Ireland provides support for Microsoft in Email Privacy Case

LONDON - The Irish government has given qualified support to Microsoft's efforts to block US authorities from seizing customer emails that are stored in Ireland.

This action is linked to an ongoing legal dispute over a United States search warrant for emails in connection with a drug trafficking investigation. These messages are stored in a Microsoft data center in Dublin.

While some courts in the United States have stated that the search warrant is lawful, Microsoft has argued that allowing US authorities to issue search warrants for the content abroad may create a dangerous precedent and increase tensions between him privacy country and the rest of the world.

In a legal brief supporting Microsoft's appeal, the Irish Government said that the courts in the United States must respect the sovereignty of other countries when issuance of the search warrant, although it added that Ireland and the United States had existing treaties that could allow information to be shared with US authorities.

"Ireland has a real and legitimate interest in the possible violations by other States of its sovereign rights," the country's lawyers said in a brief support that was released late Tuesday. "Foreign courts are obliged to respect the sovereignty of the Irish," they added.

The efforts of Ireland, which is home to the operations of major US companies including Google technology and Facebook, are the latest in a number of complaints by companies and civil liberty organizations against the efforts of the US government for receive emails stored on Irish data center.

This month, organizations including Amazon, Apple, CNN, Fox News, Verizon, The Washington Post, and nearly two dozen other technology and media companies also filed briefs in support of the Microsoft case, which is now being considered in New York by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Technology companies said a ruling against Microsoft could damage their international operations, as customers will be able to become suspicious that their data would be easily accessible to the government of the United States. Like other US companies, Microsoft uses data centers around the world for cloud computing services such as email and data storage.

News organizations have also warned that foreign governments may use the issue to try to gain access to data centers outside of their jurisdiction to receive e-mails and other information from American journalists.

And in particular a legal brief filed to the court in support of Microsoft's Jan Philipp Albrecht, Member of the European Parliament from Germany who has called for stricter privacy rules in the European Union 28 country, said that the ability the United States to have free access to data held in Europe will undermine the region's strict laws data protection.

"European citizens are very sensitive to the differences between European and American standards for data protection," said Mr. Albrecht in his brief.

He added, "The successful execution of the order in question, in this case will extend the scope of this anxiety for a substantial majority of the data held in the data centers of the world outside the US".