The European Commission has reportedly expressed extreme concern about a court decision, forcing Microsoft to hand over data it stores overseas.
According to eWeek, European officials are calling out the US Government, with one European official telling the publication: “The Commission has raised this issue with the U.S. government on a number of occasions. The Commission remains of the view that where governments need to request personal data held by private companies and located in the EU, requests should not be directly addressed to the companies but should proceed via agreed formal channels of cooperation between public authorities, such as the mutual legal assistance agreements.”
In the Microsoft case, prosecutors wanted the contents of the email stored overseas, but didn’t want to follow the established procedures. According to testimony in hearings on July 31, the prosecutor feels that the process is “cumbersome” and wouldn’t produce the evidence as quickly as they wanted it.
