The CLOUD Act: Arguments For and Against

On February 27, 2018, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the seminal data privacy case of the term, United States v. Microsoft Corp. At issue in the case is whether the warrant provisions of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) apply extraterritorially, such that they compel Microsoft, an electronic service provider to produce private electronic communications stored on servers in Ireland for the United States government. Microsoft argues that the SCA does not apply to electronic communications stored in overseas data centers; the U.S. government begs to differ.