Long Arm Of US Law – US Microsoft Ruling And The Implications For Irish Data Centres

On 25th April 2014, a New York court ordered Microsoft to comply with a search warrant to disclose a large amount of content, contact, payment and other data relating to an email account hosted in Ireland. The decision sheds light on the views of certain members of the US judiciary towards sovereign jurisdiction and, in particular, the extent to which a US court should be able to compel the production of data stored in servers overseas — in this case, in Dublin.

Background

The facts of the case in question ('In Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation', 13 Mag. 2814, heard by Judge James Francis IV) were quite straightforward.