstream media source has written about it. It was signed into law by Trump just a couple days later without a single hearing or debate in Congress. Please read: - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/23/cloud_act_spending_bill/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/23/cloud_act_spending_... - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflect... I personally believe the Facebook “scandal” is/was a smoke screen to draw the media attention away from this (4 or 5 year old scandal with regards to data collected for the Government to begin with). No private information was leaked (private messages, chats, etc) from Facebook as far as I am aware. I am not saying Facebook is innocent here – they are far from it, but I can’t stop thinking that the timing is too convenient and too much of a coincidence. Also recall that Zuckerberg liquidated around $500 million of Facebook stock in February. All of the major tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc) co-authored a letter supporting this legislation saying that it represents “notable progress to protect consumers’ rights.” despite the fact that it does the exact opposite. I think it will save them money from drawn out legal battles, legal fees, and the possibility of having to build additional data centers in other countries/continents to replicate and provide access to customer’s data for law enforcement agencies. The CLOUD act allows access to ANY data including emails, private messages, etc. without requiring a warrant or having to inform the person that it is being collected. It gives additional power to the executive branch as the attorney general and certain members of the cabinet can access data on unsuspecting individuals without having to notify Congress or the Judicial branch. Also data collected from another party interacting with someone else could be used to criminally prosecute them even if they were not under any suspicion or investigation to begin with.

cmurf 9y ago
It's a combination of corporate money in politics, and a nation of spectators, not citizens. The citizens have yielded their participation and power to corporations, on purpose, and many are proud that they've done this, if they care at all. It's only hindsight being 20/20 that they go, oh fuck that was a bad idea, how did we get here? Complacency. No one said democracy was easy. It requires constant vigilance. And people are too happy to be entertained by other things. Of course the better system would be the benevolent dictator for a push button operation, the small problem is they're not benevolent for very long.

mtgx 9y ago

I was afraid this was going to happen, after Microsoft became one of the primary supporters of the CLOUD Act recently. https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/03/21/microsoft-statement-on-the-inclusion-of-the-cloud-act-in-the-omnibus-funding-bill/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2018/03/21/microso... It's also the second time in the last few months that Microsoft has settled with the government instead of pushing forward the privacy fight. The government pinky-promised that it wouldn't abuse the gag orders anymore, and that's all it took for Microsoft to give up: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/10/23/doj-acts-curb-overuse-secrecy-orders-now-congress-turn/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/10/23/doj-act... It was starting to look like Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith was starting to care a bit about privacy with all the things he was proposing (like the Digital Geneva Convention) and these recent lawsuits he pushed the company to start against the government. But it looks like that fight was very short-lived and the pro-surveillance people in the company (Nadella, probably, going by how they implemented law enforcement's whole wishlist into Windows 10) won that debate. So I guess we can no longer trust Microsoft to fight for privacy at all anymore. And with the CLOUD Act, nobody should trust any US-based company anymore anyway.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
> So I guess we can no longer trust Microsoft Microsoft has not been trustworthy since the mid 90s, at the latest. http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/ http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/
da_chicken 9y ago
This isn't Microsoft's fault. Don't blame Microsoft because they're unwilling to continue a case which what just rendered moot. The law changed and the case now lacks merit. The legal question at issue in the SCotUS case can't magically include the CLOUD Act. That's not how the courts work. Microsoft will have to start over and file complaints against data requests under the CLOUD Act, but since that involves a different question of law this case before SCotUS is moot. Regardless of the decision in this case, the Federal government could just make another request under the CLOUD Act.

strstr 9y ago

Just going to give a shout out to the openness of the Supreme Court oral arguments. You can find them directly from the Supreme Court (https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2017 https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2...) or in Podcast form (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral-arguments/id1048210550?mt=2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/u-s-supreme-court-oral-a...). First Mondays (http://www.firstmondays.fm http://www.firstmondays.fm) did an interview with Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer about the Supreme Court case and the CLOUD Act. The combination of these sources made both the CLOUD Act and this call for dismissal somewhat unsurprising. It was pretty clear that the Supreme Court wanted congress to clarify the now antiquated Stored Communications Act.

perpetualpatzer 9y ago
Agree that this isn't as surprising or impactful as others are reporting and strongly second your audio recommendations. For the oral arguments, check out Oyez (https://www.oyez.org https://www.oyez.org). I like it much better because it: * has argument audio from cases going back 50+ years (as compared to 8 yrs on scotus.gov), so you can listen to big cases from before 2010 (e.g. Citizens United), and when modern cases draw heavily on prior decisions, you can go back and listen to the reasoning in the previous case (e.g. Vieth for Gill/Benisek, Bakke for Fisher). * has the audio synced to the court transcript, which helps identify voices and follow when there's poor audio quality. * has audio of opinion announcements when they're given (so you know the outcome and reasoning of the decision without looking it up) * lets you sort by popularity, which makes it easier to find the cases that are important and interesting rather than merely politically charged.

