A NY judge has ruled against Microsoft in a rather important case concerning the powers of the Justice Department to go fishing for information in other countries — and what it means for privacy laws in those countries. As you may recall, back in April, we wrote about a magistrate judge first ruling that the DOJ could issue a warrant demanding email data that Microsoft held overseas, on servers in Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft challenged that, pointing out that you can’t issue a warrant in another country. However, the magistrate judge said that this “warrant” wasn’t really a “warrant” but a “hybrid warrant/subpoena.” That is when the DOJ wanted it to be like a warrant, it was. When it wanted it to be like a subpoena, it was.
Microsoft fought back, noting that the distinction between a warrant and a subpoena is a rather important one. And you can’t just say “hey, sure that’s a warrant, but we’ll pretend it’s a subpoena.”