Microsoft told hand over emails by US court

Microsoft has been ordered by a United States federal court to turn over a customer’s emails and other information stored in a Dublin data centre.

In a ruling with possible implications in Ireland for privacy laws and for major multinationals operating here, US District Judge Loretta Preska said a search warrant approved by a federal magistrate judge required the company to hand over any data it controlled, regardless of where it was stored.

“It is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information,” Preska said after a two-hour court hearing in New York.