I wish we pushed for a law that said you can only serve a warrant for a data request to the person whose data you want. I think from a human rights principle it makes the most sense. The only reason the government can take it from
third parties that store our data for us is because it's "easier" for them to do that, and because there hasn't been enough pushback against it.
Imagine if the government said "hey, that money in your bank account, we can just automatically take our taxes from it, because we're not really taking it from you, we're just taking it from the bank." Probably not the most accurate analogy, but I think you see where I'm going with this.
Since the ruling that invalidated Safe Harbor, Microsoft has been pushing for laws and agreements between nations that say law enforcement shouldn't be coming to Microsoft (as a cloud service provider) with a warrant for data requests, but to their corporate customers. So for instance, if FastMail uses the Azure cloud service, they're saying that if the government wants access to a user's data, they shouldn't be going to Microsoft but to FastMail with the warrant.
It's a small improvement, but Microsoft and all of the other companies should be pushing so this works for all of their customers, not just the corporate ones. It's exactly the same principle, but Microsoft just takes the easier way out here, because that still gets them off the hook, and it's really what they care most about. The corporations (even if they are "people") shouldn't be having more rights than actual people.
Imagine if the government said "hey, that money in your bank account, we can just automatically take our taxes from it, because we're not really taking it from you, we're just taking it from the bank." Probably not the most accurate analogy, but I think you see where I'm going with this.
Since the ruling that invalidated Safe Harbor, Microsoft has been pushing for laws and agreements between nations that say law enforcement shouldn't be coming to Microsoft (as a cloud service provider) with a warrant for data requests, but to their corporate customers. So for instance, if FastMail uses the Azure cloud service, they're saying that if the government wants access to a user's data, they shouldn't be going to Microsoft but to FastMail with the warrant.
It's a small improvement, but Microsoft and all of the other companies should be pushing so this works for all of their customers, not just the corporate ones. It's exactly the same principle, but Microsoft just takes the easier way out here, because that still gets them off the hook, and it's really what they care most about. The corporations (even if they are "people") shouldn't be having more rights than actual people.