- US fights Microsoft's bid to tell users when feds take data
The U.S. Justice Department asked a judge Monday to throw out a lawsuit from Microsoft and keep a law that prohibits technology companies from telling customers when the government demands their electronic data.
Microsoft says its customers have a constitutional right to know when the government collects their private information during criminal investigations. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act compels companies to divulge the data and keep the move secret, violating the company's First Amendment right to speak with its customers, according to its complaint filed last year.
"People need to get notice when the government comes knocking at the door to seize all that stuff that historically would have been stored in a file cabinet," Microsoft lawyer Stephen Rummage told U.S. District Judge James Robart.
Companies including Apple, Twitter and Amazon as well as media outlets such as The Associated Press, the Seattle Times and Washington Post filed court briefs supporting Microsoft.
In its filing, Apple said it received more than 1,000 secret warrants from law enforcement agencies for iCloud data during the last six months of 2015. Microsoft said the government made 2,576 demands for data over an 18-month period before April 2016, the most recent numbers available, and about 68 percent of those had no end date.
Eric Soskin, a Justice Department lawyer, said the federal government has an interest in keeping criminal investigations confidential and customers often eventually learn about the data demands when charges are filed.
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