Microsoft v. United States | |
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Court | United States District Court for the Western District of Washington |
Full case name | Microsoft Corporation v. The United States Department of Justice, and Loretta Lynch, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the United States |
Defendants | United States Department of Justice, Loretta Lynch |
Plaintiff | Microsoft |
Keywords | |
Search warrant, electronic surveillance |
Microsoft Corporation v. United States of America was a complaint for declaratory judgment action filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington.[1] At issue was the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act.[2][3] with Microsoft arguing that secrecy orders were preventing them from disclosing warrants to customers in violation of the company's and customers' rights.[4][2] The case was started in April 2016[2] and although the government bid for dismissal of the suit,[3] in February 2017 a federal judge set a trial date set for June 2018.[5] Microsoft was supported in its lawsuit by companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google,[6] Dropbox and Salesforce.[5] The case was dropped by Microsoft in October 2017 after policy changes at the Department of Justice.[7][3][6][5][8][9] Although no laws were changed,[3] the new DOJ policy "changed data request rules on alerting Internet users about agencies accessing their information," and mandated defined periods of time for secrecy orders from the government.[4] Although the change represented "most of what Microsoft was asking for,"[9] Microsoft did not rule out future litigation.[3]
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