justinclift 9y ago

Fairly unfortunate (mind understatement). Especially for the US Corp which literally added mandatory uploading and sharing of random end user docs to Win 10. Hopefully this starts the ball rolling on Windows being completely unacceptable for use by all non-US goverments and business. Giving your docs to an unfriendly foreign state isn't cool. ;)

jstanley 9y ago
> added mandatory uploading and sharing of random end user docs to Win 10. What does this mean? Does Windows 10 automatically upload randomly-selected Word documents to Microsoft? Or something else?
- justinclift 9y ago
  Windows 10 is known to upload random end user docs to Microsoft. For example, if a computer with Win10 on it crashes / has some level of fault (etc), it can upload docs it determines are related to MS (to assist diagnosis). To bad if those docs happen to be medical records - or anything else sensitive. :( Note - that's just one example. Win 10 really is a privacy shit show.
  - mercer 9y ago
    Can this functionality be turned off?
    - justinclift 9y ago
      Apparently it's possible to temporarily turn it off. Saying temporarily because there are (apparently) settings which can be used to minimise it (unsure about "complete off"). The setting names and meaning appear to be unstable though. eg the required settings change name, change their meaning, (etc) with subsequent Win 10 updates and releases Just in case that sounds like it might be "on purpose" by Microsoft in order to make things difficult for their targets/end users to stop this abhorrent behaviour... it does seem that way. Microsoft is absolutely not operating in good faith. :( For in depth details, there's plenty of info available by looking online. Using HN's search feature should bring up a wealth of helpful pointers too. Personally, I can't tell you the settings needed for disabling this stuff, as I've never run Win10 (due to this crap). Everything possible has been migrated to non-Windows, and the last few pieces (running Win7) are on not-connected-to-the-internet VM's or hardware while non-windows alternatives are being tried out.

kerng 9y ago

In many ways this case isn't settled until the foreign stakeholders agree with it also, or? I mean Ireland can still force Microsoft to not hand over the data because its on their soil? Or because its digital law makers assume the data is already in US. Doesn't this need agreements between countries? Anyone know more, I'm not super savvy on that topic.

sbov 9y ago

Why does this sort of thing not require an amendment to the constitution?

tootie 9y ago
International law enforcement cooperation has existed for a long time and has rarely been abused. This new law is just extending current standards to cross-border digital assets. It's no different than extradition. The State Dept is allowed to negotiate treaties recognizing or denying the legitimacy of foreign search requests.
PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
Because the current 9 people, who are not at all in touch with either the original writers or the current population, get total say in what the Constitution actually says. It is just like the rulings that allowed obscenity exception to the first amendment, a fully automatic exception to the second amendment, or for the commerce clause to apply to a person growing food for their own animals to eat, Now, maybe in this case the 9 will claim it does require an amendment, but so many current exceptions and weird interpretations have been allowed that I can't have faith in the decisions of the 9.
- liberte82 9y ago
  Anyone could make your argument about any Supreme Court that has ever existed or will exist, when they don't agree with the decisions being made. What are you proposing exactly?
  - bluGill 9y ago
    I agree with his assessment of the problem. I have no clue how to fix it. I'm not sure one exists.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 9y ago
    You could make this argument about not just any Supreme Court case, but about any law that exists. Someone or some group has to be the authority on interpreting any given law, and if they interpret a law that says "X is allowed" to mean "X is banned", then that is in their power to do so. Ideally when their interpretation becomes some blatantly against the will of the people, the people need to take action. In the case of the US, we need amendments to clarify things. But so far this hasn't really been against the will of the people. So many wanted some level of obscenity ban. So many want some level of gun restrictions. And so many are willing to give up their privacy because of the promises made by those in power of the safety they will receive in turn. Sometimes when people play with fire, they aren't going to learn a lesson until they are burned, and there is nothing we can do other than try to protect ourselves from the blaze. We have enough people right now wanting to restrict rights for promises of safety (even when those promises are not delivered on) that I'm not sure what we can do in the US. More education on reasons why one should not trust an all powerful authority, but we have plenty of evidence that teaching someone something is bad for them might do nothing to stop them from doing it anyways.

jfoutz 9y ago

So, if I’m following the cloud act, it sounds like I could find an officer (anywhere in the world) that needs $500 and in exchange get everything stored by Google and Facebook for a specific person. I have no need for such a thing. However it’s not hard to imagine drug cartels or similar organizations using this right away. Pretty exciting new feature. Surprised they buried it in the patch notes.