Microsoft tells US lawmakers cloud changed game on data privacy, gets 10 info demands/day from cops

[Klaralven]

The US House Committee on the Judiciary met on Wednesday to hear testimony on the government's practice of secretly subpoenaing cloud service providers, and Microsoft was happy to oblige.

Tom Burt, Microsoft's veep of customer security & trust, testified as a representative of cloud service providers. He revealed that Microsoft is presented with 7–10 secrecy orders per day from federal law enforcement. These comprise a quarter to a third of all legal demands Microsoft receives, he said.

Burt referred to law enforcement's court-mandated secret targeting of Americans' emails, text messages, and other sensitive data stored in the cloud as shocking in how routine it had become.

"The fact that law enforcement requested, and courts approved, clandestine surveillance of so many Americans represents a sea-change from historical norms," said Burt. He clarified that the practice wasn't exclusive to one party or the other, but rather "an ongoing problem since the ascendancy of cloud computing."

https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/02/us_government_cloud/

For a population of 335 million, that doesn't seem like a lot.

[abqtommy]

1. People who really want privacy won't use a smartphone or go online. I'm halfway there since

I refuse to get a smartphone but being online is a large part of my life. I really don't like this
"secret targeting". At all.

[Xoan]

2. Seems like enough.

[FakeNoose]

3. The feds are welcome to read my spam - I get about 100 per day

Seriously, who gets emails on their Yahoo or Gmail account that could possibly be incriminating?

[Klaralven]

4. I regularly get proposals for business transactions that must be kept private from the Nigerian cops

They sound pretty shady, and if pursued, would result in taxable income in the US. Maybe they are looking for those.

[Voltaire2]

5. So just a small bit of tyranny is ok?

At what rate would you find it unacceptable?