Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the
United States v. Microsoft Corp. case (previously
discussed
here). As a quick refresher, the crux of this dispute requires
the Court to determine whether Congress intended for the Stored
Communications Act's ("SCA") warrant provisions to
reach data that is stored abroad or whether that would have an
impermissible extraterritorial reach. The government began the oral
arguments by pointing out that the focus of Section 2703 of the SCA
is on disclosure, thus making the warrant at issue a permissible
application of the statute. Microsoft, on the other hand, argued
that the focus is on the security of stored communications and
therefore, it is the storage of the data that matters in making
this an extraterroritoral act.
