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Leslie Fletcher

Opening the Floodgates?

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Edited by Leslie Fletcher, Monday, 6 Feb 2017, 12:51

As part of TU100 Block 1 Part 1 Activity 8 discussing information I thought this was an interesting piece of news. There seems to be quite a difference of opinion between a Philadelphia Magistrate and a Federal Appeal Court in the United States which could affect us all indirectly in the future.

The difference of opinion concerns the FBI wishing to seize data held on foreign servers as part of a US Fraud investigation. Google has said that a US Federal Warrant impinges privacy rights and that it has no jurisdiction over such data.

A Federal Appeal Court in the US ruled in a similar case where a warrant was issued to Microsoft, that Microsoft moving personal data from Foreign servers to the US did indeed infringe data privacy and jurisdiction.

Philadelphia Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter ruled, "Though the retrieval of the electronic data by Google from its multiple data centers abroad has the potential for an invasion of privacy, the actual infringement of privacy occurs at the time of disclosure in the United States". He also argued there was "no meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest."

Judge Reuter did agree there was a “potential for invasion of privacy” but argued moving the data from abroad, in this case emails, “did not constitute seizure.”

I look forward to reading the Appeal Ruling as, to me, this raises many ethical questions and privacy concerns. The news item that caught my eye was written for Beta New Dot Com by Mark Wilson on the 5th February 2017 at https://betanews.com/2017/02/05/google-must-give-email-data-to-fbi/

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