Microsoft Says It Can, and Will, Read Your Emails Without a Court Order

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BoraMurdar

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Microsoft recently managed to hunt down a former employee who previously leaked copies for Windows 7 and Windows 8 to the Internet, but according to court documents, the company has managed to determine his identity after looking into Hotmail accounts. Without court orders, that is.

And still, the company claims that it’s perfectly legal to look into a Hotmail or Outlook.com account without first asking a judge for permission because what it’s doing is actually searching its own servers for information regarding a specific case.

Microsoft vice president and general counsel Frank Shaw said in a statement that although the company is free to look into user accounts for specific information, it’s not doing it, and to give users a better sense of privacy, it’s also tightening internal policies to make sure that emails are stored securely on its servers.

“Courts do not issue orders authorising someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed. So even when we believe we have probable cause, it's not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves,” Shaw explained.

“To ensure we comply with the standards applicable to obtaining a court order, we will rely in the first instance on a legal team separate from the internal investigating team to assess the evidence. We will move forward only if that team concludes there is evidence of a crime that would be sufficient to justify a court order, if one were applicable.”

So what’s the truth, you might ask. It’s pretty difficult to determine whether your emails are secure on Outlook.com right now, especially with Microsoft agreeing that looking into accounts is perfectly legal, but there’s no doubt that taking down whoever leaked Windows copies to the Internet was a priority for the software giant.

The problem with this case, however, is that Microsoft’s Scroogled campaign launched against Google and accusing the search giant for looking into users’ emails to deliver ads doesn’t make much sense now, especially because the Redmond company itself is doing it too, and not for a better ad experience.

Microsoft, on the other hand, says that it’s keen to provide a greater transparency level, so future reports will also include information regarding the number of accounts that got scanned by the company for illegal content. That’s not at all a thing that could calm you down if you’re a privacy advocate, but the company claims that “the privacy of our customers is incredibly important to us.”
 

Ink

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http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ft-tightens-privacy-policy-journalists-emails

Microsoft has tightened up its privacy policy after admitting to reading emails from a journalist’s Hotmail account while tracking down a leak.

The new rules prevent the company from snooping on customers’ communications without first convincing two legal teams, independent of the internal investigation, that they have evidence sufficient to obtain a court order were one applicable.

The company did not apologise for the search.
 

Exterminator

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The controversy over Microsoft searching through a person's Hotmail account in September as part of a company investigation has now gotten the attention of the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation. As you might expect, the EFF thinks that Microsoft's actions violate the U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act,

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Microsoft admitted this week that as part of its actions to find evidence against a person who allegedly leaked Windows 8 files and other code to a third party, it examined some of the Hotmail account content of a French blogger who was in communication with the leaker, now former Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo. Microsoft's Terms of Service for Hotmail and Outlook.com users state that the company has the right to search through those accounts if such actions are needed to "protect the rights or property of Microsoft or our customers."

The EFF believes, however, that Microsoft should have gotten a warrant to search the Hotmail account. Microsoft's argument is that "courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves," but according to EFF legal fellow Andrew Crocker it's the content of the emails on those servers created by a third party that is being searched.

Crocker says:

To the contrary, if Microsoft’s independent legal team concluded that there was probable cause, it could have passed the tipster’s information to the FBI to obtain a warrant and conduct the search under the auspices of the criminal justice system. The warrant protections enshrined in the Constitution would be preserved, ECPA would be satisfied, and Microsoft could have claimed the high moral ground. Instead, Microsoft has opted for an internal corporate shadow court.

Microsoft has said it will be updating its policies on searching email accounts, which will include adding a separate legal team to determine if a search is needed, followed by sending that opinion to an outside attorney who is a former federal judge. That's not good enough, according to Crocker, who says it violates the Fourth Amendment right to have such evidence presented to a "neutral and detached magistrate."

Crocker also thinks that Microsoft's Terms of Service could be abused thanks to the specific wording. He stated, "Combined with the kangaroo court potential of the company’s new internal Warrants for Windows policy, Microsoft is playing with fire." So far, there's no word on if the EFF plan to launch any legal actions against Microsoft.

Source: EFF
 

Ink

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News, news news. Microsoft have adjusted their policy to prevent this from occurring again. But I see why they'd be annoyed by this individual with sharing trade-secrets.
 

Dima007

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Just purchased a piece of the moon… Will help me?;)
Please let us breathe.
 

Erebus

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Mar 24, 2014
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I have read that is MS is actually getting paid by Govt. to allow access to certain computers.also rumors that Google was threatened by Feds that the whole company would be seized for drug trafficking(because of the drug ads without a script ads), if they didn't cooperate
fully.

http://gizmodo.com/how-much-microsoft-charges-the-fbi-for-user-data-1548308627

This Big Brother thing is getting out of hand.I don't know what to think anymore about the path we are going down.

First post...go easy on me...
 
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