Microsoft: Customers are entitled to know about federal data requests
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Microsoft revealed on Wednesday that it is fighting in court for the right to tell one of its large enterprise customers about a federal request for data hosted on Microsoft's cloud services. The data request came with an order prohibiting Microsoft from notifying its customer about the request, and Microsoft views the gag order as inappropriate.
"On Sept. 5, 2018, Microsoft challenged a secrecy order issued by a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn, New York in connection with a federal national security investigation," wrote Microsoft general counsel Dev Stahlkopf. "Based on the limited information available to us in this case, we feel the secrecy order was too broadly drawn and is inconsistent with the U.S. government’s policy that secrecy orders be narrowly tailored."
The Microsoft customer in question has thousands of employees. Microsoft argues that the feds should be able to identify someone at the company who can be notified without jeopardizing the investigation. However, a judge rejected Microsoft's request and left the secrecy requirement in place.