Microsoft said Wednesday that it is too easy for the federal government to surveil the public's emails, texts, and other data hosted by tech companies by abusing gag orders and warrants.
Microsoft, one of the biggest email and cloud-computing companies in the world, receives as many as 10 secret gag orders every day to access user data and up to 3,500 per year, accounting for as much as a third of all law enforcement requests the company gets, Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. “What may be most shocking is just how routine court-mandated secrecy has become when law enforcement targets Americans’ emails, text messages, and other sensitive data stored in the cloud," Burt said during a hearing focused on legislative solutions to potentially unnecessary government surveillance and investigations.
"We are not suggesting that secrecy orders should only be obtained through some impossible standard," Burt said. "We simply ask that it be a meaningful one ... Without legislative reform, abuses will continue to occur, and they will continue to occur out of sight," he added.
www.washingtonexaminer.com
