Rome – Citizens have a right to know that the interest of the investigating authorities is gathering against them, the companies have the right to ensure its users the confidentiality of their data, and to give responsibility for any interference with the demands of justice, and the needs of the authorities who are investigating. Microsoft has formally denounced the US government in a public stance and widely publicized, echoing the defenses transparency instances by other entities and industry associations who fight for civil rights.
The Microsoft complaint, accompanied from a post of the chief legal officer Brad Smith, is not focused on a single dispute, but moves from 2,576 data access requests users received from the US authorities over the last 18 months. Requests that require companies that manage the data at the center of the investigation to cooperate without informing the affected individual on the basis of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986. 1,752 requests, 68 percent of the total, says Redmond, provide perpetual secrecy : Microsoft will never inform their users of the fact that the government has had access to their data.
Microsoft to prove the unconstitutionality of this secrecy imposed by routines, which goes beyond the need to prevent the concealment of evidence or the risks involved, it calls into question the Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment of the US constitution. The citizen has the right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches , and the perennial secrecy of data access does not allow him to exercise his rights, submitting to justice any disputes: a law written in the time of telephone, according to Microsoft, can not discriminate cloud computing and similar services, denying citizens the guarantees that are insured in case of domestic machines searches or paper records that an individual preserve in their own home.
Microsoft does not denies “having an interest related to its core business in safeguarding correspondence and private documents of its members” and does not intend to take responsibility for the violation: for this, with the complaint, would ensure the right to speak, to communicate to their users the government, and not the company that offers the service, is responsible for access to personal information otherwise stored and treated in privacy. For this Redmond, on the basis of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression, says its right to inform their users access from the authorities: the right that can not compressed without an expiration limit, for reasons vague and unsubstantiated.
“the transition to the cloud does not affect the privacy expectations dele people and should not alter the constitutional requirement according to which the government, with few exceptions, must notify the citizen search or seizure of information or private communications, “writes Smith. This is the same principle that has pushed Microsoft and other IT companies to advocate transparency behind the first revelations of Datagate, that soul that line of initiatives with which the entities that process user data aim to reveal how civil society They are ambitious given the governments to consult, and possibly how much data they have denied them access. This is the same principle on which Redmond has leveraged as part of another ongoing dispute with the US authorities, who demanded access to the data of a citizen kept on Irish servers, a principle that could help dissolve some of the nodes who still remain in the application of laws on an international scale and in the conception of transnational agreements centered on privacy as the EU-US Privacy Shield, which will replace the invalidated Safe Harbor agreement.
Microsoft so hopes that their legal action triggers reform of the sector, as also formally invoked by parties such as Google and Facebook, who profit from the personal data of their users and intend to make sure of being able to declare champions of privacy, at least compared to government interference. The review of the regulatory framework so pressing Redmond and other IT giants, supported by associations working for the protection of citizens’ rights, should invest the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Smith is confident that the legislature operates on the basis of three pillars: transparency, so that people can know the intentions of the authorities and to be informed about requests made to businesses; The technology neutrality, so that the market and innovation are not held back by discrimination by the regulatory framework; the limitation to the necessary secrecy, within the time and in the circumstances of application.
Gaia Bottà
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