US Judge Makes Google Hand Over Emails to the FBI

A Judge from Philadelphia, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter, ruled last week that Google should hand over emails stored outside of the country. This is in compliance with an FBI search warrant which pertains to a domestic fraud probe.

The emails that are subject to the warrant are currently being stored on overseas foreign servers, possibly from Gmail accounts. The Mountain View multinational tech company believes that the turning over of the foreign emails would be a potential invasion of privacy. They do not want to eventually be held liable for privacy violations.

In response, the Philadelphia judge countered that while it is a potential for invasion of privacy, there is no "meaningful interference" with account holder's "possessory interest" in seeking to access the data. Moreover, the actual privacy infringement would occur only upon actual disclosure in the United States and would not occur as a result of the data transfer made by Google.

The judge's ruling goes against a recent appeals court judgment rendered last year pertaining to Microsoft customer data that was kept in servers outside the United States. In the Microsoft case, a federal court ruled that the Redmond-based company did not have the duty to hand over its data stored overseas to the US government so as to not "disregard the presumption against extraterritoriality," as stated by the judge.

Extraterritoriality is a recognized principal in international law which exempts someone or something from the jurisdiction of local law. This is usually as a result of diplomatic negotiations and extends to foreign heads of state, ambassadors and diplomats, and occurrences in ships in foreign waters.

In a development late last year, Congress has approved a controversial Supreme Court rule change wherein it expanded the FBI's search powers allowing judges to issue warrants for searches outside their own district. Applying this ruling to the present case, the judge was trying to apply this principle by issuing a search warrant outside of his own district. But considering that it is within the jurisdiction of another sovereign nation and is contrary to precedent, will this ruling hold?

Google obviously intends to fight this ruling. The company has already said that they plan to appeal the decision and push back on overboard warrants.