People use email for many things: to collaborate at work, catch up with old friends, share baby pictures, or, sometimes, to coordinate the operations of an international narcotics trafficking ring. The federal government believes certain Microsoft-hosted email accounts were used for this last purpose and is demanding Microsoft provide them access to the communications stored within.
The Stored Communications Act (SCA) governs federal law enforcement’s authority to search email and other electronic records. They must obtain a warrant, subject to constraints similar to those imposed by the Fourth Amendment, and then provide an opportunity for the target company (e.g. Microsoft here) to contest the warrant.
Microsoft chose to contest the warrant in this case on the ground that the emails in question are stored on servers in Ireland, arguing that federal law enforcement may not claim jurisdiction over the entire globe. The federal government argues that the happenstance of the server’s location is invisible to the user, who, while sitting in his apartment in Manhattan (or wherever), is oblivious to whether his email server is in Galway or Yonkers. Because this is an important and recurring question, the Supreme Court decided to step in and sort the matter out.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/purposes-fourth-amendment-does-it-matter-where-email-stored
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