Amazon.com, Apple, Google, Fox News, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Mozilla Foundation are supporting a court case brought by Microsoft against the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) that is attempting to put an end to a law that prevents companies informing their customers about government data requests.

The law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) allows the DoJ to serve a warrant on a company to gain access to a customers’ email and other information without telling users that their data is being searched or seized.

Microsoft, with the support of the EFF and others, are arguing that the law is unconstitutional as it breaches the Fourth Amendment, which is supposed to protect American citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures but in 2016 is routinely ignored by various arms of the Government.

“Whether the government has a warrant to rifle through our mail, safety deposit boxes, or emails stored in the cloud, it must notify people about the searches,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien said in a statement. “When electronic searches are done in secret, we lose our right to challenge the legality of law enforcement invasions of privacy. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t allow that, and it’s time for the government to step up and respect the Constitution.”

Letters

The crux of the argument comes down to the fact that a search for physical items, such as letters, would involve a person being told that they were being told they were being searched, and there should be nothing different when it comes to email.

“When people kept personal letters in a desk drawer at home, they knew if that information was about to be searched because the police had to knock on their door and show a warrant,” EFF Staff Attorney Sophia Cope noted. “The fact that today our private emails are kept on a server maintained by an Internet company doesn’t change the government’s obligations under the Fourth Amendment. The Constitution requires law enforcement to tell people they are the target of a search, which enables them to vindicate their rights and provides a free society with a crucial means of government accountability.”

It’s a more than reasonable case to fight and it’s great to see rival tech companies, ones who have on occasion stood on opposites sides of the courtroom against each other, come together to support the case.

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